I had another dream, I had another life
Readers of Difficult Run likely know that family structure and child well-being is a subject that I have spent quite a bit of time studying and reporting. It is this reason that I was excited to see this very subject revisited by the Princeton-Brookings collaboration The Future of Children in their October 2015 issue. According to … Read more
Last week I pointed out that a lot of the liberal glee at Kim Davis’s apparent hypocrisy was disingenuous. One of our commenters who supports same-sex marriage countered that there is reasonable grounds for suspicion about conservative motivations for opposing same-sex marriage, however. He wrote: There’s a slightly deeper issue at play, which none of the … Read more
I haven’t written much about Obergefell v. Hodges. I still don’t have a lot to say on the matter. I will just point out that, within hours of the decision, articles were already calling for churches to be stripped of their tax-exempt status. It’s difficult to see how the nationwide legalization of gay marriage could … Read more
Where you live affects both your income and your chance of getting married according to recent research by economist Raj Chetty and others at the Equality of Opportunity Project. Both studies were covered in a couple interactive articles in The New York Times. On location and income, the NYT reads, Location matters – enormously. If you’re … Read more
There are two naive assumptions for the price of one in David Brooks’ most recent NYT column.[ref]Correction: This article is from April 1, 2013, not April 1, 2015. My mistake.[/ref] Concluding, he writes: The proponents of same-sex marriage used the language of equality and rights in promoting their cause, because that is the language we … Read more
Sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox has had an excellent article in The Washington Post a few days ago largely drawing on the work of Harvard’s Robert Putnam. Drawing from Putnam’s latest book Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, Wilcox writes, One of the tragic tales told by Harvard scholar Robert Putnam…is that America’s churches have grown … Read more
Research has found that children in two-parent families are less likely to be victims of a crime compared to those in single parent households, but it has been ambiguous as to whether this is due to marriage or the neighborhoods in which married families choose to live. A recent analysis on the 2011-2012 National Survey of Children’s Health, … Read more
W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia has a recent article exploring the connection between family structure and domestic violence. Drawing on new evidence, he writes, Using data from the 2011-12 National Survey of Children’s Health, which surveyed more than 90,000 parents of children aged 17 and under, Zill reports that domestic violence is … Read more
The origins of marriage are much older than most historical critiques admit. They are, in fact, prehistorical.
The above graph comes from yet another post at the Brookings Institution, which finds that marriage leads to better outcomes for children. However, this study breaks it down into two main reasons: More money: the income effect More engaged parenting: the parenting effect However, the authors come to an interesting conclusion: If the benefits … Read more