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The Family blog
Your First Year of Homeschooling, a Practical Playbook for Parents A step-by-step plan for the first year: find your state's legal category, withdraw properly, pick a curriculum, keep records, test and plan for transcripts. How to Find an Ancestor Who Served in an American War Using Public Records Seven steps to trace a family member's military service through draft cards, the National Archives, the VA gravesite locator and ABMC, then write it down. How to Mark America's 250th Birthday in Your Own Town and With Your Own Family Six steps for any family: read the Declaration aloud, find a local Revolutionary veteran, visit a park site, interview a vet, fly the flag right, ask your town. Ten questions families ask about adopting a child from another country Ten plain answers on treaty and federal rules for intercountry adoption, from the Hague Convention and visas to closed countries, costs and citizenship. It's a Wonderful Life Is the Most Conservative Film Hollywood Ever Made Capra's 1946 classic celebrates family, thrift, faith and local institutions, and its villain wants to own everything. It is the conservative Christmas film. A Family Phone Plan That Puts Dinner, Sleep and Sunday Back on the Calendar Families can reclaim time from screens with a few written rules everyone follows, parents included, in seven plain steps. From Father Knows Best to the Bumbling Sitcom Dad, What TV Taught About Fathers Television's dads went from wise heads of the house to the family punchline, and the culture followed the laugh track. Respect for fathers is a choice. Thanksgiving Proclamations of 1789 and 1863, Read as Lessons in Gratitude Washington in 1789 and Lincoln in 1863 asked a divided people to give thanks. Both texts read closely, and why gratitude is a civic habit. Healthy Habits Are a Matter of Character, Not a Government Program A free people builds good habits in families and churches and clubs, not in federal agencies, and the oldest moral tradition in the West says why. A Family Playbook for a Childhood With Fewer Screens and More Freedom One family saying no to a smartphone is hard, but families saying it together change a classroom. Here are the steps, in order. Free-Range Kids and the Law, Why Letting Children Roam Became Suspect Letting a child walk to the park used to be normal; vague neglect laws made it risky until states rewrote them. Here is how, and why it matters. The equalizer, why a firearm matters most to the smallest person in the room A firearm narrows the strength gap between attacker and victim, so the right to arms is a right of women and the vulnerable, with its duties stated. The McGuffey Readers Taught Reading and Virtue to Millions of Americans For a century the McGuffey Readers taught children to read through stories of honesty, work and courage, and the country lost something when they faded. Seven Myths About Homeschooled Kids, From Socialization to College Seven stock objections to homeschooling, tested against the legal and documentary record, and why they keep coming back anyway. Levittown Built a Nation of Homeowners, and Ownership Built Citizens Levittown turned renters into owners with assembly-line homes and GI Bill loans. Its exclusion of Black buyers was wrong, and the case for ownership stands. The Case for Honoring Motherhood Without Telling Any Woman What She Must Do A culture that praises every ambition but raising children has its priorities backward, and honoring mothers limits no woman's choices. What It Means to Be a Man, Argued From Duty Rather Than From Bravado Manhood is best defined by responsibility, protecting, providing, keeping your word and serving others, not by swagger and not by apology. Is Your Child Being Taught to Read With Phonics? A Parent's Checklist A parent can learn in one afternoon whether a school teaches systematic phonics or leans on guessing, and what to do if it does not. Ten steps. Teaching Kids About Money, a Plan From the Piggy Bank to the First Paycheck A stage-by-stage family plan for teaching children to save, give and spend, from three jars at age five to a first paycheck and a first account. Chores, Thank-You Notes and the Lost Art of Raising Grateful Children Real work and a habit of saying thanks teach children that nothing is owed to them, and that is the best gift a home can give. Robert Nisbet Saw Lonely People Turn to the State for Belonging Nisbet's 1953 book argued that when family, church and town weaken, people seek belonging in the central state. What that implies about loneliness now. Marriage and Money, Why One Household Budget Beats Two Separate Ledgers A marriage is one household, so a joint budget is a moral choice before a bookkeeping one; the premises, a worked couple and the best objection answered. Eight myths that keep good families from adopting a child Cost, age, income and birth parents are the reasons families give for not adopting, and most rest on myths. Here are eight, tested against the record. Baby Moses laws, from one Texas statute in 1999 to all fifty states Safe haven laws let a parent in crisis leave a newborn with a hospital or fire station, and they spread from Texas to every state with votes from both parties. Baby bonuses, tax credits or cheaper houses, comparing pro-family policies Six conservative tools to help families form, rated for cost, work incentives and federalism, with both sides of the fight over cash payments. A falling birth rate is a conservative problem, not a culture-war slogan Fertility has sat below replacement for years, straining entitlements and signaling that families are harder to start. Where conservatives split, and why. California's 1969 no-fault divorce law and the revolution that followed Governor Reagan signed the law that ended fault divorce in California, and every state followed. The history, and the conservative fight over repeal or reform. Every Totalitarian Regime Went After the Family First, and Not by Accident From the Jacobins to the Bolsheviks to Mao, revolutionary states weakened the family because it is a loyalty they do not control. The family checks power. Fathers are not optional, and the culture that says they are is wrong Television mocked fathers and welfare rules pushed them out of the house. The record shows what father absence costs, and what men and communities can do. 'The success sequence is just correlation,' answered point by point Critics say finishing school, working and marrying before children only describes privilege. The evidence says more than that, and the objection has answers. The marriage penalty buried in welfare programs, with the math shown Means-tested programs can make marriage cost a low-income couple thousands of dollars a year. Here is the arithmetic, program by program, and the fixes. The family came before the state, so why does the state act like a parent? The family is prior to government in time and in rights, so policy should start there, while answering the case for protecting children from bad parents. What Obergefell said to religious believers, and what it left open Obergefell v. Hodges promised religious people could keep teaching their view of marriage, and the decade since tested how far that promise reaches. Every School Teaches Morals, the Only Question Is Which Ones No school is morally neutral, because rules on honesty and cheating are moral teaching. The real question is which virtues, taught on what foundation. The Trivium Explained, Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric for a Modern Child Classical education is a sequence matched to how children learn: facts first, then argument, then persuasion. Here is what it is and how to judge a school. The Little Platoons Passage From 1790 and What It Asks of Us Now One sentence in Burke's Reflections makes family, parish, town and club the first schools of public affection, and France showed what follows when they go.