Category: Marriage/Family

Over the past several years, American households have experienced one of the sharpest increases in the cost of living in decades.
Rising prices for housing, child care, healthcare, and education have coincided with heightened economic uncertainty following the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, U.S. fertility rates have continued their long-run decline…

Ireland’s marriage rates have cratered to historic lows, sparking urgent warnings from the Iona Institute’s new paper, “On the Wrong Course: Birth, Marriage and Family Trends in Ireland.” Dropping from 5.2 per thousand adults in 2004 to just 3.8 in 2024—below the EU’s 4.0 average in 2023—this decline signals a profound cultural shift away from lifelong commitments, threatening children, couples, and society at large.

Research supports my clinical experience and indicates that dating is on the decline among teens and young adults, despite the fact that the majority of single men and women between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four want to be in a romantic relationship. The challenge? Many simply don’t know how to navigate the path to finding one.

Recent research from BYU’s Wheatley Institute shows that several practices within each spouse’s control contribute to stable marriages. I emphasize two of these: being fully committed to your spouse and participating in religious activities together.

Unlike two disparaged archetypes — the American basement dwellers and the Japanese hikikomori who rely on their parents for support — the trad son offers something useful to his parents: labor in exchange for his upkeep, whether it be cooking, cleaning, yard work or running errands. In other words, you might say the trad son is merely being a productive member of a household, which parenting expert John Rosemond says even a 3-year-old should do.
That said, there’s no question that the arrangement can be appealing for both young men and their parents, who might enjoy both the help and the pleasure of having their son stick around longer than expected. And it’s been pointed out that this isn’t as unusual in other cultures, where it’s simply called a less trendy term: multigenerational living.

Gone are the days of naively believing that screen time is a net positive for youth. Over the past 18 months, we have seen a sharp rise in legislative action banning smartphones during the school day and an abundance of conversations and research documenting the negative influences of social media on teen mental health. It should come as no surprise, then, that many are now questioning the amount of screen time students are receiving during the school day.

The House will consider H.R. 6945, the Supporting Pregnant and Parenting Women and Families Act, and H.R. 6359, the Pregnant Students’ Rights Act.
Both bills advance real, compassionate support for women and their children.

Research has long shown that marriage adjusts men and women’s personalities for the better through marriage.
“findings indicate that newlywed spouses’ personalities undergo meaningful changes during the newlywed years and these changes are associated with changes in spouses’ marital satisfaction.”