Carle Zimmerman Revisited

Eminent sociologist Carle Zimmerman’s Family and Civilization is widely considered to be a classic. It is a tour de force on family structure. And its largely accurate prophecies make its age (over 70 years) even more valuable. It’s not clear whether Zimmerman’s succinct first sentence is motivated by his profession or his interest as a […]

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American Copreneurs

The Who, Where, and Why of Couple-Operated Business Ventures American Copreneurs: The Who, Where, and Why of Couple-Operated Business Ventures Nicole M. King Perhaps nowhere in literature is the idea of a home-based economy more evident than in the works of Kentucky agrarian writer Wendell Berry. In the fictional lives of the members of the […]

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Beyond Capitalism and Socialism

Rebuilding an Economy Focused on Family and Community The Great Recession of 2008-2009 brought to the surface old truths that many chose to forget when times seemed to be good: The business cycle has not been eliminated; finance capitalism is by nature unstable; politically connected corporations commonly escape market discipline; and there is nothing conservative […]

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The Family Wage and Domestic Work in Roman Catholic Discourse

From Rerum Novarum to Amoris Laetitia Every Roman Catholic magisterial document that confronts the key social issues of our contemporary culture should be compulsory reading for many, but especially for those researchers who reflect on the centrality of the family in the lives of every human being and of society at large. The great ideologies […]

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Growing Acceptance of a Dangerous Addiction

June 12, 2018 The Topic: Growing Acceptance of a Dangerous Addiction The News Story: More Americans Say Pornography is Morally Acceptable The New Research: Internet Pornography—Akin to Cocaine The News Story: More Americans Say Pornography is Morally Acceptable A recent Gallup poll reveals that a whopping 43% of Americans now believe that pornography is “morally […]

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Putting Children at Risk—Chinese Labor Bosses, American Divorce Lawyers

Progressives always style themselves as champions of children. Yet these defenders of children often evince a curious insouciance about a social circumstance—namely, parental absence—known to put children at risk.  A new study establishing that children suffer when they lose contact with parents comes out of China, where many hard-pressed rural parents have in recent years […]

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Mom’s Job, Baby’s Formula

Pediatricians have understood for some time that breastfeeding delivers remarkable benefits—nutritional, immunological, developmental—to infants. But these benefits have counted for little among the feminist activists pushing ever more women into full-time employment, and away from wedlock. Just how fully the feminist agenda jeopardizes babies needing breastfeeding shows up distinctly in a new study of infant-feeding […]

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Parents Split, Junior Flunks

For all of their effusive pro-child rhetoric, progressives remain astonishingly blind to the real consequences for children of their marriage-subverting principles. But those consequences come into sobering focus in a new Spanish study concluding that children who experience a parental separation are disturbingly likely to fail in school.   In sketching out the context for […]

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“One Big Thing”

Catholic Social Teaching and Distributism: Toward a New Economy  by Michael Hickey  Hamilton Books, 2017; 166 pages, $19.99 Of Labour and Liberty: Distributism in Victoria, 1891-1966  by Race Mathews  University of Notre Dame Press, 2018; 422 pages, $50.00 An Economics of Justice & Charity: Catholic Social Teaching, Its Development and Contemporary Relevance  by Thomas Storck  […]

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