Featured in this issue:
· Dr. Ryan MacPherson, chair of the history department at Bethany Lutheran College and Senior Editor of The Family in America, discusses the recent rise in home offices, homesteading, and telecommuting. In spite of the greater efficiency of such arrangements, current tax policy punishes home entrepreneurship and instead rewards companies who rent office space and pay for their employees' daycare needs. MacPherson makes five policy recommendations that will contribute to family autonomy in the home economy.
· Michael Tolhurst, a writer from Northern Virginia, investigates the "Maker Movement," inspired by the work of Chris Anderson and discussed everywhere from the New York Times to the Huffington Post. Tolhurst outlines the ways in which modern technology--devices such as 3-D printers and laser-cutters combined with the fundraising capabilities of sites like Kickstarter--have the potential to revolutionize how we view manufacturing, and how legislatures might help instead of hinder this promising movement.
· President of The Howard Center and Editor of The Family in America Allan Carlson traces the rise and fall of the discipline of Home Economics. What began, Carlson argues, as a noble endeavor to elevate the role of homemaker in an industrial society concluded with the collapse of all things domestic in the face of feminist antagonism.
· In "Etsy, Pinterest, and Mommy Blogs: A Return to the Home Arts?" Managing Editor Nicole King examines what appears to be a renewed American interest in the domestic sphere, particularly as it is exemplified through the Internet. Can this healthy interest resist the takeover of corporate interests?
In addition to these thoughtful essays, the spring issue also contains the text of "model legislation" in the form of the Parents' Tax Relief Act of 2007, whose chief sponsors were Representative Lee Terry of Nebraska and Senator (now governor) Sam Brownback of Kansas. William Duncan of the Marriage Law Foundation reviews Abuse of Discretion: The Inside Story of Roe v. Wade, by Americans United for Life Senior Counsel Clarke D. Forsythe. And Katy Hopkins reviews Pat Ennis' and Dorothy Kelley Patterson's The Christian Homemaker's Handbook.
As always, this issue of The Family in America closes with the ever-popular New Research section, highlighting the scholarship that proves--even when the academics themselves don't want to admit it--that the natural family is the fundamental unit in a healthy society.
