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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.

(from the article) “Couples can destroy their marriages by repeatedly talking at the wrong time and in the wrong way.”

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.”

“Advice for Young Men

The problem is that many young men today are not taught about the benefits of marriage, what most women want in a husband, or the skills they need to build a strong family. Long before marriage, from boyhood to manhood, young men should be honing the following skills necessary for a healthy family life.

Provide: Steward your intelligence, pursue an education, and cultivate a strong work ethic so you can serve others, instead of demanding to be served.

Protect: Develop healthy habits, abstain from food and drink that weaken the body, exercise to increase physical strength and durability, so that you’re always ready to stand between those you love and whatever (or whoever) threatens them.

Pay attention: Do the hard work of active listening, discern the needs of those you encounter throughout the day, and find a way to meet those needs. It’s not about you.”

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.

(from the article) “The constitution was drafted to ensure the rights of the weak against the works of the powerful.”

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.

"Pornography is killing social interaction and the craving for personal connection that all humans have...."

GTues 2023 DAY BEFORE from Live The Life NWFL on Vimeo.

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.

(from the article) “The difference between the average weekly hours of direct care that married fathers with children at home provide for their kids versus that provided by nonresident dads is staggering.”

Is marriage a losing bet for men? The (unmarried), self-described “anti-feminist” Internet commentator H. Pearl Davis has repeatedly argued to her millions of social media followers that marriage doesn’t make sense for men. Her main argument is based on one point: that divorce happens, and divorce has large negative consequences for men. Empirically, her argument is basically that, sure, being married may be good for men’s happiness, but staying married is no guarantee, so the real happiness effect of getting married is not correctly estimated when we look at currently-married men. Implicitly, Davis suggests that the happiness penalty from divorce is so large, and divorce so common, that it eliminates any happiness benefit from marriage.

This past April, a group of young women were searching for their friend’s house in a rural upstate New York town, and accidently pulled into the wrong driveway after losing cell service. Shortly after realizing their mistake and beginning to back out, the women were met with gunfire from the homeowner, killing a 20-year old passenger. One week earlier, in Kansas City, a 16-year-old boy approached a house in his own neighborhood to pick up his younger siblings, and after ringing the doorbell of the wrong house, he was shot and killed through the door. And just weeks ago, a college junior was fatally shot by his neighbor in Columbia, South Carolina, after mistaking another house for his own.

Today in Europe, happy families are more alike in that they are most often found among the well-educated. Poorly educated men and women are less likely to marry, and if they do marry, are more likely to separate or divorce.1 In new research in the Journal of Marriage and the Family, Michael J.Rosenfeld and Katharina Roesler show that the same is true in the United States: poorly educated women are less likely to marry, and—if they do marry—are increasingly likely to divorce.

By basing their book on retrospective surveys of adults, Davis, Graham, and Burge overlook one essential descriptive fact about religion in America: most of the decline in religion is actually among children, and virtually all of it among people under age 22. Secularization, or what they call “dechurching,” is happening among children and then trickling upwards into the general population as those children age. This essential fact suggests that any story of secularization in America has to begin with home life: what changed for children born in the 1980s and 1990s that they never fully absorbed religious belief as children?

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.

“With over 4 in 5 children being raised in a married-couple family, Utah remains the national leader in giving children the advantage and promise of a stable home environment.“

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.

(from the article) "Screen addiction keeps teens from family, friends, neighbors, and other community figures; it supplants team sports, exercise, good sleeping habits, life outdoors, and time for public service."

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.

Kids of all ages (especially adult children) need some input into their future family, the wedding, and how relationships take shape.

There’s been a major trend towards legalizing vice in America, including everything from legalizing gambling to repealing usury laws to allow payday loan stores. One manifestation of this trend has been marijuana legalization in various states. To be clear, pot is still illegal in America because it’s illegal at the federal level. But as it has been permitted at the state level in some places, the federal government has chosen to take a hands-off approach in those states, leaving pot de facto legal in growing parts of America. As with other social trends, there’s a feeling of inevitability about full legalization in the country.

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.

(from the article) "Consistent with prior research, couples who cohabited before marriage were more likely to see their marriages end than those who did not."

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.

“Sexually inexperienced” individuals, or the ones who have only had sex with their spouse, are the one’s mostly likely to be flourishing in marriage, per new study.

Phil Wickham - Falling In Love (Official Lyric Video)

#youtube #God the Father proved that he loves us with “all his heart” when he sent his Son to die so we could live eternally. God the Son proved th #Craig Dennison

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