Contact: Larry Jacobs, World Congress of Families,815-964-5819, 513-515-3685 cell, media@worldcongress.org

WASHINGTON, May 15 /Christian Newswire/ -- World Congress of Families International Secretary Allan C. Carlson will give a keynote address at the International Conference On Family And Society (The Family, Paradigm of Social Change) at the International University of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain (May 15-17).

Carlson will give the keynote address at the Saturday, May 17 session (Towards a Culture of Family) titled "The Natural Family In An Unnatural World."

Other conference topics include: "Permanency and Change in the 21st. Century Family," "Public Health And Family: Sexuality And Character Education," "The Challenge Of Good Parenting," "Marriage As The Foundation of Social Welfare" (an address by Maggie Gallagher, President of the Institute for Marriage And Public Policy), "The Influence of Movies On Young People And Families," and "Family, Population And Sustainable Growth" (a speech by Dr. Maria Sophia Aguirre, professor of economics, Catholic University of America, and a regular speaker at past World Congresses of Families).

There will also be a special screening of the new documentary on the worldwide decline in birth rates ("Demographic Winter: the decline of the human family") at noon on May 15. World Congress of Families lent its support to the production of this groundbreaking documentary.  DVD's can be purchased from the Howard Center by calling 1-800-461-3113.

The conference will also seek to strengthen the pro-family movement in Spain. Several thousand are expected to attend, mostly from Spain and Europe.

Carlson has a Ph.D. in Modern European History. He is the author of 10 books, including, "Conjugal America: On The Public Purposes of Marriage." Dr. Carlson lectures frequently on family and population issues, both in the United States and internationally.

For a complete schedule of the conference in English, go to http://www.iesf/congress/eng/programme.htm

For a bio of Allan Carlson or for more information on the World Congress of Families, go to www.worldcongress.org. To schedule an interview with Dr. Carlson, contact Larry Jacobs at 1-800-461-3113.

The World Congress of Families (WCF) is an international network of pro-family organizations, scholars, leaders and people of goodwill from more than 60  countries that seeks to restore the natural family as the fundamental social unit and the ‘seedbed’ of civil society.  The WCF was founded in 1997 by Allan Carlson and is a project of The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society in Rockford, Illinois (www.profam.org).  To date, there have been four World Congresses of Families – Prague (1997), Geneva (1999), Mexico City (2004) and Warsaw, Poland (2007).