The Gap Between the Families We Have and the Ones Conservatives Want

The panic about Americans having fewer babies continues unabated. But we know this: Marriage and fertility rates in this country and across much of the world have been declining for years, with no signs of reversing. Prominent American conservatives keep saying that the problem is that it’s not 1950. That’s when it was typical to get married in one’s late teens or early 20s, to someone only of the opposite sex, and a majority of families had a male breadwinner with more legal rights than his wife.

In a commencement speech to Hillsdale College, a Christian liberal arts school with moral guidelines that state that the only “responsible sexual acts” are “those occurring in marriage and between........

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