Tip #16 from "101 Tips for a Happier Marriage" 

Adopt this motto: Setbacks are inevitable, but failure is unthinkable.

Remember that Lance Armstrong fellow? He's an inspirational guy. He had cancer, extensive chemo, and multiple surgeries, including on his brain, yet he got back on the horse (or the bike, as the case may be) and won the Tour de France seven more times. He was doing something he loved, and he wasn't going to give up on it. If only he, and every married couple experiencing problems, devoted that much dedication and perseverance to their own relationships.

Be one of those couples.

Find all 101 Marriage-Improving Tips here.

La Crosse Conference: On Divorce

Elizabeth Marquardt speaks at the Conference for the Priests and Deacons of La Crosse, Wisconsin, on divorce, donor-conceived persons, alternate family forms, and alienation. (Click the POD icon.)

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As heard in a Kindergarten classroom, Part 4

I was pulling wet wipes out of the container and the wipes had kinda balled up at the bottom. One of my boys seeing me struggling, says, “Kinda hard, Miss C, huh? Just about as hard as pulling a thorn out of a dinosaur.” Keep reading.

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Strengthening the Family: a Report from Utah

by Charles Capps, Stanford alumnus and co-founder of the Anscombe Society at Stanford University

Last weekend, a group of students and young professionals converged on Provo, Utah, for the second annual Strengthening the Family conference, put on by Students for the Family. The conference planners selected a timely theme—“Engaging Issues with Courage and Civility.” Anyone who reads the news knows that, when it comes to current debates about marriage and the family, civility is in short supply. This makes courage in speaking the truth about these issues difficult but crucial. [Editor's note: The Ruth Institute was one of the sponsors for this conference.]

The student and young professional presenters certainly rose to the challenge. In the spring, Students for the Family issued a call for academic papers and project proposals; out of over a hundred submissions, twenty-two papers and seventeen projects were selected for presentation. Winning papers explored topics such as the threat to religious freedom posed by Perry v. Schwarzenegger (Laura Bunker), the importance of modesty in sexual ethics (David Eastman), and statistical links between pornography consumption and child molestation (Callan Olive).  

Winning projects approached issues of marriage and family from a variety of perspectives, including history (Becca Potter, “Make History”), religion (Mariangela Mazzei, “Faith Proceeds the Miracles”), the arts (Julie Loa Nielson, “A Family Composition”), the social sciences (Ben Johnson, “Positive and Negative Effects of Video Games in Relation to Game Addiction”) and even linguistics (Erin Shaw and Brandon Betenson, “The English Revolution and the Family”). Student and young professional presenters flew in from multiple states and shared work from a diversity of academic disciplines and ideological backgrounds.

Not to be outdone, the professional presenters further enriched the conversation with talks ranging from violence in the media (Robert Ridge, PhD) to women in the workplace (Jennifer Roback Morse, PhD). By the end of the weekend, attendees had heard about truly cutting-edge research being performed on the many facets of marriage and the family—thanks to the impressive array of speakers lined up by Students for the Family.

Keep reading.