As a society, we are confused. Motherhood is detested. Motherhood is seen as an independent woman being stripped of her individuality and forced to breed, barefoot and pregnant trapped in a kitchen. How wrong is that image! Motherhood happens when an independent woman lovingly serves her fellow beings by raising the generations of people who will raise the banner of goodness and liberty in our nation.

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When people who have a high need for achievement—and that includes all Harvard Business School graduates—have an extra half hour of time or an extra ounce of energy, they’ll unconsciously allocate it to activities that yield the most tangible accomplishments. And our careers provide the most concrete evidence that we’re moving forward. You ship a product, finish a design, complete a presentation, close a sale, teach a class, publish a paper, get paid, get promoted. In contrast, investing time and energy in your relationship with your spouse and children typically doesn’t offer that same immediate sense of achievement. Kids misbehave every day. It’s really not until 20 years down the road that you can put your hands on your hips and say, “I raised a good son or a good daughter.” You can neglect your relationship with your spouse, and on a day-to-day basis, it doesn’t seem as if things are deteriorating. People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers—even though intimate and loving relationships with their families are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness.

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An increasing number of young Americans who have completed high school but not college are having children in fragile cohabiting relationships instead of within marriage. Even those who are married face a high divorce rate, being more than twice as likely to divorce in the first ten years of marriage as their college-educated peers. As Wilcox and Cherlin state in their paper, “The nation’s retreat from marriage, which started in low-income communities in the 1960s and 1970s, has now moved into Middle America”.

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Fathers bring distinctive talents to the parenting enterprise. The work of psychologist Ross Parke, for instance, indicates that fathers are more likely than mothers to engage their children in vigorous physical play (e.g., roughhousing), to challenge their children — including their daughters — to embrace life’s challenges, and to be firm disciplinarians. Not surprisingly, children benefit from being exposed to the distinctive paternal style.

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Share A claim recently made in a premier family science journal raised a question that likely would have shocked previous generations: “Does having a mother really matter?” The claim was based on the premise that mothers do not provide anything particularly unique to children’s development. Rather, all that children need for healthy development is two [...]

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ShareOn February 2, 2011, Love and Fidelity Member Group “Love Revealed at FUS” hosted Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse for a dynamic lecture entitled “Same-Sex Marriage: Why Not?” Click here to watch the full video recording of the lecture:

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While a growing number of Americans may view marriage as a dying institution, its benefits for children are clear. As our nation’s poverty rate continues to climb, preventing and strengthening fragile families will become increasingly important.

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If we want to have a discussion over women’s freedom and the nuances of balancing our commitments, we’d be better served by encouraging the type of community support Jong advocates and creating policies that are friendlier to mothers in the workplace.

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… marriage is friendship.

But not just any kind of friendship—in particular, the institutional model seeks to create what Aristotle called “the best kind of friendship.” Aristotle argued that there are three kinds of friendship: for the sake of pleasure, utility, or good. The highest kind of friendship, for good, is one in which each wishes the other well for his own sake. In this kind of friendship, friends are bound together not because they seek to use the other person, whether it’s for pleasure, a better social position, or economic benefit—no, they are instead bound together by virtue.

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