Dr. Carlson has been Assistant Director, Governmental Affairs Office, Lutheran Council in the U.S.A.; NEH Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute; Assistant to the President and Lecturer in History at Gettysburg College; Executive Vice President of The Rockford Institute; Publisher of Chronicles; Member, National Commission on Children; General Secretary, World Congress of Families I and II; Member, Council on Families; Consultant, Research Institute for the Family, Russian Federation; History Team Member, Pew Foundation/Woodrow Wilson Center project on “the nature of the human person”; Distinguished Fellow for Family Policy Studies, Family Research Council; and Visiting scholar, Arbetarrorelsens Arkiv.

Dr. Carlson is the author of the books, Family Questions: Reflections on the American Social Crisis; The Swedish Experiment in Family Politics: The Myrdals and the Interwar Population Crisis; From Cottage to Work Station: The Family's Search for Social Harmony in the Industrial Age; The New Agrarian Mind: The Movement Toward Decentralist Thought in 20th Century America; Society, Family, Person; and The American Way: Family and Community in the Shaping of the American Identity.

His articles have appeared in the Washington Post; Journal of Social Issues; Society; Journal of Law, Ethics, and Public Policy; New Oxford Review; The Public Interest; Regulation; American Enterprise; Weekly Standard; National Review; Touchstone; The Cresset; Family Policy Review; Human Life Review; Policy Review; This World; Intercollegiate Review; University Bookman; Continuity: A Journal of History; Dialogue: A Journal of Theology; Small Farmers' Journal; Marknads Ekonomisk Tidskrift; Communio; Chesterton Review; Modern Age; Caelum Et Terra; Wall Street Journal; San Francisco Chronicle; USA Today; Baltimore Sun; Los Angeles Times; International Herald-Tribune; Detroit News; Atlanta Journal; and Chicago Tribune. He has been interviewed for the PBS News Hour, NPR ("Morning Edition," "All Things Considered," "Talk of the Nation”), Voice of America, ABC, CBS, and NBC News, MSNBC, CBN, CNN, C-SPAN, Australian, Czech and Polish TV, eight special PBS productions on family issues, and more than 400 regional radio and television outlets.