The loss of marriage as a social ideal expresses itself in multiple fashions, including moves by researchers and governments to lump married persons and cohabitants into the same statistical (as well as tax and legal) category. In fact, some observers hope that rising levels of cohabitation will minimize or eliminate existing differences between the two. […]

Women increasingly comprise close to 50 percent or more of all students in law and medical schools, a trend over which the news media fawn as holding promise of gender equality in America. Yet a study by sociologists at Tulane University suggests that differences in the motivations, aspirations, and even academic performance of men and […]

Why women without a wedding band continue to bear children remains a puzzle, especially since research continues to demonstrate how such behavior disadvantages both mother and child. Exploring the maternal side of those disadvantages, a study by scholars at Penn State and Cornell reveals how young women who “jumped the gun” face handicaps in persuading […]

Mothers in any social circumstance can experience what physicians label “postpartum depression.” Yet, research suggests that single mothers are decidedly more vulnerable to such postpartum distress than are married mothers. To determine the prevalence of postpartum depression and its antecedents, a team of psychologists from the University of Iowa analyzed data collected for 4,332 new […]

In May 1914, a feminist entered the Royal Academy in London carrying a concealed meat cleaver to attack John Singer Sargent’s portrait of novelist Henry James. “I have tried,” the woman explained, “to destroy a valuable picture because I wish to show the public that they have no security for their property nor their art […]

Research continues to confirm Russian novelist Yevgeny Zamyatin’s identification of daycare centers as “child-rearing factories.” As part of its on-going investigation into the effects of early nonmaternal child care, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development published more findings as to how America’s own child-rearing factories are generating long-term social pollution. Findings published […]