Untitled

There is great value in preparing couples for marriage before they tie the knot. But I have had many couples—full of cheer when we first met—return for help when they found themselves drowning amidst the often-overwhelming demands of married life, particularly after a baby is born.

Many competing theories attempt to explain our national mess, but few are as compelling as the one put forth by Brad Wilcox, sociology professor and Director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. One of our central problems is that not enough Americans are getting and staying married. “The future of our civilization,” writes Wilcox, “depends on more Americans succeeding in this most fundamental social institution.”

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, governor of Arkansas, appears uncowed by Big Tech. Inspired by Jonathan Haidt’s new book Anxious Generation (which I reviewed favorably in American Affairs), on May 6, Sanders sent a letter to her fellow governors in all 50 states, exhorting them to “work together” in rescuing America’s children from the “dark sewer of social media and screen addiction.” The governor also forwarded copies of Anxious Generation, and highlighted its final chapter, where Haidt lays out a legislative agenda to get kids off of smartphones and social media.

Most of us probably have people in our lives who struggle with an addiction of some kind, whether it be to smoking, using drugs, gambling, or other vices. An addiction develops when changes in the brain and body cause a person to “feel compelled to continue using a substance or partaking in an activity, even when doing so may cause harm.” These substances or behaviors activate motivation and reward regions in the brain, resulting in an altered dopamine system. The thing about addiction is that oftentimes, the younger a person is when they are first exposed, the higher their risk for developing a serious addiction that can dominate minds and bodies, numbing them to the environment around them.

There’s no question the bond between fatherhood and marriage is weaker today than it was 60 years ago. Whereas almost 80% of children were raised in an intact, married home with their father in the early 1960s, today only about 51% have that privilege. In the face of what seems like a fraying father-marriage bond, some left-leaning men’s advocates like Richard Reeves would like us to accommodate this family dynamic.

Utah ranks at the top of many rankings of state performance across America. But perhaps the Beehive State is best known for its top rankings on the economic front. The “Utah economic miracle” — marked by exceptional economic growth, a favorable business climate and high rates of economic mobility — has garnered attention across the nation and helps explain why Utah’s economy ranks No. 1 among all 50 states, according to U.S. News & World Report.

The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) governs how social media companies engage the nation’s children, but it was written in 1998, before social media existed. American teens are afflicted by a profound mental health crisis, and smartphones and social media are the principal culprit.

Premarital counseling is nearly ubiquitous within local faith institutions. Helping couples prepare, not just for a wedding, but for life after the wedding is a value most pastors and religious leaders have. Thankfully, premarital preparation works. In general, the average couple sees a 30% increase in relationship quality1 and premarital counseling lowers the annual odds of divorce by 31 percent, per one study.2 That’s good news. The bad news for couples forming blended families (also called stepcouples) is that 75% get no premarital preparation at all,3 and when they do, typically it is what leaders offer first-time engaged couples, and so it completely misses the mark.

Using a new national sample of Americans who married for the first time in the years 2010 to 2019, we examined the stability of these marriages as of 2022 based on whether or not, and when, people had lived together prior to marriage. Consistent with prior research, couples who cohabited before marriage were more likely to see their marriages end than those who did not cohabit before marriage.

For many young adults, single life in American culture has become synonymous with sexual experimentation in both committed romantic dating relationships and casual sexual hook-ups.1 However, new studies continue to show that most single adults in the United States still desire to have a successful, lifelong marriage one day. Because of these trends, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) reports that over half of married adults in the U.S. today enter marriage with 5 or more previous sexual partners.