Changes in Domestic Population Policy and American Reproductive Behavior in the 1960s The sexual revolution of the 1960s did more than endogenously change the costs of sexual activity through the advent of normalized contraceptive use; it initiated the shift in how Americans think about reproduction. The new calculus of reproduction precipitated modernity’s unique demographic phenomenon: […]
Read MoreHow Segregationists Handed Feminists a 1964 “Civil Rights” Victory Against the Family On February 8, 1964, Howard J. Smith, Democrat of Virginia, grinning broadly, rose to address the United States House of Representatives. It was no usual practice for the House to meet on a Saturday. This urgent schedule had been set two days earlier, […]
Read MoreThe Story behind America’s Most Enduring Oxymoron When language aficionado Bo Mitchell judged 461 entries for the “Great Oxymoron Contest” in 1983, he ranked “wedded bliss” in third place. In fourteenth place came “happily married.” Mitchell distinguished two kinds of oxymorons: “linguistic oxymorons, which contain two words with opposite or conflicting meanings” (such as, “Positively […]
Read MoreWe 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 […]
Read MoreThe “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 […]
Read MoreIt 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 […]
Read MoreEven 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 […]
Read MoreIn 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’ […]
Read MoreThe 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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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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