Leon R. Kass's book Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics (2002) discusses the implications of advances in biotechnology. Dr. Kass believes that technology has done and will continue to do wonders for human health and longevity and that we have much to thank it for. But he argues that the biological revolution raises stakes beyond saving life and avoiding death. Human beings, in his view, must approach innovations in a way that protects the ideas and practices that give them dignity and preserves their humanity.

James Q. Wilson's The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families (2002) reveals that the long-term weakening of marriage as an institution originated from unlikely sources, most importantly slavery and the Enlightenment. Slavery taught women and children not to rely on the presence of fathers, while the Enlightenment's emphasis on individual rights has eventually contributed to making unmarried cohabitation the fashion today among younger people.

In the October Bradley Lecture, Douglas J. Besharov looked at how welfare reform has fared and how it will shape the future of the U.S. welfare system. He described how, since 1994, welfare caseloads have fallen by 60 percent nationwide, yet how an assessment of welfare reform's long-term impact is complicated. Single mothers are working in greater numbers, for instance, but the number of disadvantaged men in the workforce remains low. Mr. Besharov explained that, although welfare caseloads have decreased and incomes among the poorest families have increased, the sum of all government aid to low-income families is at a post-Depression high, and he noted how little improvement has been made in nonmarital birth rates and marriage formation.

Mr. Besharov and Research Associate Peter Germanis edited a major study in 2002 titled "Family Well-Being after Welfare Reform," which encompasses a collection of essays on numerous topics, including child maltreatment and foster care placements, children's health and well-being, mothers' work and child care, and the plans of the Department of Health and Human Services to monitor the well-being of low-income children.