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Sexuality & Family

The second pillar of a decent society is the institution of the family, which is built upon the comprehensive sexual union of man and woman. No other institution can top the family’s ability to transmit what is pivotal—character formation, values, virtues, and enduring love—to each new generation.

Liquid Selves, Empty Selves: A Q&A with Angela Franks

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Liquid Selves, Empty Selves: A Q&A with Angela Franks

By and
I’m all for refuting bad ideas. But the way you really convince people is to show them that what they want, they’re not getting from the wrongheaded idea, but they can get it from a correct understanding of what’s good and true.
stressed parent

The Parental Arms Race Needs to End 

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In a world where “success” is increasingly understood as zero-sum, we might have some empathy for today’s parents who are worried they are letting their kids down if they are not setting them up to succeed, even if that comes at a collective cost.  
dating app

The “Tea” App and the New Barbarism 

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Instead of relying on apps, perhaps we can, instead, invite friends over and run our concerns through a more reliable filter: the thoughts, impressions, and wisdom of those who know and love us, off-screen.  
Laboratory fertilization of human eggs/IVF

Babies, Made to Order: The New York Times Sounds the Reproductive Technology Alarm 

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If Siddiqui's new moral imperative for artificial, disembodied procreation to ensure perfectly healthy babies becomes the norm, have we not lost something truly beautiful and human, the link between physical sexual communion and procreation?   
Mother stressing kid out over perfectionism and homework

Intensive Parenting Is (Probably) Incompatible with Having Many Kids.

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Is it possible to be considered a good parent today if your top priority is not perfecting your children, but rather simply being their “safe place”? I don’t know the answer, but it seems to me that being a warm and loving parent that children feel safe with is both a worthy and challenging goal. I have often reflected that many of my worst parenting mistakes happened when I tried to convince my kids to be other than the people they are.
stressed out young mom with kid throwing a fit

Parenting Doesn’t Have to Be This Hard. You Can Just Tell Your Kids What to Do. 

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Take it from me: girl boss or not, travel sports or not, having kids can be a lot easier and more fun if you just remember that you’re the grown-up.
Sexual revolution's false promises

Passing Social Conservative Values from One Generation to the Next: A Q&A with Nathanael Blake 

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Policies matter, as do choices by individuals, families, and congregations. But ultimately our hope, both for rolling back the sexual revolution and then keeping it at bay, is in the grace of God. 
pride parade

Why Same-Sex Marriage Momentum Failed to Launch a Transgender Revolution 

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What might have seemed like the next progressive triumph-in-waiting is instead running off the rails. How? Why?
psych office

Should Sexual Reorientation Therapy Be Criminalized? 

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Whatever else one might say about the therapy bans in question, they undeniably burden the free exercise of religion for same-sex-attracted or gender-confused persons who seek not to identify with or live according to those conditions.
marriage and sex

Saving Sex: Love and Responsibility Revisited, Part II 

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The loving union of persons in even the best marriage is imperfect, temporary, partial, and prone to failure. To expect more than mortal love from marriage is to put a strain upon it that it cannot, and was not intended, to bear.
marriage and sex

Saving Sex: Love and Responsibility Revisited

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This background should prepare us for a more positive account of sexual morality that not only supports the right conclusions, but does so in a way that allows us to affirm the intrinsic goodness of sexual desire and sexual pleasure while connecting them to the great goods of marital friendship and procreation.
babies

A Baby Bazaar 

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As parents, may we each choose what is real, no matter the cost, that we may come to know real love and pour it out for our children.
monastery

On Monasteries and Birth Rates 

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Social conservatives have long recognized the civilizational value of the quotidian work of parenthood. In an analogous way, we ought to recognize that it is in the small acts of local participation that societies thrive or languish.
dating in the West

How the West Really Lost Dating 

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We are very different people from those who came before us, because of our deficits in social learning. 
family

On Taking Up a Task Too Big for You Alone 

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Welcoming children surely is a great responsibility; no one can know ahead of time the challenges and joys that are waiting for them. But perhaps the greatest surprise is that every decision and every parenting strategy will find its true home in realities that, blessedly, far exceed them. 
dating

Serve God, Love Me, and Mend: To Date Well, Flourish First 

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Individuals who want to marry must choose from options that lack the spontaneity and spark many hope for: singles groups, dating apps, speed dating. One is left wondering whether a bad script is preferable to no script at all. And well-intentioned people—mostly married—offer all kinds of conflicting advice about how to date to find a spouse. I aim to tackle these seeming contradictions in order to show how each can be true and helpful for the Tough Mudder that is twenty-first-century dating.
Justice Sotomayor

Changing the Subject: Hidden Assumptions in Justice Sotomayor’s Defense of Gender Transition Medicine  

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Justice Sotomayor’s analysis depends on many assumptions that she does not articulate or defend. This lack of clarity leads to unnecessary confusion and inconsistency. In more ways than one, Justice Sotomayor is changing the subject.  
large family

Israel’s Future-Oriented Natalism: A Q&A with Daniel Kane 

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There’s this very deep part of the Jewish religious tradition that understands children to be a blessing. I think Jews have deeply internalized that. 
Same-sex marriage

New Vindication for the Regnerus Same-Sex Parenting Study 

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Suppressing disfavored ideas from consideration has serious consequences for the possibility of scientifically informed public discourse in our day.
egg freezing

The Egg Freezing Industry’s False Promises 

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The problem of egg freezing cannot be solved by safer methods or better policies. Beyond the physical and financial costs, there is a more insidious myth at work—one that speaks to our deepest assumptions about time, control, and what gives life meaning.
sexual revolution

Victims of the Revolution 

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Can we insist on the biological reality of sex while denying the biological reality of the unborn child? “This far and no further” has its limits. We should make tactical partnerships in the battles that can be won today. But we shouldn’t allow tactical alliances to cloud our vision of the truth.
Fatherhood

Generation, Priesthood, and the Nature of Fatherhood

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Catholic men are called to follow the Lord Jesus, to live not lives of domination that demand submission from others but lives where their strength and talent are offered in self-sacrifice for those God has given them to serve. The virtuous mean between those extremes is the Way of the Cross, the path by which you find your life in losing it, the way by which you enter into joys you didn’t know existed on the far side of burdens you didn’t know you could bear.
Elon Musk

The Radical Deficiency of Elon Musk’s Pronatalism 

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At some point we have to be honest about what makes life truly good. Landing on Mars may be an incredible feat, but it is only love and the pursuit of meaningful communion with others that makes such an endeavor worthwhile in the first place.
mother and children

Why Have Children? The Global Population Decline and Human Happiness 

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Happiness is not an achievement; it’s a gift. Children are a blessing. Forget your smartphones, ambitions, and quibbles with your neighbors. Take the risk, open your heart, and the boundless love of a child will move you to tears.  

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