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Found 14 results by David Lapp
How Religious Institutions Can Bridge Class Gaps to Support Families
7 Findings From a New Report on Fatherhood
Restoring the Lost Tradition of Thrift
The Institute for American Values' new report The Way to Wealth, coinciding with the celebration of National Thrift Week, aims to combat the wealth-education gap. (Full disclosure: my wife, Amber, was the lead writer on the report, and it draws a few stories from our research with young adults in Oh...
Looking for Marriage in Middle America
'Hitching up,' for a strong middle class: Strengthening the Middle Class Starts at Home
The "Knot Yet" report shows that Middle American young adults still aspire to marriage--about 80 percent say that marriage is an "important" part of their life plans. But before they reach the altar, most are having their first child outside of marriage, often in a cohabiting relationship. Indeed, m...
A New Normal for the American Family: Kids Outside of Marriage
In our own research, while we heard many working–class young adults express reservations about marriage — emphasizing the importance of not “rushing” into marriage, but seeing no problem with having kids in the meantime — they are determined to give their children what so ma...
Love in Middle America: "It's Complicated"
A renewed society–wide resolve to strengthen marriage is not a matter of patricians “imposing” their love of marriage on others who are resistant to marriage–it’s about helping those Americans who arguably value family the most realize their dreams of raising a flourishing, ...
Is Marriage Just Evolving?
When many Americans survey the relationship landscape in their friends’ and families’ lives, they wonder whether marriage really provides any more stability than a live–in relationship. To some, marriage doesn’t seem worth the risk of an expensive and drawn out divorce.
The Poor's Good Marriages
If the social expectation is that marriage lasts only so long as one is subjectively happy, only the most subjectively happy enjoy stable marriages. Who tends to be the most subjectively happy? It surely helps if the couple makes over $75,000, has the luxury of spending week-long vacations at the be...
Men were dealt a blow in recession
High rates of joblessness among working–class and poor men are likely to harm married life among lower-income couples. Job loss and instability can be a big blow to a man's sense of self–worth, can undercut his wife's faith in him and can cause considerable financial stress for the couple....
Where is sperm donor 2035?
But what sperm banks regularly fail to adequately communicate to these men – usually college students who, no doubt, are looking to make an extra buck – is that they are becoming fathers to as many as dozens of children. Just as they try to sanitize reality by saying that men who sell thei...
Did I Get Married Too Young?
As focused as we young adults are on self–development, what if the path to that development is actually learning to live with and love another person? We may be startled to find that the greatest adventure lies not in knowing oneself as much as in knowing and committing to another person. Sure,...
Thrift Week? It Makes Sense
It's clear that when it comes to use of money and resources, we need a better set of guiding principles. But we don't have to invent these principles - we can draw inspiration from one of our own great, though largely forgotten, traditions: National Thrift Week... But the leaders of National Thrift ...
Thrift Week? It Makes Sense
It's clear that when it comes to use of money and resources, we need a better set of guiding principles. But we don't have to invent these principles - we can draw inspiration from one of our own great, though largely forgotten, traditions: National Thrift Week... But the leaders of National Thrift ...