My rejection of the National Marriage Project’s “Before ‘I Do'”

If they had asked me to review the new research report from the National Marriage Project, this is what I would have said.

If the National Marriage Project told you it was going to rain, would you bring an umbrella?

In other news, the Heritage Foundation reported the unemployment rate.

Distorting data on divorce at the National Marriage Project

This has really gone too far. The National Marriage Project, under the directorship of W. Bradford Wilcox, a tenured sociologist at the U. Virginia, is telling some tall tales, courtesy of a grant from the Templeton Foundation‘s “Foundations of Marital Generosity Project.” I’m sorry I never got around to writing this, even though the report in…

Wilcox plagiarism denial and ethics review

The only argument he makes is to underline the word "not." So do you trust him?

The failure of the success sequence

Generations of applying the "three somethings" formula to a basic idea: the problem with poor people is that they’re doing life wrong.

Book review: One Marriage Under God

The following are notes for my remarks at an author-meets-critics session at the Social Science History Association yesterday in Baltimore. The book is One Marriage Under God: The Campaign to Promote Marriage in America, by Melanie Heath.    The book is well researched, elegantly argued, easily read, and deeply thought-provoking. I highly recommend it.In the…

Doing math one-handed? Inequality and the marriage problem (#asa14)

I’m at the American Sociological Association meetings in San Francisco, on my way over to present the following slides at a session on “Closing the Economic Marriage Gap: The Policy Debate.” Looks like a great session, organized by Melanie Heath, Orit Avishai, and Jennifer Randles, and including Andrew Cherlin, Sarah Halpern-Meekin, Mignon Moore, and Ronald…

It’s modernity, stupid (Book review of The Sacred Project of American Sociology, by Christian Smith)

Like a vaccine-denying Mr. Banks from Mary Poppins? Chris Smith is outraged and befuddled by the state of academic sociology.

Final proof there is no human tragedy Brad Wilcox will not exploit in order to promote marriage

I have to give credit to the overreaching headline writer for accurately capturing the basic message: Shame on you.

Quote that sociologist, 124 in the Times edition

How many sociology professors do you have to quote to prove they are instinctively dismissed?