Editing David Brooks (commentator) (section)

==Social views==
Brooks opposes what he sees as self-destructive behavior, such as the prevalence of [[teenage sex]] and [[divorce]]. His view is that "sex is more explicit everywhere barring real life. As the entertainment media have become more sex-saturated, American teenagers have become more sexually [[sexual abstinence|abstemious]]" by "waiting longer to have sex ... [and] having fewer partners". In 2007, Brooks stated that he sees the [[culture war]] as nearly over, because "today's young people ... seem happy with the frankness of the left and the wholesomeness of the right." As a result, he was optimistic about the United States' social stability, which he considered to be "in the middle of an amazing moment of improvement and repair".<ref>''The New York Times'', April 17, 2005, 4–14</ref>

As early as 2003, Brooks wrote favorably of [[same-sex marriage]], pointing out that marriage is a traditional conservative value. Rather than opposing it, he wrote: "We should insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous that two people could claim to love each other and not want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity ... It's going to be up to conservatives to make the important, moral case for marriage, including gay marriage."<ref>{{cite web | last1=Brooks | first1=David | title=The Power Of Marriage | url=https://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/22/opinion/the-power-of-marriage.html | date=November 22, 2003 | website=The New York Times | access-date=May 19, 2017}}</ref>

In 2015, Brooks issued his commentary on poverty reform in the United States. His op-ed in ''The New York Times''  titled "The Nature of Poverty" specifically followed the social uproar caused by the death of [[Death of Freddie Gray|Freddie Gray]], and concluded that federal spending is not the issue impeding the progress of poverty reforms, but rather that the impediments to upward mobility are "matters of [[social psychology]]".<ref name="nytpoverty">{{Cite news |last=Brooks |first=David |date=May 1, 2015 |title=The Nature of Poverty |work=[[The New York Times]] |location=New York City |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/opinion/david-brooks-the-nature-of-poverty.html}}</ref> When discussing Gray in particular, Brooks claimed that Gray as a young man was "not on the path to upward mobility".<ref name="nytpoverty" />

In 2020, Brooks wrote in ''[[The Atlantic]]'', under the headline "The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake", that "recent signs suggest at least the possibility that a new family paradigm is emerging," suggesting that in the place of the "collapsed" nuclear one the "extended" family emerges, with "multigenerational living arrangements" that stretch even "across kinship lines."<ref name="mistake">{{cite magazine|last=Brooks |first=David |title=The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-nuclear-family-was-a-mistake/605536/|magazine=[[The Atlantic]]|publisher=[[Emerson Collective]]|location=Boston, Massachusetts|date=March 2020|access-date=February 22, 2020}}</ref> Brooks had already started in 2017 a project called "Weave", in order, as he described it,<ref name="mistake" /> to "support and draw attention to people and organizations around the country who are building community" and to "repair [America]'s social fabric, which is badly frayed by distrust, division and exclusion."<ref name="weave">{{cite web |url=https://www.aspeninstitute.org/programs/weave-the-social-fabric-initiative/ |title=Weave: The Social Fabric Project |website=[[The Aspen Institute]] |access-date=February 22, 2020}}</ref>

Brooks also takes a moderate position on [[abortion]], which he thinks should be legal, but with parental consent for minors, during the first four or five months, and illegal afterward, except in extremely rare circumstances.<ref>{{cite news |first=David |last=Brooks |title=Postures in Public, Facts in the Womb |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0DE6D9163EF931A15757C0A9619C8B63 |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |location=New York City|date=April 22, 2007 |access-date=December 31, 2009}}</ref>

He has expressed opposition to the legalization of [[marijuana]], stating that use of the drug causes immoral behavior. Brooks relates that he smoked it in his youth but quit after a humiliating incident: Brooks smoked marijuana during lunch hour at school and felt embarrassed during a class presentation that afternoon in which he says he was incapable of intelligible speech.<ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/03/opinion/brooks-weed-been-there-done-that.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0 | work=[[The New York Times]] |location=New York City|first=David | last=Brooks | title=Weed: Been There. Done That | date=January 2, 2014}}</ref>