Nearly a decade after Princeton alumna and mom Susan Patton was skewered for urging young women at her alma mater to find husbands before graduation, UK feminist Louise Perry is encouraging young women to get married and stay married against the statistical odds of divorce and feminist animus. “Feminist analysis of marriage,” she writes, “sees it as a method used by men to control female sexuality. And it does do that, but that was never its sole function. There is also a protective function to marriage, but it makes sense only when understood in relation to children.” Perry has no illusions about the limitations of marriage in solving all social ills, but it is precisely her observation that marriage has succeeded in “complex societies” such as in the West that she places her confidence in its ability to improve conditions for women and children. 

These days we hear a lot about “care.” Childcare. Care infrastructure. Caring for our planet. Caring for the elderly. Mental healthcare. Self-care. The fact that we speak so endlessly and passionately about the need for more care, or preserving care, in our world tells us a lot about our society. We all want to care and be cared for, yet something about our culture makes us feel as though it’s lacking. Why – when so many are working overtime to care for each other, for their families and friends, considering policy questions and private programs – do we feel as though no one cares enough?

The month of May marks new beginnings for high school and college students as they celebrate commencement ceremonies and next steps in education or career. For parents, grandparents, and former teachers, the proud moment of witnessing one’s child transform into an independent adult brings back early memories of late nights and hard days, of help with homework and shuttling to after-school activities. It’s no secret that good citizens are made, not born – and the family is the place where first principles about good citizenship, what it means to love, learn, and serve, are learned. Given the benefits of family stability on a child’s overall wellbeing, we’d like to focus on the ways that family structure and relationships make a graduate.

Much has been made of higher education in recent years – whether about safe spaces or snowflakes. Most critics of today’s campus climate point out the undue influence of social justice on college life, recognizing that universities have often exchanged intellectual rigor with diversity, equity, and inclusion standards. Writing for the Claremont Institute’s American Mind, Max Eden argues that the cause of higher education’s decline is due to more than just the potency of bad ideas. For Eden, the university no longer forms students, but is itself formed by students into the image of the “metaversity,” an anti-institution comprised of social media, online forums, and the broader internet. If we are to salvage the university’s mission and students’ minds, then we will need to harness the power of the social internet in a way that inspires critical thought and meaningful conversation.

Anne Helen Petersen, a former BuzzFeed writer who currently authors the Substack newsletter Culture Study, wrote this week about the dearth of care for children, elderly, and sick adults in our society, and what that means for parents and adults who work who are forced to take on assume the caretaker role for a loved one. Elaborating on what Evelyn Nakano Glenn, author of Forced to Care, has dubbed the “care crisis,” Petersen writes that we need a stronger infrastructure of care to fill the gaps with more providers, but also to curtail its coercive effects on those who are forced to become caretakers, especially women. While the phenomenon she describes is real and pressing, her proposed solution is a band aid to deeper issues afflicting family life in America – particularly the effects of globalization, professionalization, atomization, and commercialization. 

Is free speech in danger on college campuses? A student at the University of Virginia recently sparked debate when she argued in a New York Times article that yes, free speech is in danger as most students self-censor for fear of social ostracism and academic reprisal. Responses ranged from the complimentary to the critical predictably along ideological boundaries, with progressives arguing that freedom of speech is a red herring to distract from social inequities and conservatives lamenting the loss of a basic human right for which our ancestors fought and died. Indeed, for most of human history there has been no guaranteed right to speak freely without fear of retaliation, and arguably it is only since the early modern period that governments prioritized it within their constitutions. But upholding freedom of speech in an age where it is being questioned means recalling its ultimate object: truth telling for the good of the other. 

Readers of How to Hope know that we love the work of the Institute for Family Studies not only for its timely and necessary research, but also for its reflections on why family and marriage matter. Recently, they republished Why Bother Having Kids? from former BuzzFeed News reporter Jim Dalrymple II’s newsletter on family. It’s a question more people are asking nowadays than ever before, and Dalrymple evaluates from the skeptic’s perspective common arguments made in favor of having kids. The most convincing one? Having kids is a part of the human experience. But for those who remain in doubt, Dalrymple advances yet another argument borrowed from the Iroquois, which resonates with our sense of justice and desire for transcendence.