There is usually a gap of some size—large or small—between the realities of life and the ideals of the law. The ideal in family law is to foster, support, and protect healthy, happy, and effective families. The reality, however, sometimes falls short of that ideal. Sadly, American family law sometimes impedes family success and frustrates […]
Read MoreIn 1888, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field wrote the majority opinion in a case involving the validity of an Oregon legislative divorce as it related to ownership of a land grant. In the opinion, Justice Field wrote: “It is also to be observed that, whilst marriage is often termed by text writers and in […]
Read MoreAbortion is one of the greatest tragedies that faces mankind across the globe. The Guttmacher Institute reports that 56.3 million induced abortions were performed worldwide between 2010 and 2014. That is an increase of nearly 6 million compared to 1990-1994.[1] These numbers represent 25 percent of pregnancies globally, meaning that a quarter of all children […]
Read MoreEvidence from a Randomized Staged Field Experiment in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala Asociación Puente (AP) is a Guatemalan non-profit organization, which seeks to reduce extreme poverty and prevent malnutrition through the development of skills in women who live in extremely poor rural communities with unmet basic needs. Between 2011 and 2014 the organization implemented the community […]
Read MoreThis past summer, I attended my 50th high school class reunion, in my hometown, Des Moines, Iowa. A near-classmate of mine at Theodore Roosevelt High School was Bill Bryson, who went on to become a bestselling author of volumes such as A Walk in the Woods and A Short History of Nearly Everything. Among these […]
Read MoreA Comparative Analysis from a Global Perspective Nowadays, the general debate about family apparently revolves around a crucial question: Is the family founded on a marriage between one man and one woman still a resource for the individual and for society, or is it a bond from the past that hinders individual emancipation and the […]
Read MoreTwenty-first-century progressives revere the 19th-century French novelist Émile Zola as one of their own—a daring writer whose often shockingly explicit writing challenged conventional sexual and moral proprieties. But a new study of Zola’s last years reveals that it is actually progressives who might find themselves most scandalized by some of the views the novelist expressed […]
Read MoreWhen 20th-century feminist utopian Charlotte Perkins Gilman looked at home cooking, she saw only a primitive tangle of inefficiencies. It is far more efficient, she opined, to have professionals prepare meals using modern culinary equipment suitable for quantity production. What Gilman failed to see, however, were the considerable benefits that come with home-cooked family meals. […]
Read MoreLong known as a land of Confucian social solidarity, Japan has felt the influence of American-style individualism in recent decades, an influence corrosive of marriage and family life. Indeed, in a recently published study, social psychologist Yuji Ogihara of Kyoto University and the University of California, Los Angeles, measures the increasing strength of such individualism […]
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The Political Theory of the American Founding Natural Rights, Public Policy, and the Moral Conditions of Freedom Thomas G. West Cambridge University Press, 2017; 428 pages, £26.99 I begin with praise for Professor West’s treatment of family questions in his book, The Political Theory of the American Founding. As he notes, there is a curious […]
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