Articles

Catharsis is good, but effectiveness matters more. 

Few people today call a doctor when they feel a bout of nostalgia coming on. But for 200 years, nostalgia was considered a dangerous disease that could trigger delusions, despair, and even death. A 17th-century Swiss physician coined the word to describe the debilitating algos (pain) felt by people who had left their nostos (native home). In the U.S.

Especially around Valentine’s Day, it’s easy to find advice about sustaining a successful marriage, with suggestions for "date nights" and romantic dinners for two.But as we spend more and more of our lives outside marriage, it’s equally important to cultivate the skills of successful singlehood. And doing that doesn’t benefit just people who never marry. It can also make for more satisfying marriages.

It wasn't long ago that being single after a certain age was considered a recipe for lifelong misery. Up until 1970, the average woman married before she was legally old enough to have a drink at her wedding, and the average man married at 23. A woman still single at the ripe old age of 26 was what the Japanese call Christmas Cake -- past her pull date and destined to spoil. A man not married by the end of his 20s was considered irresponsible, if not "deviant."

In 1973, when President Richard Nixon proclaimed August 26 Women's Equality Day -- commemorating the day in 1920 that women won the right to vote -- a woman could still be denied housing by a real estate broker or credit by a bank, simply because of her gender.

In a letter to The Wall Street Journal this week, Ivanka Trump gave a robust defense of the Trump administration's proposed paid family leave program. The Journal's editorial board had denounced it as a government "entitlement" that "could create another disincentive for work and advancement."