Commentary: Why Are Fewer Americans Celebrating Valentine’s Day?

Valentine's Day

Fewer Americans are planning to celebrate Valentine’s Day in 2024 than in years past.

America isn’t totally losing its love for the saccharine holiday, though. In fact, spending on Valentine’s Day gifts—for everyone from a significant other to one’s cat—has increased.

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Commentary: No, Ladies, We Cannot Have It All

Woman Stressed out at work

The phrase “having it all” came from the title of a 1982 book written by Helen Gurley Brown, then editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine. As Antoinette Lattouf, writing in The Guardian in early 2023, put it, this self-help book for women focused on “money, sex, diet, exercise, and appearance.” Notably, it made no mention of children or family.

Since then, of course, the phrase has come to take on an even broader meaning. Today, “having it all” is touted as a woman’s reaching her full potential by having an education, lucrative formal career, rewarding marriage, happy children, and an active social life. Of course, this ideal is vague at best and destructive at worst.

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Commentary: ‘To Have and to Hold’: Marrying Young and Making It Last

Marriage

Kate Z. works in childcare and as a part-time barista in my local coffee shop. She’s the oldest of 10 children, with seven brothers and two sisters. Home-educated during elementary school, Kate then entered Padre Pio Academy here in Front Royal, Virginia, a hybrid school which combines homeschooling with three days a week in the classroom. She graduated in 2021 and currently lives in an apartment.

Jesse R. is adopted and the youngest of three siblings. For the most part, he was homeschooled before entering Padre Pio. He also graduated in 2021 and works as a chef de partie in the restaurant of a retirement community. He shares a house with a friend.

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