During the past 50 years, growing numbers of academicians became disenchanted with the family – and marriage in particular.  These academicians slowly, but surely, persuaded ever-larger segments of the past two generations that marriage requires neither a man, nor a woman, and has no necessary connection to procreation.  Rather, marriage is now described as a utilitarian concept that can (and should) be reconstructed to satisfy the longings of autonomous individuals, who are entitled to define their intimate relationships without the fetters of established sexual and social norms, including those related to human reproduction. Gender, in turn, has been similarly deconstructed.  Professors (and politicians) now insist that gender is a “social construct” that is “mutable,” “changeable” and not “essential” to “individual identity.” “Fatherhood,” when and if acknowledged, is described in modern classrooms as a relic of patriarchal oppression, while international human rights organizations – including the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women -- criticize “motherhood” as a “harmful traditional stereotype.”

In his book Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War, Nathaniel Philbrick estimates that there are 35 million descendants of the passengers on the Mayflower. Remember, only 102 people came to this country on the Mayflower and 52 of them died of disease and starvation before the first spring.

That left only 50 survivors, and from them, there are now nearly 35 million descendants. Can you believe that? That number shows that men and women who are willing to take up a courageous cause will affect an untold number of future lives.

So what mission is your family willing to risk everything for? Why not call a family meeting and figure out what that should be? Your many descendants will be blessed.

Record Search is a new pilot Web site that can help people find their ancestors. The site, at http://pilot.familysearch.org, provides access to millions of original source documents from many areas of the world, and more records are being added all the time. For example, among the growing collection of records in Record Search, you can search Ellis Island New York passenger arrival lists, 1892-1924; US Civil War Pension index cards; and the 1895 Argentina Census.

Selfishness is a growing problem in today's society. The book, Teaching Your Children Values, by Linda and Richard Eyre suggest six simple steps to teach children unselfishness: Praise, Responsibility, Example, Say "I'm Sorry", Share Feelings, and Remember the Process. Read more about the steps here.

A new study shows just how important having a weekly date with your spouse really is. The study suggests that instead of just doing the same thing each week, like dinner and a movie, that couples should tailor their date nights around new and different activities that they both enjoy. Introducing new and novel activities such as trying new food at a new restaurant, taking an art class, or going to an amusement park activates the brain's reward system, flooding it with dopamine and norepinephrine which are linked to the romantic feelings experienced during courtship.

All Pro Dad is a website dedicated to helping fathers. They have a free email service, which I highly recommend, that will send you small nuggets of good advice on parenting daily. They recently started a companion site for mothers called iMom.

FamilySearch added 24 million new names from England baptism and marriage records to its pilot Record Search collection. The collection can be accessed for free at http://pilot.familysearch.org. The Record Search pilot is testing a new online digital image viewer and search utilities that will be added to FamilySearch.org in the near future.

Here's an article that explains what you can do to your laundry to keep the whites white. If your "whites" are anything like mine they're turning gray or something.

The following is an excerpt from Patrick Kelly’s speech "The Family: Seedbed for National Renewal" presented at The World Congress of Families IV Warsaw, Poland, May 2007:

“The central crisis confronting the family in the West is a crisis of anthropology - a crisis of the proper understanding of the nature of the human person. The problem consists of a faulty anthropology that detaches human freedom from the truth, and values the person in strictly individualistic and materialistic terms. This was the great error of Communism, and it now presents an enormous challenge to the consumer cultures of the West.

France now joins Sweden, Norway, Estonia, and Bulgaria with the lamentable distinction of having the majority of births out-of-wedlock. "What's led the rise in out-of-wedlock births is that a lifestyle that was once confined to Paris is now the norm even in rural areas," the head of Insee's demographics department, Guy Desplanques, said in a telephone interview. "Marriage is no longer considered indispensable to form a family."

FamilySearch and The Generations Network Agreement Give Patrons Access to More than 24,000 Ancestry.com Databases and Titles

SALT LAKE CITY—FamilySearch and The Generations Network, Inc., parent company of Ancestry.com, today announced an agreement that provides free access of Ancestry.com to patrons of the Family History Library in Salt Lake City and the 13 largest regional family history centers effective today.

National Archives and FamilySearch Team Up to Digitize and Index Mountains of Historic Documents

SALT LAKE CITY—The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) of the United States and FamilySearch today announced an agreement that will lead to the digitization of millions of historical documents over time. The bulk of the digital images and related indices will be freely accessible through www.FamilySearch.org, 4,500 family history centers worldwide, or at the National Archives and its Regional Centers.

www.familysearchwiki.org is a new site I helped build to help people get family history research advice. Anyone can register and contribute to the site. There are thousands of articles on research topics mostly organized by localities. Check it out and send in any feedback you have.

The Computer Science students at BYU have created an awesome genealogy tool that can tell you what famous people you are related to. First go to FamilySearch and look up the AFN number of one of your direct ancestors, then just enter it into the Relationship Finder tool.