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children 40

Faithful Lives in Faithless Times

To the tomb, all life hastens. But while death is ineluctable, the growing good of the world is not. There is an intrinsic vulnerability to civilization (and parenthood), in large…

P.D. James’ Children of Men and Modern Parenting

I didn’t intend to welcome two children into an era marked by so much bleakness and turmoil. With James’s help, I’ve remembered that there is no project more local, no…

Atticus, Scout, and the Gift of Children: On Reading To Kill a Mockingbird with my Daughter in 2020

This is the humbling gift our children offer. If we seek to shape their character, at some point in the journey we’ll find ourselves backed into a corner, faced with…

The End of Childhood Play

Too many children grow up learning no lessons, organising no peers, and exploring no territory, unless it be shifting electrons around a screen, and the screen becomes their world.
January 6, 2021

In Praise of the Children’s Choir Accompanist

Every few weeks, in what I assume is a uniquely Protestant ritual, a dozen small children stand at the front of our church and sing for the congregation. A kindly…

The Craft of Education

“Then education is the craft concerned with doing this very thing, this turning around, and with how the soul can most easily and effectively be made to do it.” Plato,…

You, Child, are Our Bond

“And children seem to be a bond of union.” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Moved by these words of Aristotle, I write here... An Open Letter to My Child Even your father can…

Gifting Children

Some friends and I are celebrating the good news that one of our company was expecting another child. None of us are the Duggars, and the offspring of the three…

The Beauty of Tolkien’s Quest

Tolkien understands the deepest of our longings and makes us understand them better than before.
Mark T. Mitchell
June 2, 2011

Where Are All the Grownups?

Why is it taking so long for Americans to become “real” grown-ups?

Why Australia Needs a Renewed Culture of Natural Marriage

Human nature, innate human longings, human biology, and human history are all on your side.
August 23, 2010

Having Kids Who Have Kids

Bryan Caplan ignores the role religious belief plays in fertility rates.
Patrick Deneen
July 14, 2010

Cultivating Gratitude

Blairsville, GA. Recently I was with a friend whose oldest son, having just completed his junior year, is home from college. The young man has not yet found a summer…
Mark T. Mitchell
June 15, 2009

Why we do not own a Television

April was "Media Awareness Month" at our sons' school. I took a couple weeks off from the Porch, and I also published a first draft of this piece in the…

Home-Making for Home-Coming

RINGOES, NJ. You’ve seen the commercials.A middle-aged couple drops their son off at college. As they drive away, nest now empty, they feign sorrow. Quickly, though, their mournful countenances are…
Mark T. Mitchell
April 21, 2009

No Wealth But Life

JEFFERSON COUNTY, KANSAS. William Allen White, the noted editorialist of Emporia, once named our shared home country America’s tenth muse—the muse of prophecy. If Kansas is muse, surely one of…
March 6, 2009