The Supreme Court Enlists in the Sexual Revolution

We have traveled very far from 1888 when a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court was willing to endorse the notion that marriage “is an institution, in the maintenance of which in its purity the public is deeply interested, for it is the foundation of the family and of society, without which there would be […]

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Introduction by Allan C. Carlson

The “Sixties” actually opened as a continuation of the equally iconic “Fifties.” Through 1963, the social life of the United States remained defined by a seemingly strong culture of marriage and family. The average age of first marriage stood at record lows: 22 for men; 20 for women.  The proportion of adults who were or […]

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Unmarried Parents – the Fathers

It takes two to tango, so when public-health officials examine the troubling rise in out-of-wedlock births, they need to look not only at unmarried mothers. Unmarried fatherhood thus defines the focus of a study recently completed by scholars from Columbia University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The researchers begin their inquiry acutely aware “that nonmarital […]

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Unmarried Parents – the Mothers

Even when social scientists refuse to confront the moral questions, they must admit that a woman giving birth outside the bonds of marriage is creating serious problems for herself, the child, and society at large. So what personal and household circumstances foster such births, and what contrasting circumstances prevent them? In a study recently completed […]

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Rechazando Las Drogas: La Religión y El Matrimonio

In their fight against the use of illegal drugs among Latinos—the nation’s largest and still rapidly growing minority group—law-enforcement officers have need of every support. And according to a study recently completed at California State University, San Bernadino, religion and wedlock count as two particularly powerful allies.   The reasons for the Cal State researchers’ […]

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What Should Be Done?

The lambent visionaries who scripted the Sixties promised that Americans would be much better off after they had shed restrictive marital roles. So why, a half century later, are social scientists from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) concluding that in cutting their marital ties, Americans have actually been shredding the social safety […]

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The (Non)Marrying Middle

Marriage Markets – How Inequality is Remaking the American Family June Carbone and Naomi Cahn Oxford University Press, 2014; 272 pages, $29.95 Across America, a new marker of social class is emerging. That marker differentiates the rich from the poor, the educated from the high-school dropouts. It separates those who drive Bentleys and vacation in […]

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Marriage and the Middle Class

Labor’s Love Lost – The Rise and Fall of the Working-Class Family in America Andrew J. Cherlin Russell Sage, 2014; 272 pages, $35.00 Andrew J. Cherlin, the Benjamin H. Griswold III Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at Johns Hopkins University, has spent a career studying marriage and family in the United States. His work […]

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