Hardwired to Connect: The New Scientific Case for Authoritative Communities is a recent study that was conducted by the Commission on Children at Risk, a group of distinguished physicians, scholars, scientists, and youth service professionals. These professionals amassed and integrated the most recent neuroscientific and social science evidence. This Commission identified the crisis of American childhood to be one of a lack of connectedness to other people as well as to deep moral and spiritual meaning.

This report has been very well received by a wide variety of professionals, parents and educators representing a diverse set of opinions, values and beliefs. The central idea of the need for connection is universal, and has resonated in churches, schools, communities and homes across America.

Note: Some professional parent educators and therapists have argued that the report’s emphasis on the value of doing everything possible to maintain the “traditional” two parent biological American family could (without intention) leave those in “nontraditional” families feeling hopeless or encourage a spouse to remain in an abusive marriage “for the sake of the children.” For an additional perspective that is also research-based and validates how nontraditional families are capable of raising healthy children click here for Dr. Harriet Heath’s review of Dr. Susan Golombok’s book Parenting: What Really Counts

Below are some links to resources related to this study, including the full report and various responses:

The Institute for American Values, which published Hardwired to Connect, has the full report, an executive summary and other information available for downloading on their website.

Hardwired to Connect Keynote given by Dr. W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia - this downloable MS Word document contains the keynote address given by Dr. Wilcox at the Hardwired to Connect conference in Baltimore on September 27, 2004.

Commentary on Hardwired to Connect by conservative columnist George Will.

A Response to Hardwired to Connect from the Motherhood Project entitled Gather Around the Children.

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