The Porn Gap: How is Pornography Impacting Relationships Between Men and Women Today?

Teens in Virtual Classes Are Less Satisfied with School Experience

Depression and loneliness were actually lower among teens in 2020 than in 2018.

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has changed numerous things about our daily lives. Much of the public focus has naturally been on the health and safety of individuals, families, and society. Others have focused on the economic impact of both the virus and the various policies implemented to slow its spread and “flatten the curve.” Social distancing has changed almost all aspects of our daily interactions.

Tens of thousands of public and private schools have closed their doors to over 425 million students because of the Coronavirus – and these numbers continue to rise. Teachers and administrators are scrambling to figure out how to instruct students in this new reality.

We’ve all seen the headline: “Money is the leading cause of divorce.” In fact, it isn’t money itself, but disagreement about it that makes financial conflict the strongest predictor of divorce. Financial disagreements “last longer, are harder to resolve, and are more important to spouses than other types of disagreements.” Indeed, one reason financial issues appear to be so important to marital quality is because they reflect deeper, more serious marital processes and challenges.

iFidelity: Interactive Technology and Relationship Faithfulness

Mapping Family Change and Child Well-Being Outcomes

"In the end, the questions and doubts that generate so many crises of faith for so many can be met by sustained and careful reflection on the premises and perspectives from which such struggles spring."

In the 1920 book Die Freigabe der Vernichtung Lebensunwerten Lebens (“Permitting the Destruction of Unworthy Life”), jurist Karl Binding and psychiatrist Alfred Höche coined the phrase Lebensunwertes Leben or “life unworthy of life.” The book was a pseudoscientific argument for the systematic elimination from society of those who were deemed to be unfit, disabled, mentally defective, and racially suspect. It was not an unusual work for the times, nor was it outside the mainstream of thinking in the worldwide eugenics movement that began in earnest with the writings of Francis Galton in the late 1800s. Binding and Höche’s book did serve, however, as a mainstay resource for Nazi racial science over the following two decades.

In 1992, New York became the 18th state to ban paid surrogacy[1](Belkin B1). At that time an estimated “40 percent of all surrogate births in the United States [occurred] in New York” (B1). But in the U.S., the trend towards banning surrogacy has now reversed.

Catherine Pakaluk, an economist at the Catholic University of America explains the value of marriage as an institution in personal lives of heroism and the public good.

Ryan Anderson from The Heritage Foundation gave the Wheatley Roundtable on Family Keynote Address on the importance of marriage today.

Most sex education, however well-meaning, has failed to achieve its dual purpose: 1) Promote the understanding that personal growth, development, character, relationships and sexual interaction all relate to the quality of life most people long to experience; and 2) prevent negative, harmful, self-destructive choices which undermine the quality of an adolescent’s family relationships and future opportunities.

In this Roundtable on the Family, Wheatley Fellow, Jenet Erickson Ph.D, tackles a unique perspective on children: instead of why do children need their parents, she looks at all of the positive ways parents are affected and transformed by their children.

Sir Paul Coleridge, the founder and director of the Marriage Foundation in the UK, discuss the vital role that marriage plays in society and outlines its decline in Britain.

Recent research on Millennials and young adults identified a trend that startled contemporary scholars and journalists. Findings revealed that an increasing percentage of high school seniors and young adults espouse the traditional norm of men being the primary breadwinner and women being the primary caregivers at home, a percentage that has been increasing since the mid-1990s. This rise in “traditionalism” took many by surprise, uprooting the assumption that each new generation would continually move toward a highly prized value of “gender equality,” where men and women divide professional and family work equally. For many journalists, the only explanation for such a finding was that Millennials just don’t seem to care about “gender equality” in marriage. But a more accurate analysis suggests that many Millennials just don’t adhere to the narrow definition of “gender equality” that assumes men and women are only equal if they do the same things, professionally and at home. And it is not just Millennials who appear to desire a more “traditional” approach to family life. Married mothers and fathers in America today (the parents of these Millennials) typically divide caregiving and professional work hours along traditionally gendered lines. And they do so, “because that’s what most of them want to do.”

Wheatley Roundtable on Family gathered students and faculty from BYU, intrigued community members, and scholars from across the country to discuss philosophical defenses for the family and its value to society. On February 14, Mary Eberstadt gave the conference’s keynote address, “Family & Faith in a Pagan Time,” acutely focused on the societal shift of family and faith in Western civilization. She began, “Once, belief in God and traditional religion were unremarkable. Now increasing numbers seem to think both those things require explanation and also resistance. That difference between cheering God and jeering God is not just a sea change; it is wholly uncharted water.” Eberstadt argues that the shift away from Christianity and towards Paganism has everything to do with the collapse of the family. She explains that there is almost “a rival secularist faith that sees Christianity as a faith to be crushed.” This persistent attack on the traditional moral code has become “an engine of secularization itself,” one that denies any distinction between male and female and therefore the role of mothers and fathers. She continues, “Here is the fundamental question: Why the drive toward androgyny in the first place? Who benefits? What is it about our time that makes this more attractive or desirable to some people than it used to be?” Years of secular attack on the family, protests for a redefinition of marriage, and legislative rulings have fractured the family and created a new kind of cultural system. “The collapse of the family has left a great many people more vulnerable than ever before. It has meant the disappearance in the lives of many children of the one figure meant to protect them from physical harm, their fathers.” This vulnerability does not come without consequence. It forever alters an individual’s life, whether for better or for worse. Decades of breaking down society’s core institution was bound to create unprecedented ripple effects.