children

Child marriage is alive and well among the Yemeni-Americans in Dearborn, but education may finally erode that social norm.

The GOP had a chance to get Trump’s border wall (and much, much, more) back in 2007. They blew it.

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift discuss the latest in the debate over immigration policy and detained children and what to expect from the DOJ Inspector General memo as it pertains to the Mueller Investigation.

One of the last laws in Europe banning abortion, Ireland’s eighth amendment, was decisively rejected by voters on May 25. The plebiscite’s result allows the amendment to be struck from the country’s constitution. Once that happens later this year, Irish women will no longer have to smuggle in…

Or, how to make the duties of social workers even more difficult

A little parenting heresy on smartphones and screen time.

Nikolas Cruz delighted in torturing animals. The Florida school shooter is reported to have killed frogs and squirrels, and sicced a dog on a neighbor’s piglets. Cruz’s social media feeds were replete with images of dead and maimed critters, apparently hurt by his own hand.

In a recent conversation with an administrator who spent years at one of Manhattan’s most prestigious prep schools, I brought up the subject of gifted education. “I don’t know what you mean,” she responded without a trace of irony. “Every child is gifted in his or her own way.” In a culture where…

The unexpected risks of lives spent online.

Of the many things that a young fellow, barely knee-high to a grasshopper, might aspire to be when he grows up, one that doesn’t often come to mind is “grifter.” Yet in my early 20s, intoxicated by the demimonde allure of pulp novels by Jim Thompson and Charles Willeford, I was reminded of a time…

"Here, you can be the policeman." Jenna (not her real name), a 4-year-old, hands me one of the dozen small figures spread in front of her, a black woman in a police uniform. “I’m going to be the doctor,” she says as she picks up another black woman dressed in a doctor’s coat. For the next few…

In August, your humble Scrapbook noted an alarming New York magazine article about how the world of teenage novels is now rife with “culture cops, monitoring their peers across multiple platforms for violations.”

In the past 100 years, no visual artist has contributed more to the sum total of human happiness than Alexander Calder. If you think about it, this generating of happiness, to the extent to which it retains any cultural prestige these days, is seen as the domain of musicians and writers far more…

In the past 100 years, no visual artist has contributed more to the sum total of human happiness than Alexander Calder. If you think about it, this generating of happiness, to the extent to which it retains any cultural prestige these days, is seen as the domain of musicians and writers far more…

Minneapolis

Minneapolis

Kids at Barack Obama Elementary have known only one president. Many fear the next.

Towards the end of a recent lunch, I found myself ogling a friend's bowl of chicken pista korma. He was done, but there were still a few tender chunks of chicken left. It required enormous restraint on my part not to ask him, "Are you going to finish that?" And considering we were in a restaurant…

Towards the end of a recent lunch, I found myself ogling a friend’s bowl of chicken pista korma. He was done, but there were still a few tender chunks of chicken left. It required enormous restraint on my part not to ask him, "Are you going to finish that?" And considering we were in a restaurant…

Washington went into one of its periodic hysterias recently when it was reported that the CEO of a pharmaceutical company that had been gouging the public was the daughter of a U.S. senator. Not that there is anything wrong with that. No laws broken and it was just business, more or less, as usual.

Washington went into one of its periodic hysterias recently when it was reported that the CEO of a pharmaceutical company that had been gouging the public was the daughter of a U.S. senator. Not that there is anything wrong with that. No laws broken and it was just business, more or less, as usual.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Hillary Clinton’s It Takes a Village, and given what's written there, Clinton must be sorry she isn't running for president of Scotland. After all, the Scots have been rolling out a law that implements much of her argument, namely that government—or "the…

Recently, I attended a marvelous performance of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night with my twin three-year-olds, a one-year-old, and my wife.