Ruth Institute Blog

Who are we kidding, people? Can anyone really argue that the trend toward cohabiting vs. marrying and single parenthood vs. natural two-parent biological parenthood is a good thing? What are those crazy Brits thinking? (And I’m half British, by the way.) Just like it’s a no brainer that food straight from the ground is far better for you than processed, hormone-injected, insecticide soaked food from the supermarket, marriage should be left the way nature intended. Do we really need to debate this?

Carolyn Moynihan

A report about families from Britain says forget about marriage; another report from the United States says save it. They can’t both be right.

One of the remarkable things about research on the family is that studies can start from the same data and reach quite contradictory conclusions. This makes family research a bit like climate change studies, with probably some doctoring of the evidence here and there. On the other hand, while climate data is invisible to most of us and the weather we experience is thoroughly confusing, what is happening to families is out there on the street for all to see. Read more…

So, basically Britain has given up on the traditional family. The Family and Parenting Institute’s new chief executive might as well resign and disband the institute then.

Carolyn Moynihan

Golly, it’s hard to keep up with the Brits and their reports on families and parenting. You would think that government and academics actually understood something about those subjects, but more often than not they add to the confusion.

The latest “major report” to pronounce on the fate of the family advises the government not to try to preserve the “traditional family” as it crumbles under the impact of marital breakdown and workplace pressures. The Family and Parenting Institute says the family as we knew it is no longer “the norm” and government efforts to rescue it are futile; members of the extended family — grandparents, uncles and aunts, even siblings and cousins — can make up for absent parents, says the FPI. Read more…

by Helen M. Alvaré, J.D., Senior Fellow in Law and Academic Advisory Board Member of the Ruth Institute.

This is the last in my series of columns on out of wedlock births.  By now you know that 4 in 10 U.S. births are nonmarital; this rises to 7 in 10 for African-American Women, and  5 in 10 for Hispanic women, our fastest growing minority population. Women in their 20s and 30s account for the lion’s share of the trend. [1]  Reactions to our predicament are suitably alarmist, but still terribly predictable. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy will push for both more abstinence, and higher rates of contraceptive usage among the unmarried. They will call for less complacency and more parental involvement.[2]  Planned Parenthood took the occasion to bash abstinence programs while abstinence programs linked the rise to the fact that 68% of public schools employ contraceptive instruction, which has a 4 to 1 funding advantage over abstinence in the United States. [3] Read more…

by Helen M. Alvaré, J.D., Senior Fellow in Law

“Jon and Kate plus Eight.” “Kate plus Eight.” “Jon and the Other Kate.” If there was ever a time we wanted to shield our eyes from supermarket tabloids, this must be it.  Yet, while their story is topping the pop culture charts, it seems fitting to look more closely at it in order to acknowledge not only the emotional wreckage involved, but also the light it sheds on the travesty we call our divorce laws. Read more…

by Helen M. Alvaré, J.D., Senior Fellow in Law, Culture of Life Foundation

This is the last in my series of columns on out of wedlock births.  By now you know that 4 in 10 U.S. births are nonmarital; this rises to 7 in 10 for African-American Women, and  5 in 10 for Hispanic women, our fastest growing minority population. Women in their 20s and 30s account for the lion’s share of the trend. [1]  Reactions to our predicament are suitably alarmist, but still terribly predictable. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy will push for both more abstinence, and higher rates of contraceptive usage among the unmarried. They will call for less complacency and more parental involvement.[2]  Planned Parenthood took the occasion to bash abstinence programs while abstinence programs linked the rise to the fact that 68% of public schools employ contraceptive instruction, which has a 4 to 1 funding advantage over abstinence in the United States. [3] Read more…

Carolyn Moynihan Mercatornet.com

British family researchers seem to be working overtime to keep up with trends that have won the UK the label, Breakdown Britain. A new report from the relationship support organisation One Plus One reviews the evidence on the effects of marital or partnership breakdown on the wellbeing of both adults and children. It finds a definite negative impact and argues that better interventions to support parents could prevent some family ruptures. Read more…

Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.
IN 2007, THE MEDIA HAD A FEEDING FRENZY around a voice-mail message actor Alec Baldwin left his daughter. He screamed at her for not answering her phone. The public was shocked: many assumed that he was yet another self-absorbed celebrity, with neither control over himself nor regard for his daughter. But in fact, Baldwin had been caught in the web of the totalitarian nightmare known as the American family court system. Read more…