Andrea Mrozek
Andrea Mrozek is a Senior Fellow with Cardus Family.
Bio last updated May 23rd, 2023.
Articles by Andrea Mrozek
Staying Home for School
By Andrea Mrozek
September 21, 2020
COVID-19 concerns could open parents’ eyes to the crucial benefits of kitchen-table learning, developmental psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld tells Cardus’ Andrea Mrozek.
The idea of parent-led home education has become markedly more popular in the pandemic, but it is still an uncomfortable idea to parents steeped in the view that going to school is the gold standard for their children’s development socially, emotionally and academically Published earlier this month, “Could Home Education Be More Than Just A Backup Plan?” provides evidence that school is not actually a developmental need for children Neufeld says, “that many children find school stressful and our culture is less likely to provide the safe spaces for our children’s feelings to bounce back
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The Pill-aging of Motherhood
Andrea Mrozek
May 10, 2019
In a culture that lionizes contraception and avoids pregnancy like the plague, Andrea Mrozek asks, is it any wonder mothers grow fewer and more isolated each Mother’s Day?
What kind of celebration is Mother’s Day when our culture is geared toward preventing motherhood? When I read policy analysts theorize that culture dictates fertility norms, I can only wholeheartedly agree But with dispersed families, waning religiosity and dwindling community of any kind, we have t...
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Appeal for Numbers
Andrea Mrozek
February 5, 2019
Andrea Mrozek, program director for Cardus Family, touched off a media flurry last week when she spearheaded an appeal signed by 30 prominent academics asking Statistics Canada to resume collecting data on marriage across Canada. She sat down with Convivium’s Peter Stockland to explain why marriage numbers matter.
C: Is part of your argument that they've extended their reach to make other kinds of information available, and basically that crowded the marriage data out? Or it's simply that they don't value the collection of marriage data? C: Is there argument, though, that because the data is out there in othe...
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Settle Down or Lean In?
Andrea Mrozek
January 8, 2019
Both strains of advice to young women—to either settle down or "lean in" to work—ignore that family life is unattainable for many, writes Cardus Family Program Director Andrea Mrozek.
There’s no shortage of advice directed at young women, but most of it misses the mark by failing to grapple with one stark reality of the wealthy Western world: Family and marriage are wholly unattainable for many All of this advice, especially the admonition for women to settle down sooner, implies...
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Daycare Double Standard
Andrea Mrozek
December 19, 2018
Childcare activists are attacking the Ontario government for changes to ratios for independent providers but praise even lower standards in Quebec and Sweden, notes Cardus Family Program Director Andrea Mrozek. The price of raising a child, she argues, is eternal parental vigilance.
These systems with poor legal ratios (Quebec) and a lack of adherence to any ratios (Sweden) have earned the loud praise of Canadian child care activists If child care activists were truly concerned about Ontario’s new standards in the independent sector, they would need to show at least some concer...
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Building Better Christian Bridges
Andrea Mrozek
October 23, 2018
In a recent talk for Ottawa’s Theology on Tap speaking series, Cardus program director Andrea Mrozek examined myths and misunderstandings that divide Catholics and Protestants. She reminded her audience of C.S. Lewis’ admonition that we are faithfully waiting, not sullenly camping, until unity is restored.
One point Catholics can raise to help Protestants understand where they are coming from lies in the Creed, in this line: “We believe in One Universal (catholic), and Apostolic Church Worst of all is to create an environment where the other, a different type of Christian or a non-Christian altogether...
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Why is Sex Ed Silent About Marriage?
Andrea Mrozek
September 5, 2018
Meet Ontario’s new old sex ed, same as Ontario’s old new sex ed, writes Cardus Family Director Andrea Mrozek. Meanwhile, Mrozek notes, the proven, enduring good of marriage gets crickets.
To which I’d respond that we have hit an ironic point: The Canadian federal government legalized same-sex marriage because it’s a critical institution to which sex must not be a barrier – only to stop talking about it altogether But where support, safe sexuality, poverty reduction, health and child ...
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Stage Set For Life
Andrea Mrozek
June 19, 2018
Actress Mindy Kaling voiced a pro-life message at a recent college commencement when she described letting go of her rigid “life checklist” in order to give birth to a baby girl, writes Cardus Family Program Director Andrea Mrozek.
When I think pro-life talking points, I think freedom; the freedom to live a life that is not scripted or part of a checklist because even an unwanted pregnancy can become wanted I’m talking about a new norm of informal sexual encounters that men and women experience unevenly ...
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Screw-Loose Inclusion
Andrea Mrozek
May 29, 2018
A new federal government document on “digital inclusion” has gender neutral smoke coming out the ears of Cardus Family program director Andrea Mrozek. The waste of time and tax dollars is bad enough. Worse, she argues, is the missed opportunity to do something serious about genuine gender inequality and violence.
So what’s the document about? Canada, we learn “encourages development, adoption and use of technologies that includes the voices of women, girls and gender non-conforming individuals After reading the document, the only question a sane man, woman, girl or gender non-conforming individual could poss...
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Speaking Up for Marriage
Peter Jon Mitchell and Andrea Mrozek
May 14, 2018
New poll numbers show more than half of Canadians no longer believe marriage is necessary. But as Cardus Family’s Peter Jon Mitchell and Andrea Mrozek point out, leading Canadian voices backed by impeccable social science research are debunking that destructive myth.
Given the expert testimony and the availability of scholarship on the matter, what the survey results show is that a majority of Canadians hold views about marriage that are at odds with the research In spite of the fact that marriage is still the most stable relationship choice, we hesitate to enco...
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Daycare Demands Diversity
Andrea Mrozek with Steven Lehrer
March 20, 2018
In conversation with Cardus Family program director Andrea Mrozek, Queen’s University economist Steven Lehrer says hard data debunks the political appeal of universal, uniform daycare
I got interested in universal child care when Michael Baker came to Queen’s and presented his joint work with Kevin Milligan and Jon Gruber, which found that the Quebec childcare program, the access to universal, subsidized child care there, led to declines in a host of child developmental outcomes ...
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#YourBudget Does You No Favours
Andrea Mrozek
March 2, 2018
The federal budget released this week purports to give women a hand up when in reality it gives men the brush off, contends Cardus Family Program Director Andrea Mrozek.
The budget seems set on trying to solve this problem by ensuring women have fewer, not more, choices Imagine that Budget 2018 referenced men 708 times instead of women ...
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Unmarried With Children
Peter Stockland, with Andrea Mrozek, Peter Jon Mitchell
February 20, 2018
Cardus Family has unearthed a startling new statistic: fewer than two-thirds of Canadian children now have married parents. Program director Andrea Mrozek and senior researcher Peter Jon Mitchell tell Convivium how they discovered the number, and what it means for Canadian family life.
PJM: The original (2017 census) report did look at the living arrangements of children, and broke down intact and non-intact families, but it didn't actually look at marriage: which kids were in married parent families, which kids were in common law families It’s a trend that’s been followed since 1...
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Spice of Life
Andrea Mrozek
January 29, 2018
Even in the industrial décor aisles of Costco, Cardus Family director Andrea Mrozek discovers, lurk hopeful encounters able to produce a lifetime of meaning.
No, young man, I said while asking his embarrassed companion to help me in my cinnamon search, this idea was not going to earn him a million dollars The million dollar idea young man replied slowly ...
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It’s Wrong To Call Abortion A Right
Andrea Mrozek with Faye Sonier
January 23, 2018
Citing the Supreme Court’s historic Morgentaler decision, Andrea Mrozek and Faye Sonier show why Prime Minister Trudeau gets so-called abortion rights so wrong.
This is a far cry from the claim that the Morgentaler decision established a right to abortion or that advocating for legislators to develop laws to protect the pre-born child is somehow anti-Charter Gavigan of Osgoode Hall Law School echoes the idea that the Morgentaler decision did not create a ri...
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Eight Myths of Choice
Andrea Mrozek
November 24, 2017
In this talk to a group of interns on Parliament Hill last week, Cardus Family program director Andrea Mrozek offered a new way to see familiar pro-choice arguments
For women like myself, rather than viewing choice through an autonomy lens, I prefer to consider abortion through the lens of the good, the true and the beautiful Access to abortion and the birth control pill have significantly altered the way we view women, women’s bodies and the nature of pregnanc...
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More Than Harvey’s Secret Is Out
Andrea Mrozek
October 13, 2017
Revelations of his serial predations brought Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein low this week. But Cardus’ Andrea Mrozek warns everything from our relationships to our shopping malls are afflicted by the corruption he represents.
Hollywood is obsessed with looks: Why can’t women ever look something approximating normal in Hollywood? By normal, I mean a lead role for a woman who is, oh, a size ten, and not then declared to be pushing the boundaries for plus-size acting Feminists today can’t agree on whether pornography is har...
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Waiting Women
Andrea Mrozek
August 29, 2017
Andrea Mrozek hears recent media clamour about women having to wait too long for abortions and wonders why there are no voices concerned for women who must wait, endlessly wait, just to conceive a beloved child.
Advocates for abortion in Nova Scotia, it also turns out, have no data—something we learn in the fourth to last paragraph of the story: “Nova Scotia does not appear to keep statistics on how long it takes women to obtain an abortion after a referral Women always get their abortions—so far not one st...
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Bubble Trouble
Andrea Mrozek, Ruth Shaw
August 9, 2017
A potential bubble zone in front of an Ottawa abortion clinic won’t change minds on either side of the issue, but it will affront Charter-protected free speech and freedom of association, argue Andrea Mrozek and Ruth Shaw.
The impetus for this is allegations of harassment outside the Bank Street abortion clinic in Ottawa This summer, Ontario Attorney General Yasir Naqvi is promising to hold public consultations about a proposed new law that would limit protest outside Ontario abortion clinics ...
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Ontario Botches Child Protection
Andrea Mrozek
June 20, 2017
Cardus Family's Andrea Mrozek reports on Bill 89 and the gaps that Ontario's new child welfare law presents.
How then did the talk around removing children for conflicting views over gender identity arise? The new bill imports a list of rights from the Ontario Human Rights Code for consideration in child welfare cases The other serious risk of Bill 89 is that it doesn’t have the ability to do what it sets ...
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Avenues of Absent Children
Andrea Mrozek
June 6, 2017
In the second of our series from Cardus’ What Makes A Good City forum, Andrea Mrozek ponders the intersection of the hotel-style condo and the empty playground in her own neighbourhood.
Cost of living tapped into the consumer price index and we definitely measured rental cost and also the rate and cost of home ownership, which is obviously a growing concern for so many families in Canadian urban centers….To what extent would families be able to find work and make a living in a part...
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The Empty Daycare Dilemma
Andrea Mrozek
April 26, 2017
Data obtained by Cardus Family shows a shocking number of subsidized daycare spots sit empty even as the federal government, Ontario and Toronto promise billions of tax dollars to create even more.
Yet data obtained by Cardus Family through Access to Information shows the city of Toronto alone had a 45 per cent increase in the average number of vacant daycare spaces between 2009 and 2017 Incidentally, another thing the City of Toronto said is that the spaces aren't being used because new dayca...
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At the Heart of Health, Continued
Andrea Mrozek
April 5, 2017
In the second installment of a two part article, Cardus Family's Andrea Mrozek sits down with Dr. Sue Johnson, creator of a highly effective strategy for relationship repair called Emotionally Focussed Couples Therapy and author of several books, among them Hold Me Tight (2008) and Love Sense (2013). Together, they discuss attachment, health, and relationship.
This is what the science of attachment, or put differently, the science of love brings to relationships and what, in turn, Dr If we fail to understand our attachment bond to our spouse, we can teach all the communication skills in the world and it won’t impact relationship satisfaction, because, say...
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At The Heart of Health
Andrea Mrozek
April 4, 2017
Cardus Family's Andrea Mrozek sits down with Dr. Sue Johnson, creator of a highly effective strategy for relationship repair called Emotionally Focussed Couples Therapy and author of several books, among them Hold Me Tight (2008) and Love Sense (2013), to learn about a cutting-edge approach to emotional relationships and physical well being at the Ottawa Heart Institute..
It was of great interest, then, to learn the Ottawa Heart Institute is offering a structured couples therapy program to cardiac patients and their spouses/partners Building on research released last fall by Cardus Family on the importance of emotional relationships to physical well being, program di...