The Birth of the Pill – How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched A Revolution Jonathan Eig W.W. Norton and Company, 2014; 400 pages, $27.95 One winter night in 1950, Margaret Sanger and the scientist Gregory Goodwin (“Goody”) Pincus met in a Park Avenue apartment to discuss the taboo topic of birth control. For years, […]
Read MoreMarriage, the Economy of Membership, and Ordered Diversity in the Fiction of Wendell Berry For as long as men have told stories, they have been primarily concerned with stories of a certain kind—those of love, of fidelity, of loyalty to kith and kin and country. The purposes of these stories have been as varied as […]
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Marriage Markets – How Inequality is Remaking the American Family June Carbone and Naomi Cahn Oxford University Press, 2014; 272 pages, $29.95 Across America, a new marker of social class is emerging. That marker differentiates the rich from the poor, the educated from the high-school dropouts. It separates those who drive Bentleys and vacation in […]
Read MoreThe Wave of the Future? In late October of 2013, conservative news sources became aware that in its newest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM-5), the American Psychological Association had labeled pedophilia an “orientation” instead of a “disorder.”[1] The APA quickly backpedaled, claiming in an October 31 press release, […]
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The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption Kathryn Joyce Public Affairs, 2013; 352 pages, $26.99 Four years ago, Kathryn Joyce published Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, a critical treatment of an evangelical Christian group wherein women married and obeyed their husbands, had lots of babies, and stayed home to take […]
Read MoreReplacing Families with Federal Food Programs At the end of 2012, amidst calls for reform and fears of skyrocketing dairy prices, Congress failed to agree on a renewal of the Farm Bill (technically the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008). Instead, our representatives authorized extensions of certain portions of the Farm Bill, and put […]
Read MoreInthe introductionto the Tenth Anniversary Edition of The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan wrote, “It’s frightening when you’re starting on a new road that no one has been on before. You don’t know how far it’s going to take you until you look back and realize how far, how very far you’ve gone.” 1 Indeed. Forty […]
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Sex and God at Yale Porn, Political Correctness, and a Good Education Gone Bad Nathan Harden Thomas Dunne Books, 2012; 320 pages, $25.99 Nathan Harden’sstoryof being admitted to Yale is an unconventional one. Harden grew up in various states across the South and began dreaming of Yale at ten years old. When he was in […]
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