Category: The Conversation

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Peter McGraw, Professor of Marketing and Psychology, University of Colorado Boulder

When a couple marry in a church, synagogue or mosque, the ceremony does more than sanctify a union. Often, it binds two families to an institution.

For centuries, marriage and child-rearing have been among the main ways adults are integrated into congregational life. Couples who share the same faith tend to be more observant, and they often raise children within that tradition – bringing the next generation into congregational life. More marriages mean more families in pews and more children raised in the faith.

That helps explain why the rise of single adults is so unsettling for many faith communities today. In the United States, 42% of adults were not married or living with a partner in 2023, up from 38% in 2000. This shift is unlikely to change soon: A quarter of 40-year-olds have never been married, and a third of Gen Z are projected to never marry.

At the same time, the share of unmarried Americans who belong to a religious congregation has fallen well below that of married Americans. According to the Pew Research Center’s 2023–24 Religious Landscape Study, 68% of married adults identify as Christian, compared with about 51% of never-married adults. Twenty-four percent of married Americans are religiously unaffiliated, compared with 39% of Americans who never married.

As a behavioral economist and a business school professor, I study what I call the “solo economy”: how the rise of single adults is reshaping workplaces, taxes and consumer markets. Religious institutions are the latest domain to face the same shift. They are not simply confronting lower marriage rates. Many of them, I contend, are reckoning with the consequences of treating unmarried adults as incomplete members of the community.

Alarm across faiths

According to the Survey Center on American Life, the gap in religious membership between married and unmarried Americans has widened substantially since the 1990s.

At the time, 71% of married Americans said they belonged to a religious congregation, compared with 64% of unmarried Americans. In 2019, those numbers were 59% and 45%, respectively. Barna Group, an evangelical Christian polling firm, found that just 1 in 4 single mothers attend church weekly – the lowest rate of any parent group.

Communities that have historically built their infrastructure around married families are feeling the shift most acutely: couples retreats, small groups organized by life stage, children’s programs, and leadership roles that quietly assume a spouse. The cumulative effect is less about overt exclusion than about whom the institution imagines when it pictures itself.

In an April 2021 address during a churchwide conference, M. Russell Ballard, then one of the top leaders in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, acknowledged that more than half of adult church members were widowed, divorced or not yet married – and that some “wonder about their opportunities and place in God’s plan and in the Church.” In July 2024, the church expanded its “young single adult” category from ages 18–30 to 18–35.

In evangelical Christianity, sociologist Katie Gaddini’s research for her book “The Struggle to Stay” found that women – especially those over age 35 – often felt overlooked, excluded from leadership and valued less because they had not married.

At a women’s conference in London, one attendee captured the tension: “I’m so tired of fighting Christian church leaders to be treated equally, but I don’t want to leave the church. So, what do I do?”

In Modern Orthodox Judaism, similar patterns of exclusion have emerged. A 2022 Nishma Research survey found that singles reported the lowest sense of community connection of any group studied: 69 on a 100-point scale, compared with 81 for married members. Another 2022 report, by Brandeis University sociologist Sylvia Barack Fishman, described unmarried members feeling “ignored and invisible” in synagogue life, sometimes treated as if they were broken people waiting to be fixed.

On my podcast, sociologist Ari Engelberg, author of “Singlehood and Religion,” described how unmarried adults in Israel’s Religious Zionist community internalize their single status as a religious failing. The community treats marriage as so central to observant life that remaining single can feel like falling short.

Doubling down

Religious institutions’ responses to the rise of singles have split in two directions.

Some have reasserted marriage as the expected path to adulthood, belonging and spiritual maturity. Pope Francis, for example, repeatedly warned about declining birth rates, calling the trend a “tragedy” in a 2021 address. In a 2023 worldwide broadcast, Dallin H. Oaks, who is now the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, urged single adults to date more, marry earlier and not delay having children. And in June 2025, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution lamenting “willful childlessness” and calling for laws that “incentivize family formation.”

In qualitative research with single churchgoers, a consistent theme emerges: Marriage comes up regularly in sermons – in illustrations, examples and applications – while singleness almost never does.

That instinct is understandable. But a strategy built for a society where most adults married young is a poor fit for one where many never will.

But doubling down carries a real cost. When single adults hear, again and again, that the fullest version of faithful life is married life, many do not feel called upward. They feel pushed outward.

Adapting

Other religious communities are adapting.

In the U.K., the Single Friendly Church Network developed a guided audit to help congregations across denominations assess how welcoming they are to people who come alone. In the U.S., ministries such as Table for One have tried to move singles programming away from matchmaking and toward spiritual community. And Fishman’s 2022 report on Modern Orthodox Judaism urged synagogues to give singles leadership roles, committee seats and ritual honors, regardless of marital status — though whether those recommendations have taken hold remains an open question.

But adaptation raises its own question. Are these efforts designed to support single adults as full members of the community or to manage them toward marriage? There is a difference between welcoming singles and treating singlehood as a problem to solve.

I see several practical steps for religious institutions that want to keep unmarried adults engaged in their communities:

1. Count who is actually in the pews. Leaders may not realize how many of their members are single, divorced or widowed. The Single Friendly Church Network found that when congregations conducted demographic audits, many were surprised by the results.

2. Give singles real authority. Inclusion does not mean creating a special ministry and leaving decision-making to married people. It means leadership, voice and visibility.

3. Rethink the language of belonging. Sermons and announcements that reflexively address “families” and “couples” can make unmarried adults feel peripheral. Small linguistic changes can signal that they are not.

4. Build community rather than dating pools. The goal should not be to funnel unmarried adults toward coupledom. It should be to treat them as complete people whose spiritual lives matter now.

Religious institutions have joined employers, policymakers and consumer brands in facing the same choice: Adapt to a society with more single adults, or keep building for a world that no longer exists.

Peter McGraw does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Many churches, synagogues and mosques are built around families – and they’re struggling to respond to rising singles – https://theconversation.com/many-churches-synagogues-and-mosques-are-built-around-families-and-theyre-struggling-to-respond-to-rising-singles-278723

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Mark Bartholomew, Professor of Law, University at Buffalo

Americans spend a remarkable amount of time shopping – more than on education, volunteering or even talking on the phone. But the way they shop is shifting dramatically, as major platforms and retailers are racing to automate commercial decision-making.

Artificial intelligence agents can already search for products, recommend options and even complete purchases on a consumer’s behalf. Yet many shoppers remain uneasy about handing over control. Although many consumers report using some AI assistance, most currently say they wouldn’t want an AI agent to autonomously complete a shopping transaction, according to a recent survey from the consultancy firm Bain & Company.

As scholars studying the intersection of law and technology, we have watched AI-assisted commerce expand rapidly. Our research finds that without updated legal measures, this shift toward automated commerce could quietly erode the economic, psychological and social benefits that people receive from shopping on their own terms.

Caveat emptor

Part of shoppers’ hesitation is about privacy. Many are unwilling to share sensitive personal or financial information with AI platforms. But more profoundly, people want to feel in control of their shopping choices. When users can’t understand the reasoning behind AI-driven product recommendations, their trust and satisfaction decline.

Shoppers are also reluctant to give away their autonomy. In one study involving people booking travel plans, participants deliberately chose trip options that were misaligned with their stated preferences once they were told their choices could be predicted – a way of reasserting independence.

Other experiments confirm that the more customers perceive their shopping choices being taken away from them, the more reluctant they are to accept AI purchasing assistance.

Although the technology is expected to get better, there have been some well-publicized missteps reported in financial and tech media. The Wall Street Journal wrote about an AI-powered vending machine that lost money and stocked itself with a live fish. The tech publication Wired cataloged design flaws, like an AI agent taking a full 45 seconds to add eggs to a customer’s shopping cart.

The business case for AI shopping

Consumers have good reason to be cautious. AI agents aren’t just designed to assist; they’re designed to influence. Research shows that these systems can shape preferences, steer choices, increase spending and even reduce the likelihood that consumers return products.

And companies are hyping these capabilities. The business platform Salesforce promotes AI agents that can “effortlessly upsell,”
while payments giant Mastercard reports that its AI assistant, Shopping Muse, generates 15% to 20% higher conversion rates than traditional search – that is, pushing shoppers from browsing to completing a purchase.

For companies, the appeal is obvious. From Amazon’s Rufus app and Walmart’s customer support to AI-enabled grocery carts, companies are rapidly integrating these tools into the shopping experience.

Assistants with names like Sparky and Ralph are being promoted as the future of retail, while technologists are calling on companies to prepare their brands for the era of agentic AI shopping.

The real concern is not that these systems might fail, but that they may succeed all too well.

The human side to shopping

AI shopping agents do offer considerable benefits.

For example, they can scan numerous products in seconds, compare prices across sellers, track discounts over time, sift through thousands of product reviews, and tailor recommendations to the user’s preferences and needs. They can even read through terms of service and privacy policies, helping consumers detect unfavorable fine print.

But there’s more at stake than these considerations.

While consumers have reason to focus on privacy and control, AI shopping agents carry some overlooked emotional risks, such as squashing the joy of anticipation. Psychologists have shown that the period between choosing a purchase and receiving it generates substantial happiness – sometimes more than the product or experience itself. We daydream about the vacation we booked, the outfit we ordered, the meal we planned. Automated buying threatens to drain this anticipatory pleasure.

This anticipation connects to another value: a sense of personal and ethical authorship. Even mundane shopping decisions allow people to exercise choice and express judgment. Many consumers deliberately buy fair-trade coffee, cruelty-free cosmetics or environmentally responsible products. The brands and products we choose, from Patagonia and Harley-Davidson to a Taylor Swift tour shirt, help shape who we are.

Shopping, moreover, has a communal dimension. We browse stores with friends, chat with salespeople and shop for the people we love. These everyday interactions contribute considerably to our well-being.

The same is true of gift-giving. Choosing a gift involves anticipating another person’s preferences, investing effort in the search and recognizing that the gesture matters as much as the object itself. When this process is outsourced to an autonomous system, the gift risks becoming a delivery rather than a meaningful gesture of attention and care.

Keeping human agency alive

AI shopping agents are likely to become part of everyday life, and the regulatory conversation is beginning to catch up, albeit unevenly.

Transparency has emerged as a central concern. Past experience with recommendation engines shows that undisclosed conflicts of interest are a real risk. The European Union has proposed a disclosure framework around automated decision-making, although its implementation was recently delayed. In Congress, U.S. lawmakers are considering bills to require companies to reveal how their AI models were trained.

So far, consumers seem to want to choose their own level of engagement – a signal that shopping, for many people, is more than just the efficient satisfaction of preferences. Perhaps the least-settled, yet most crucial question is whether AI shopping tools will be designed and regulated to serve users’ interests and human flourishing – or optimized, as so many digital tools before them, primarily for corporate profit.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. What we lose when artificial intelligence does our shopping – https://theconversation.com/what-we-lose-when-artificial-intelligence-does-our-shopping-280251

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Shawn Datchuk, Associate Professor of Special Education, University of Iowa

Recently, I worked with a group of elementary teachers in Iowa to select new reading textbooks and software. They wanted new materials to improve their district’s stagnant reading scores.

After several days of reviewing materials from a state-approved list, one of the teachers asked me, “Will any of these help my students learn to read?”

I said, “I think so, but I don’t know.”

The teacher looked disappointed. But my answer reflects a hard truth about what reading scholars like me understand about the best ways to teach people to read and boost their literacy. Although research suggests that elementary teachers should focus on helping students learn the sounds of speech, phonics, reading fluency, vocabulary and reading comprehension strategies, there is little evidence on how well these skills are packaged into the textbooks used in classrooms.

I am a professor of special education at the University of Iowa and the former director of the Iowa Reading Research Center.

I help schools across the country adopt new textbooks and software to improve their students’ reading and writing. Currently, I’m working with colleagues on a review of how elementary school teachers use new reading textbooks to improve their students’ literacy skills.

There is a crowded marketplace of reading textbooks and software for schools to purchase, and it is often difficult to determine which one is better than the others. As a result, schools may end up purchasing new, expensive materials that do little to improve reading skills.

Stalled reading progress

Many elementary school students, including those with reading disabilities such as dyslexia, struggle to learn to read.

On the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, a broad measure of reading development given to fourth grade students in every state, approximately 34% of students without disabilities and 72% of students with disabilities scored below basic levels. This means they displayed difficulty with multiple foundational reading skills and were reading below grade level.

The fact that many young students struggle to read at grade level is not a new problem. For the past 30 years, reading performance across the U.S. has remained largely unchanged.

Since 1992, the average NAEP reading score for fourth graders has varied by only a few points. In fact, NAEP scores for most students in fourth grade, the only elementary school grade measured by the NAEP, have declined since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since 2019, a total of 42 states, including California and Tennessee, have passed legislation intended to help students read better by training teachers to use evidence-based reading instruction. This means schools across the country are adopting new approaches to teach reading and using new textbooks.

For example, Louisiana in 2021 and Iowa in 2024 passed legislation that provided teachers with additional training, in addition to giving them state-approved reading textbooks that align with key areas of reading development, such as phonics and reading comprehension strategies.

As a result of these policies, reading scores are improving in some states. However, a substantial number of students across the country are still reading below grade level.

For example, Louisiana had a significant increase in fourth grade reading scores on the 2024 NAEP, rising from 55% of fourth grade students scoring basic or above in 2019 to 60% in 2024. However, 40% of fourth grade students still scored below basic, meaning they were reading below grade level.

Iowa had minimal increases in the reading proficiency of its students in 2024 statewide assessments, rising from 73% to 74% of sixth graders reading proficiently. Most elementary grades’ reading levels stayed the same from the prior year, with approximately 65% to 69% of students reading proficiently.

Despite this large number of students reading at grade level, nearly 70% of students with disabilities were reading below grade level in 2024.

To improve the scores of those still reading below grade level, new research that I and colleagues are doing is looking at the quality of reading textbooks promoted on state-approved lists.

New textbooks aren’t necessarily better

Reading textbooks play a pivotal role in how reading is taught. These textbooks have distinct daily lessons in which specific reading skills and content are taught, such as specific letter sounds or words. Textbooks not only include paper-based materials for students but also online apps and websites, as well as lesson plans for teachers.

There are a variety of textbook publishers and textbooks, and each textbook differs on what reading skills are taught and how often they are taught. For example, a recent review found textbooks differ drastically on the amount of time given for students to learn the sounds of speech. This time difference matters, as students’ reading performance suffered when too little or too much time was spent on learning the sounds of speech.

More than 36 states publish a list of approved reading textbooks, often referred to as high-quality instructional materials. States differ on which textbooks they consider to be of high quality, but they typically rely on the opinion of reading experts. Two popular nonprofit organizations that provide detailed reports on how reading experts rate textbooks include EdReports and The Reading League.

A need for more research

Despite using expert opinion to determine quality, ineffective textbooks still make it onto state-approved lists. A 2025 study by the Tennessee Reading Research Center found mixed effects for teachers who used state-approved textbooks to teach reading. In the study, students with dyslexia improved their reading on some measures, but overall their reading remained significantly lower than their peers.

Once a state promotes a reading textbook as high quality, it is likely to remain a staple in schools. Most states do not have systems in place to monitor which reading textbooks are used in schools and their potential effects on student reading performance.

Once a school adopts a textbook, it is likely in place for years. Adopting a new one is a time-consuming and expensive process. It can take several years to train staff and several hundred thousand dollars to pay for materials and training.

I think that we ultimately need scholars who research how kids learn to read to closely collaborate with schools as they use new reading textbooks, and then measure whether student reading performance improves. This will help them determine which reading textbooks improve student reading scores. The results of this research can then be shared with other schools across the U.S. that are considering new textbooks. Schools could then make informed decisions on which textbooks to purchase.

Without this kind of research, states may promote ineffective textbooks and leave schools with a confusing choice on which textbooks to use.

Shawn Datchuk consults to several curriculum companies, including Learning Without Tears, Heggerty, and Dyslexico. He receives funding from the Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education.

– ref. New reading textbooks, same problem: Why children’s reading scores in the US aren’t rising – https://theconversation.com/new-reading-textbooks-same-problem-why-childrens-reading-scores-in-the-us-arent-rising-280125