Category: Marriage/Family

The title of this article reflects a common idea in the world of dating at middle age. In our 20s, all of us were roughly equal. Even though some may have come from families with substantial resources, while others did not, with a good education and personal initiative, your dating partner might represent “potential.”

The Spirit confirmed that my first husband was the one I should marry but after almost two decades of marriage and multiple children, I left him and soon married someone else who was an inactive returned missionary.

Last week, The New York Times of all places gave two very smart conservative women an open microphone and one hour to passionately debate and critique modern feminism.

As it turns out, for women ages 25 to 39, higher incomes are associated with higher marriage rates. ACS data from 2019 to 2023 shows that, among women who had never previously been married, 10% of those in the highest income quintile reported getting married in the past year; meanwhile, only around 5% of the lowest-earning women did.

Hope, love, faith: The three theological virtues, though not in Pauline order, form the tripartite shape of a good life—childhood, youth, maturity. You can’t skip over any phase. If some overpowering love doesn’t shatter the chrysalis of my childhood, I’ll never surpass the passivity of childish hope. Without the memory of my original inspiration, I won’t keep slogging through long seasons of slow, sometimes imperceptible germination and growth.

Mothers and fathers should be intentional and deliberate about not only modeling a good marriage but also sharing about why it’s so good. Every child should know how their parents met and how they fell in love. Fathers and mothers should talk with their sons and daughters about dating and discernment. The parents need to help cast a vision and explain how much better life is when you have committed your life to someone and can spend your remaining years with them.

The Institute for Family Studies has delivered exceptional research demonstrating that Americans overwhelmingly prefer family-friendly housing with multiple bedrooms. Lyman Stone and Bobby Fijan’s survey of over 6,000 Americans confirms what housing analysts have long suspected: bedroom count matters more than virtually any other apartment feature for family formation. Stone and Fijan are absolutely correct that we need more family-sized homes (2+ bedrooms) to support American families, particularly young and low-income families.