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 […]
Read MoreMothers 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 […]
Read MoreIn 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 […]
Read MoreResearch 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 […]
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Bad Girls Go Everywhere:The Life of Helen Gurley Brown Jennifer Scanlon Oxford University Press, 2009; 288 pages, $27.95 Beside Every Successful Man:A Woman’s Guide to Having it All Megan Basham Crown Forum, 2008; 256 pages, $24.95 These books offer a fascinating look at two alternative models of husband-wife relationships. In each marriage, the spouses are working […]
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Quiverfull:Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement Kathryn Joyce Beacon Press, 2009; 258 pages, $25.95 Many Americans were appalled by the behavior of “Octomom” Nadya Suleman, the publicity-hungry, unemployed single mother whose litter of artificially-inseminated octuplets brought her offspring total to fourteen. Many were also outraged by developments on Jon and Kate Plus 8—the reality television show, which will […]
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A Promise to Ourselves:A Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce Alec Baldwin St. Martin’s Press, 2008; 240 pages, $24.95 Taken into Custody:The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family Stephen Baskerville Cumberland House, 2007; 368 pages, $24.95 In 2007, the media had a feeding frenzy around a voice-mail message actor Alec Baldwin left his daughter. He screamed […]
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The Marriage-Go-Round:The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today Andrew J. Cherlin Knopf, 2009; 271 pages, $25.95 Andrew Cherlin is one of the nation’s most prominent family researchers—author of influential scholarly books and articles, professor at Johns Hopkins, one time president of the Population Association of America, and advisor to the National Institute of […]
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