Links on Family

A lot of the links I’ve saved in the past six months concern the broader topic of families. Here’s a top ten from May to this week:

1. Noah Millman comments on parenthood and fertility rates. Amazing insight into, and compassion for, the way our culture fears the future. It’s also the best treatment I’ve seen of the climate change fear.
2. Ross Douthat charts three possible courses for marriage and fertility rates post-Covid. Awesome close: “The alienation of the sexes is the crucial underlying problem, and there will be no lasting solution until we figure out models of manhood and womanhood that can once again successfully unite.”
3. Speaking of dating, this on attraction inequality in dating. This article has important flaws, and could use more evidence, but I believe its main conclusions: that looks matter more than everyone agrees they should; that women are pickier than men about dating, while men are more likely to be unfaithful; and that we have some work to do on our norms around dating and marriage to tackle these problems.
4. Jill Filipovic asked for stories from women who regret their motherhood, and writes about the pushback she got. As she says, “A story of regret is… a story about how some of the resentments and regrets mothers have might be avoidable if we made motherhood less financially difficult, less all-consuming, less self-sacrificial, less definitional, and less personally trying.”
5. Speaking of financial difficulties, apparently giving cash to parents and telling them it’s to help with their kids usually goes pretty well. I’ll have more to say about government spending in general later.
6. And speaking of personal trials, Stephanie Murray points out that policy won’t overcome Americans' bizarrely hostile attitudes toward children in public spaces. “Giving parents the space to do their job requires all of us to tolerate inconvenient childish behavior.”
7. Carter Snead and Mary Ann Glendon lay out why Roe and Casey are jurisprudentially indefensible. Best summary I know of the history.
8. The lived experience of the children of sperm donors offers a compelling argument that we should help everyone know their biological parents.
9. Speaking of how much better biological parents are for children, Rebekah Henson’s thread and links about adoption are important correctives to the segment of the pro-life movement that thinks it’s a good idea. Important empirical observation: the choice about whether to abort is made before and independent of the choice about whether to give for adoption.
10. Finally, Brendan Hodge says sensible things about paternity leave.

I hope that’s a wide enough set of perspectives that everyone can find something new in it. And I think we can all agree that we’ve got our work cut out for us.