In this interview, journalist Tim Carney joins contributing editor Patrick Brown to discuss how America’s family-unfriendly culture is deterring couples from having children, how overparenting and unattainable standards in childrearing have made family life appear unappealing, and how a combination of policy and interpersonal solutions, including robust community support, can foster a family-friendly culture. Carney’s book Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be was released in March. Patrick Brown: Tim, thanks for joining Public Discourse to d ..read more

What does it mean to be human?  The most fundamental philosophical question made headlines recently as issues like AI and gene editing have forced communities and politicians to come to terms with who they think counts as a person. For example, earlier this year, the Alabama Supreme Court declared that frozen embryos created through in vitro fertilization (IVF) were human children entitled to the state’s protection under its wrongful death statute. Though the Alabama legislature passed a temporary fix allowing IVF clinics to continue operating with immunity, legislators from both parties ..read more

I’ve observed the campus anti-Israel encampments both through news reports and firsthand at Princeton. Like much student activism, the “liberated zones” have aspects of the pathetic and the ridiculous. Pathetic as in protesting without knowing the first thing about Israel or Gaza; pathetic as in not knowing between which river and which sea “Palestine will be free”; pathetic as in waving the Hezbollah flag and then (according to anecdotal reports) claiming not to know that the flag belongs to a terrorist organization. (Maybe the fist and machine gun give a hint?) As for ridiculous, consider th ..read more

In 1999, Allen C. Guelzo published Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, an intellectual biography that situated Lincoln’s politics within the literary, political, religious, philosophical, and economic ethos of antebellum America. He presented Lincoln as “a man of ideas” navigating an era swirling with them.  Guelzo returned to this theme ten years later in Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction, organized explicitly as “a biography of his ideas.” That book explored, in amazingly chronological fashion, the most important concepts and policies that motivated Lincoln personally and politically ..read more

In this interview, historian and author Bronwen McShea joins contributing editor Nathaniel Peters to discuss her new book, Women of the Church: What Every Catholic Should Know, co-published by Ignatius Press and the Augustine Institute. Nathaniel Peters: St. John Paul II and other Christian leaders have written about a “feminine genius” that women bring to their lives and work. What is this, and how do you see it manifest in the lives of the women you studied? Bronwen McShea: As an historian, I defer to what various popes and other Christian leaders have said, in a philosophical and theologica ..read more

Edith Stein is surely one of the great, and undeservedly overlooked, thinkers of the twentieth century. A philosopher steeped in both modern phenomenology and Thomism, Stein devoted herself to reconciling these very different streams of Western thought.   But perhaps more interesting to the wider public are her writings about women’s distinctive contributions to society. There we find a perspective that still feels every bit as original, brilliant, and timely as it was when she first presented it. Today, almost one hundred years after she wrote, Stein is occasionally alluded to in di ..read more

Can more therapy lead to worse mental health? This is the central question that Abigail Shrier explores in her new book Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up, which argues that an increased focus on children’s mental well-being appears to have produced the opposite of its intended effect. Early in the book, Shrier offers some sobering statistics:  The rising generation has received more therapy than any prior generation. Nearly 40 percent of the rising generation has received treatment from a mental health professional—compared with 26 percent of Gen Xers. Forty-two percent of the ..read more

Editors’ Note: This essay is adapted from a James Madison Program event on April 10, 2024, in Princeton, New Jersey. Oren Cass and Samuel Gregg discussed the right and the future of capitalism in the American founding and offered their perspectives on the conservative approaches to markets and the economy. The editors lightly revised the transcripts for clarity and added the links to sources with more information on the points discussed. Yesterday, we shared Oren Cass’ s remarks. Today, we are sharing Samuel Gregg’ s.  Over the past eight years, we’ve witnessed major debates about the mar ..read more

Editors’ Note: This essay is adapted from a James Madison Program event on April 10, 2024, in Princeton, New Jersey. Oren Cass and Samuel Gregg discussed the right and the future of capitalism in the American founding and offered their perspectives on the conservative approaches to markets and the economy. The editors lightly revised the transcripts for clarity and added the links to sources with more information on the points discussed. Today, we are sharing Oren Cass’ s remarks. Tomorrow, we will share Samuel Gregg’ s.  It seems to me the question we need to address is what has happened ..read more

Earlier this year, I (Clara) had the opportunity to interview Catherine Ruth Pakaluk about her new book, Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth, released in March 2024. Dr. Pakaluk is an Associate Professor at the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America. An economist and mother, she is uniquely poised to investigate the global phenomenon of falling birth rates. In 2019, she interviewed more than fifty women around the country with five or more children to find out who they are, and why they are, in her words, “strangely immune” from the fertility c ..read more