We hear a lot about the pay gap between men and women. This is allegedly the result of sexism against women although it is really the result of the different choices men and women make about their work and home balance. Women tend to choose home over work if forced and that will obviously affect...
Dr Brad Wilcox of Virginia University, (he spoke at an Iona Institute event last year), and Johns Hopkins sociologist Andrew Cherlin have a thought provoking column in the Wall Street Journal. The column draws attention to the widening marriage and religion gap between the American working and middle classes and the hugely harmful effect of...
The latest unemployment figures confirm once again that two-thirds of the 450,000 people who are without a job in this country are men. The same phenomenon has been found in other countries. Basically, the recession has disproportionately hit construction and manufacturing, traditional male industries. This is why some commentators have called the recession a ‘mancession’....
A story in the British press over the weekend relates how a couple were refused permission to adopt a black or Asian child because they are both white. The local authority in question objects to inter-racial adoption. The authority obviously believes that the race of a couple is a relevant factor in deciding which couples...
Box office figures from the US suggest that Jennifer Anistion’s latest comedy, The Switch, which is about a forty- year-old single woman who wants a baby and chooses to be artificially inseminated has flopped, at least in its first week. According to this First Things blog, it took in only only $8.4 million on opening...
New numbers from the UK suggest that their teen pregnancy rate, already the highest in the EU, is on the rise again among under 16s after some years of remaining steady. This is despite the Labour Government spending 13 years and hundreds of millions of pounds in concerted effort to halve pregnancies among under-18s by...
Is Ireland the most expensive place for child-care in the developed world? According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the answer is yes. Taking a two-income couple with two young children in day-care as its mark, it finds that we are indeed the most expensive country, that such a couple will pay...
Judge Vaughan Walker’s ruling overturning Proposition 8, the referendum passed in California in 2008 preserving traditional marriage, has provoked a firestorm of controversy, and not just for the obvious reasons. Because apart from overturning the will of the majority of Californian voters, Judge Walker also attempted to assert that gay marriage has always been part...
The Daily Telegraph ran a feature on Tuesday written by Tim Lott, a divorced dad about how lonely and bereft fathers can be when they are forcibly separated from their children. The article is a response to remarks made by author Louis de Bernieres , whose partner left him last year, taking his two children...
Kathryn Jean Lopez, writing on National Review Online, takes a stance in this article against remarks made by Friends actress Jennifer Aniston (pictured). Aniston, promoting her latest movie The Switch, said: “The point of the movie is, what is it that defines family? It isn’t necessarily the traditional mother, father, two children, and a dog...
