Latest news with #InstituteforFamilyStudies
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Biblical formula for choosing spouse offers lessons that modern dating overlooks
Maybe this is the most important question we will receive from our children and grandchildren: "How do I know that he (or she) is the one?" The Bible – our great guidebook – has the answer. In Genesis 24, Abraham sends his servant Eliezer to find a wife for his son Isaac. The Secrets Of A Meaningful And Lifelong Grandparent-grandchild Bond His only instruction? Go to Haran, the place where Abraham once "made souls." (See the video at the top of this article.) It was a culture open to God. That's trait No. 1. Look for a spouse in a good place. Read On The Fox News App Eliezer arrives and sees Rebecca. She's "very fair to look upon" — that's trait No. 2. Then he watches her draw water not just for him, but for all his camels — an exhausting and generous act. That's trait No. 3: generosity. Why God And The Bible Were Right About Your Work Schedule All Along On the basis of these three — and only three — characteristics, Eliezer decides: She's the one. Rebecca, in turn, is told only two things about Isaac. He's wealthy, which means he can provide. And he loves God, which means he has a strong set of values. She agrees to marry him. Then the Torah gives us an instructive sequence: "Isaac married her. She became his wife. And he loved her." As Isaac and Rebecca had the best marriage in the Bible, their formula for marital happiness is worthy of our reflection. Identify a few essential traits. Get married. Become a spouse through continual acts of giving. Then love will follow and continually grow. The Hebrew language supports this. The root of ahava — love — is hav, meaning "to give." Those of us who have enjoyed or even just observed long, happy and loving relationships know why: We don't give to those we love; we love those to whom we give. We don't "fall in love." We cultivate it. Modern culture says the opposite. Waiting until age 30 to marry and have children, for example, increases infertility risks, both for women and men, to varying extents. Casual dating often leads to casual sex, which is so unsatisfying that we are now in what sociologists call a "sexual recession," in which young men prefer video games (particularly new releases) to sex. Click Here To Sign Up For Our Lifestyle Newsletter Repeated rejection causes long-term emotional wear that the body recognizes as physical pain. In the model cited earlier, people "test" compatibility for years. A 2016 Barna study found that 84% of couples who live together before marriage do so to check for compatibility. And yet, according to the Institute for Family Studies, the No. 1 reason for divorce? "Basic incompatibility." When it comes to advising our children and grandchildren about a happy marriage, the Bible offers the now-proven formula. Throw out the 100-item checklists. For more Lifestyle articles, visit It doesn't matter if the young woman prefers warm-weather vacations over cold-weather vacations. It doesn't matter if the young man's friends are funny. If the couple has a foundation for love, which can be found in two or three core characteristics, they might think about getting those church bells ready to ring — as they are set for a wonderful marriage. Mark Gerson's new book is "God Was Right: How Modern Social Science Proves the Torah Is True," published by BenBella Books and distributed by Simon & Schuster (June 2025). This article is part of a series featured exclusively by Fox News article source: Biblical formula for choosing spouse offers lessons that modern dating overlooks
Business Insider
7 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
JD Vance wants women to have more babies. Conservative pro-natalists say cheaper housing is key.
Proponents of boosting the declining US birth rate are targeting Americans' biggest expense: housing. They say what parents and would-be parents need are cheaper homes that would give their families the room and financial security to grow. A recent report by the Institute for Family Studies, a conservative think tank that pushes for policies to increase the birth rate, concluded that housing costs were the single biggest factor stopping Americans from having as many kids as they want. "Housing cost concerns are more influential on young adults' plans than childcare costs, work schedules, job stability, student debt, healthcare access, paid leave, desire for leisure time, personal health, or other care obligations," the report found. In IFS' survey of more than 8,000 Americans 18-54 years old, a quarter of respondents listed housing costs as a concern, while 30% cited the cost of childcare, and 26% said they wanted more leisure time. But housing costs had the largest effect of those three factors on family size. "Housing costs were unique in having a very large effect and being extremely common, so they explain the largest total amount of foreshortening of intentions," Lyman Stone, the director of IFS' Pronatalism Initiative and a co-author of the report, told Business Insider. The group has an ally in Vice President JD Vance, who's among the most prominent faces of the conservative push for more American babies. "Our people aren't having enough children to replace themselves. That should bother us," Vance said in 2019. In his first speech as vice president, he told March for Life gatherers, "I want more babies in the United States of America." Are housing costs affecting your family planning decisions? Reach out to this reporter at erelman@ Vance has been critical of subsidizing childcare and expanding parental leave; he favors policies designed to help parents who don't work outside the home. The vice president has also called for building new housing on federal land that would be sold or leased to private developers, and supports cutting red tape, including land-use regulations, that limit housing construction. He and his conservative allies could find common ground on housing with Democrats, who also believe the US needs to build many more homes to bring costs down. A White House spokesperson didn't respond to BI's request for comment. When it comes to housing, conservative pro-natalists have slightly different aims than the typical YIMBY agenda, which focuses on building more dense housing in high-demand urban and inner-ring suburban areas, often around transit hubs. Groups like IFS want to prioritize building more single-family homes, which Americans tend to prefer over multifamily housing. An overwhelming majority of IFS survey respondents — 79% — said they preferred to live in a detached, single-family home, while just 59% live in that kind of home. "There's that desire to give your kids a backyard and have space to spread out when it comes to having and raising a family," Brad Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia and the co-founder of IFS, told BI. Wilcox said IFS has had conversations with the Trump administration's Domestic Policy Council, and pointed to the administration's efforts to sell federal land for housing construction as a promising path forward. The group also wants to see a slew of policy changes at the local, state, and federal levels to juice housing construction, including relaxing land-use regulations and legalizing more construction in undeveloped areas. "For a lot of ordinary people, the most preferred and fruitful path to pursue here is to try to figure out ways to make affordable single-family housing more accessible to working middle-class Americans," Wilcox said. Replicating the baby boom The US birth rate has been largely on the decline since the financial crisis of 2008. While many factors influence the choice to have kids, government policy is well-positioned to address the economic drivers. There's evidence that rising housing costs shrink family size. A 10% increase in home prices led to a 1% decrease in births among non-homeowners, economists Lisa Dettling and Melissa Schettini Kearney found in a 2012 paper published in the National Bureau of Economic Research. The researchers also found evidence from the distant past that easier access to homeownership can help boost birth rates. The advent of the modern, low-down-payment mortgage in the 1930s facilitated a sharp uptick in the US birth rate that helped create the baby boom, according to their February 2025 NBER working paper. The loans, backed by the Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration, made it easier for some younger Americans to buy a home by allowing very low payments up front and 30 years to pay off the loans. (Black Americans were effectively excluded from these programs for years.) The researchers found that the two mortgage insurance programs helped lower the age people got married and had their first baby, and led to 3 million additional births between 1935 and 1957, accounting for about 10% of the spike in births associated with the baby boom. "Maybe how easy it is to have kids is less about can they take three months off work versus 'do I have a bedroom to put this kid in for the next 18 years?'" Schettini Kearney, an economist at the University of Maryland, recently told BI.
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
House Republicans Want to Punish Single Parents
Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee may make it harder for single parents to access the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. A new provision in Republicans' 97-page bill, rolled out Monday evening, allows for exceptions to the program's work requirements for some able-bodied adults, including certain married parents, without making the same considerations for single parents. The general work requirements for SNAP benefits include registering for work, participating in SNAP Employment and Training, or E&T, taking a suitable job if offered, and not voluntarily quitting or reducing work hours below 30 a week without a good reason, according to the USDA Food and Nutritional Service. Republicans' new bill includes a work-requirement exception for an individual who is 'responsible for a dependent child 7 years of age or older and is married to, and resides with, an individual who is in compliance' with the work requirements, but contains no equivalent exception for single parents. In 2022, children in single-parent families made up a 53 percent majority of SNAP recipients, according to a report from the Institute for Family Studies. A whopping 49 percent of those children are living with their mothers, 4 percent reside with their fathers, and 6 percent reside with relatives or foster parents. On top of that, E&T requirements have created something of a catch-22 within the SNAP benefits program. Congress's 2018 farm bill, which permitted paid training to be a component in E&T, inadvertently resulted in significant reduction or total loss of food assistance for beneficiaries because the earnings they made ended up counting against their eligibility. The new legislation would tighten eligibility requirements for SNAP and place a greater financial burden on states instead of the federal government, which is looking to shed millions of dollars in spending as part of the Trump administration's cost-cutting efforts. Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee have been directed to find $230 billion in potential cuts.
Fox News
04-05-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Trump's $5,000 baby bonus: Here's how it will do the most good
The baby bust and its potentially catastrophic consequences garnered both worldwide and national attention. Elon Musk recently warned again that America's declining birth rate poses a greater threat to civilization than climate change or war. "If we don't have kids, there's no civilization," he wrote on X. New research from the Institute for Family Studies shows his techno-polygamous solution and lifestyle is neither a good approach for society nor is it a particularly good approach for his children. It's important to recognize that in the United States, our flight from marriage –and the mindset that has driven it – is causing our fertility collapse. Married people continue to enjoy above replacement levels of fertility. The challenge is there are far too few married people today. To provide policy incentive, reports have emerged that President Donald Trump's administration is considering a $5,000 "baby bonus" for new moms. The administration should focus that incentive on married fertility. The American left has long understood that the law is a moral teacher, and they have gleefully used it increasingly to teach their own, continuously changing brand of morality. The recent Supreme Court case, Mahmoud vs. Taylor, where progressives have shoved radical sexual ideology onto 5-year-olds, is only one small vivid example of this trend. So, the law ought not to be agnostic on what kind of fertility is beneficial to the thriving of the state and its citizens. A mountain of research has shown that children born to married homes, on average, flourish more on nearly every level. These children cost the state far less. They are many times less likely to require massive state and charitable investment to mitigate the long-term consequences born out of their homelife. We should coolly remind the "trust the science" crowd that kids, adults and society disproportionately benefit from married families. And, historically, the married, two-parent family is what made the West become the most advanced civilization in world history. We've known this for decades. Carl Zimmerman, a Harvard sociologist writing in the 1940s, identified the three family structures that have shaped civilizations: the trustee family, the domestic family and the atomized family. In a trustee family, the extended family is sacred, and the individual is subordinate to the good of the group. This model appears in times when state power is weak – like among early American settlers who relied on tight-knit clans to survive. As societies matured, they often evolve into the domestic family model, which strikes a balance between personal freedom and family obligation. This structure fosters the trust, stability and cohesion that enable markets, institutions and democratic norms to flourish. Zimmerman traced the rise of this family model to periods of cultural and civilizational growth – such as in medieval Europe, when Christian teaching helped reweave the social fabric after Rome's collapse. History also shows what happens next. The atomized family has once again become dominant, and we're witnessing the consequences in real-time. In this model, the individual is supreme, and familial obligations dissolve. Marriage becomes a contract of convenience, easily entered and easily exited. Children are often viewed as optional or even burdensome. Zimmerman warned that when this model dominates, societies become increasingly self-absorbed, unstable and violent. That's precisely where we find ourselves today. Mental health crises, youth suicides and mass loneliness are rampant. Birth rates are declining not only in the U.S. but across the developed world. Communities are disintegrating as social trust erodes and isolation increases. Can government policy reverse this trend? There is lots of evidence we need a revival of Christian faith. But we also know from the Civil Rights Movement that the law can serve a critical role as a moral teacher. The proposed "baby bonus" – if tied to married fertility – could provide powerful moral voice that would have the effect of amplifying private action and stirring revival. The church can lead here. Despite all this brokenness, two-thirds of Gen Z still say they're excited about marriage. The hunger for family hasn't disappeared – it's just been starved of vision, guidance and hope. All the dating apps on earth have only cheapened human connections at a time when 85% of churches spend nothing on relationship and marriage ministry. There is such an opportunity for churches to provide "in real life" community that can lead to the relationship revolution that will produce the next baby boom. Throughout history, the Christian faith has been the dominant force for civilizational renewal. After the fall of Rome, church leaders like Augustine and Basil the Great promoted the domestic family as a stabilizing force. Their vision helped usher in the High Middle Ages – a time of increased social trust, the birth of universities, and the rise of modern markets and law. Today, we need a similar renewal. Washington and Wall Street can play some role. But the bigger role is to be played in the home and the local church. If every believer committed to nurturing healthy, faith-filled relationships – and every church committed to equipping them – we could spark a cultural shift more powerful than any policy proposal. This is not naive optimism. It's historically grounded hope. The fall of past civilizations was not inevitable – and neither is ours. The family can be rebuilt. Marriage can be restored. Communities can be renewed. But it requires vision, courage and commitment.
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Baby boom push meets skepticism in Republican Party
Don't count on Republican lawmakers to light the fuse to a new baby boom just yet. The pronatalist movement may be having a moment as it pitches policies that seek to increase the nation's birth rate — with the latest boost being President Trump saying a $5,000 baby bonus 'sounds like a good idea.' But after some poking around on the prospects for the pronatalist policies that seem to be gaining steam, I found skepticism from Republican lawmakers on multiple fronts, as well as fractures in the pronatalist movement itself. Some don't buy into the core premise that fertility rates need a boost to prevent catastrophic economic consequences caused by population collapse. (There were 1.6 births per woman in 2024, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released last week — slightly higher than 2023, but well below the below population replacement level of 2.1 births per woman.) 'With a significant housing shortage and the growing potential for AI to displace jobs, it's difficult to justify aggressive federal incentives aimed at fueling population growth at this point in our nation's trajectory,' one GOP lawmaker told me. Another Republican lawmaker had not thought deeply about population issues, but was more inclined to support policies to increase legal immigration. The latest burst in the pronatalism movement came from a article on the Trump administration fielding ways to encourage women to have more children, including the $5,000 baby bonus idea or reserving 30 percent of Fulbright scholarships for those who are married or have children. But baby bonus incentive programs in other countries have been criticized as largely unsuccessful. Lyman Stone, senior fellow and director of the Pronatalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies, estimated that a $5,000 baby bonus would have a small effect on births. 'I would say that would probably increase fertility less than 1% — which doesn't mean it's not worth doing, because families with a new kid could use a windfall,' Stone said, adding that he prefers an increase to the Child Tax Credit (more on that later). The various policy ideas are the latest example of how the pronatalist movement has been gaining steam in the last few years. The second Natal Con took place in Austin, Texas, in March and included a number of right-wing speakers, including the Trumpworld-connected commentator Jack Prosobiec. Many of them are encouraged at friendliness to their cause in the Trump administration. Vice President Vance, who famously chastised 'childless cat ladies' (and later expressed regret about that phrasing), has long voiced concern about the nation's birth rate. Trump adviser Elon Musk, a father of at least 14 children from four different women, is the most prominent and connected voice for spawning a 'legion' of children to combat declining birth rates, as the recently reported. But Musk's 'harem drama' — as one of the mothers of his children, Ashley St. Clair, put it — not only makes family-values traditionalists squirm, but his focus on pure births has gotten criticism from others interested in boosting the birth rate. Stone and Brad Wilcox wrote in last week that 'no matter how many tutors you hire or compounds you build, evidence suggests children are more likely to struggle if one of their parents is absent.' Aside from Musk, perhaps the most prominent pronatalists are Simone and Malcolm Collins, parents of four who have invented a religion called Techno-Puritanism 'designed to combat fertility collapse' and have been profiled many, many times. Simone Collins wears 'techno-puritan' clothing that she told NPR was 'intentionally cringe.' Even for some Republicans who would like to see more babies and larger families, the whole pronatalist push is cringe in a bad way. 'I think the term pronatalist is a little odd,' Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah) told me. 'We should just be talking about being pro-family. There's nothing in my core belief system [that] would suggest that we should just be having babies. You need to have families. You need to have dedicated parents in all these situations.' 'It's not a numbers game. It's a strength in numbers game,' Moore added. When it comes to policy, the idea related to boosting birth rates that has the most traction among Republicans is adjusting the Child Tax Credit, currently set at $2,000 per qualifying child. Asked about the pronatalist policies being explored by the Trump administration, Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) pointed to his Family First Act, which would in part expand the Child Tax Credit to $4,200 for kids under 6 and $3,000 for other children, as well as creating a new one-time $2,800 tax credit for pregnant mothers. Moore is leading the legislation in the House. 'Getting married and starting a family are key to the American Dream. But for too many young people, that dream feels out of reach,' Banks said in a statement. 'Congress has a role to play in fixing this and we can start by putting money back in the pockets of hardworking parents.' But in a party full of deficit hawks, the politics of getting such a proposal through is dicey. Republicans opposed a temporary expansion that Democrats ushered through in 2021. 'The guys that are most likely to prioritize family formation are Republicans, obviously, but they really don't like increasing the Child Tax Credit,' explained Terry Schilling, president of the conservative American Principles Project and father of seven. He is more optimistic about prospects for education reform initiatives that can help families. Schilling added: 'It's incredibly important that all of the things that we discuss — all the economic incentives around children — are tied to marriage, because we don't want to get into a situation like we did with the Great Society programs, where you create, inadvertently, these loopholes that incentivize fatherless homes.'SCRAMBLE ON TAX CUT CRAFTING: Free-market advocacy groups are consumed with the biggest activity dominating Capitol Hill right now — the partisan tax cut bill that will serve as the vehicle for Trump's ambitious legislative agenda. Advancing American Freedom, the group founded by former Vice President Pence, is out with a memo warning that 'not all tax cuts are created equal.' Its ranking: 'Best bang for buck' are individual income tax cuts, corporate tax cuts, capital gains tax cuts, and reinstating full expensing; expanding the Child Tax Credit is 'dubious'; and 'actually harmful' are exempting tips and overtime from taxes (two campaign promises from Trump), as well as increasing the State and Local Tax deduction. Meanwhile, Americans for Prosperity is up with a new ad the Washington, D.C., market calling to eliminate green energy tax credits enacted in the Inflation Reduction Act under President Biden — which the group calls 'Green New Deal giveaways' — as a way to pay for extending the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act cuts signed into law during the first Trump administration. The ad says of the idea: 'It's simple.' That will be politically difficult, however, given more than a dozen more moderate Republicans have called to preserve the tax credits. 1. TRUMP 2028 WATCH: Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), who is leading a longer-than-a-long-shot constitutional amendment that would allow Trump to run for a third term, joined the Republicans for National Renewal's Third Term Project on an X space this week to talk about the push, which was a longtime goal of the group. Ogles claimed he's gotten 'overwhelming' support from Republicans on the proposal, but it still doesn't have any cosponsors. 2. CRYPTO CRINGE: While the cryptocurrency industry is optimistic about the environment for crypto under Trump, my colleague Miranda Nazzarro reports that they did not appreciate the meme coins launched by the president and his family: 'The Trump family's various crypto projects, specifically the launch of two personalized meme coins, led to some frustrations from the industry given concerns about how the coins could benefit the president's family.' They worried 'it could undermine industry's attempts to be taken seriously in Washington.' 3. WORLDS COLLIDE ON WHCA WEEKEND: Rising star Natalie Winters of Bannon's War Room snapped a pic with a masked Taylor Lorenz — the subject of near-constant hate from the right — over the weekend. Who had that on their bingo card? Not 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
