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The Christianity Today women’s blog provides news and analysis from the perspective of evangelical women. We cover news stories and books related to international justice and evangelism, pregnancy and sexual ethics, marriage, parenting, and celibacy, pop culture, health and body image, raising girls, and women in the church and parachurch.
Her.meneutics was co-founded by Katelyn Beaty and Sarah Pulliam Bailey.
August 22, 2012 8:36 AM
Before going to seminary and then having children, I worked in youth ministry with teenagers for five years. As such, I sat through countless systematic presentations of the gospel in which someone was assigned “the sin talk.” These talks...
July 3, 2012 9:55 AM
By now everyone who cares, and some who don’t, have heard about Ann-Marie Slaughter’s exhaustive Atlantic cover story, “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All.” The sub-blurb heightens the controversy: It's time to stop fooling ourselves. . . ....
June 20, 2012 8:30 AM
Not long ago, I read Christianity Today magazine's interview with John Piper because I was keenly interested in what the leading Reformed Baptist pastor had to say about race and reconciliation within the church. There’s no doubt that most of...
June 15, 2012 8:43 AM
In recent days, I have twice seen a television trailer for That’s My Boy, a new movie featuring the dubious pairing of Adam Sandler and Andy Samberg, both of Saturday Night Live fame. Embedded in the storyline is the premise...
May 30, 2012 8:46 AM
When my parents divorced when I was 32—already married for nearly a decade and with two children of my own—I remember thinking, Great. Now, I’m a statistic. My marriage is doomed. I’m pretty sure any child of the 1970s or...
May 25, 2012 8:45 AM
When Time’s July 2010 cover featured a portrait of a disfigured 18-year-old Afghan woman whose nose and ears had been cut off by her Taliban husband, the magazine was awarded the World Press Photo organization's 2010 Photo of the Year....
May 24, 2012 8:37 AM
For most of my life, any reference to “barren women” has conjured the biblical figures of Sarah, Rachel and Hannah — women who were married but infertile, until God graciously intervened. But as more fertile years have passed without a...
May 4, 2012 8:07 AM
Is donating sperm and eggs an act of kindness to a stranger or a breach of our common humanity? Should wealthy women be able to hire surrogate mothers to bear their babies? What are the ethical questions surrounding adoption, in...
April 30, 2012 8:22 AM
The news rumbled like an earthquake through evangelical circles. Tom White, the 64-year-old director of religious-persecution group Voice of The Martyrs (V.O.M.), had committed suicide after allegations that he’d molested a 10-year-old girl. For those of us who have no...
April 23, 2012 11:12 AM
My friends and family all know I’m more than a little nutty about keeping my children safe. Our friend in France has a 7 foot high locked iron gate surrounding her house--a feature I’ve been jealously remembering since we stayed...
March 22, 2012 8:31 AM
This weekend, Americans will finally find out whether the newest young-adult-book-turned-movie lives up to the fanfare. Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy attained vast popularity before the movie, and the addition of young, sexy Hollywood has only increased the mania. Without...
March 14, 2012 11:06 AM
When Sarah Palin first accepted the vice presidential nomination in 2008, I thought I should be excited that a fellow mother of a child with Down syndrome might sit in the White House. But my response to her candidacy was...
March 7, 2012 8:41 AM
This morning I was a scientist studying lions and a magic doctor healing giraffes. I was a three-year-old girl holding a baby jaguar; I was a pony running through a candy forest. I was friends with a lion, a little...
March 6, 2012 8:52 AM
What would happen if Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame had three children, settled in France instead of Italy, then read Amy “Tiger Mom” Chua’s diatribe against American parenting with both horror and assent, and sat down to pen...
March 5, 2012 9:39 AM
An article published in February in the international, peer-reviewed Journal of Medical Ethics is making headlines around the world. In the article, former Cambridge and Oxford University researchers Dr. Alberto Giubilini and Dr. Francesca Minerva argue the very point pro-life...
February 28, 2012 8:45 AM
I stormed into the house, stopping only to shake the snow off my boots before hissing at my husband as he poured his coffee: “I cannot believe you didn’t fill up the Yukon yesterday.” “You always take the Corolla when...
February 27, 2012 10:59 AM
For almost six months, Coach Selby and I have lived with mild tension about our sons’ music lessons. The oldest boy began violin two years ago, and while he won’t be playing Carnegie any time soon, he’s good. The twins...
February 1, 2012 8:34 AM
After reading Elrena Evans’s thoughtful Her.meneutics post, “Should You Let Your Baby ‘Cry It Out’? A Christian Response,” it was clear that Evans and I absolutely agree on one thing: unfortunately the so-called “Mommy Wars” are alive and well. I...
January 24, 2012 11:02 AM
When Psychology Today ran an article titled “Dangers of ‘Crying it Out,’” my response was, perhaps predictably, jaded. I read the article, then clicked over to one of my “Birth Clubs” on BabyCenter to watch the ensuing fun while I...
December 5, 2011 12:10 PM
The Associated Press recently ran a deeply moving story about a name-changing ceremony in Mumbai, India. “More than 200 Indian girls whose names mean ‘unwanted’ in Hindi have chosen new names for a fresh start in life,” reports the AP’s...
November 17, 2011 8:30 AM
Every week after Sunday School, I try to figure out if our kids have learned anything. Do they understand the stories they heard? Do they know the characters? Do they know God’s love for them? Do they understand anything about...
November 10, 2011 10:21 AM
When my boys (now 3.5 and 6) were very small, they rarely watched videos. In 1999, the American Academy of Pediatrics urged parents not to allow any screen time for children under age 2. Last month, the academy reaffirmed its...
November 7, 2011 2:39 PM
A Good and Perfect Gift, the memoir by fellow Her.meneutics writer Amy Julia Becker, is, on the surface, about a young, first-time mother learning to accept and embrace her daughter Penny’s Down syndrome diagnosis. Amy Julia’s beautiful and moving writing...
November 1, 2011 9:35 AM
A few years ago, after much research, discussion, and prayer, my husband and I sent in the preliminary applications for adopting from Ethiopia. The staff at the agency, Better Future Adoption Services (BFAS) in Minnesota, was courteous, and the fact...
October 26, 2011 9:06 AM
Our daughter Penny started kindergarten six weeks ago. At the end of her first day of school, she greeted me with, “Mom! I didn’t miss you!” She’s loved every moment since. I’m sure much of her experience is typical—she walks...
October 13, 2011 8:59 AM
Dear DC Comics, Since you are my favorite comic book publisher, I am so excited that your risky decision to reboot 52 of your comic book titles seems to be paying off. I haven’t been in a comic-book store in...
September 23, 2011 10:51 AM
Each week, it seems, stories of parents arrested for spanking their children make the news. Periodically, proposed bans on spanking are considered, but are typically shot down on grounds that such bans tread on parents' rights. Such bans are also...
September 1, 2011 8:40 AM
With a title like Maggie Goes on a Diet, it’s hard to believe author and publisher Paul Kramer did not anticipate the criticism he and his publishing house would receive when the book recently appeared on Amazon for pre-order. Not...
August 18, 2011 10:56 AM
What do the stories of a grieving mother, a couple traveling to India, and a fictional character have in common? All three stories involve people using reproductive technology to have a baby. In a Ladies Home Journal article, Jackie Hance...
August 16, 2011 4:24 PM
When I was 4, our local PBS station gave away stuffed Ernie dolls as part of its pledge drive. As soon as I saw the announcement, I did exactly as WTTW hoped I would: I ran to the other room...
August 10, 2011 9:25 AM
The first time my daughter grabbed a box of cookies out of the pantry, flipped the package round and round, and asked me how many calories were in each one, I laughed it off. “I don’t know,” I said....
July 29, 2011 10:38 AM
Since the first Europeans arrived here, captivity narratives have enthralled America’s collective imagination. These real-life accounts of settlers seized by American Indians retaliating against invading peoples expressed both the dark underside and the eternal optimism of the early American experience....
July 28, 2011 10:15 AM
“It’s a girl!” I received these words with tears of joy when our third child, Marilee, was born. We could have known her sex months earlier, of course, but we decided to wait. And yet, as I wrote in a...
July 25, 2011 9:03 AM
My father taught me how to ride a bike, the value of a great punchline, and what a woman was supposed to look and act like. My dad was a great guy with a bad habit. When we consider relationships...
July 14, 2011 10:30 AM
Because I write often about reproductive ethics, I knew Bethany Patchin’s story long before Mark Oppenheimer wrote about it in last weekend’s New York Times. Bethany and Sam Torode divorced in 2009 after nine years of marriage, during which...
June 22, 2011 11:20 AM
For all the ways reality television star and Hollywood socialite Kim Kardashian and I differ from each other, we do share one striking commonality: We both turned 30 this year. And for both of us, our entry into this new...
May 24, 2011 11:19 AM
You could say I'm passionate about birth. I delivered both my children without medication (the second was a water birth) and am trained as a doula. While I'm aware that situations arise that require intervention, even surgery, to keep mother...
May 20, 2011 11:05 AM
A new ad campaign by Skechers takes its popular Shape-Up sneaker and markets it to girls. Skechers' line of “Shape-Up” sneakers was originally targeted solely to women but now includes men’s and girls' versions. It promises to burn calories, improve...
May 18, 2011 9:30 AM
I begged her not to marry him. Our family members pleaded — all to no avail. She would have none of it. She claimed we were being negative, blind to all of his wonderful attributes. Only recently, after eight years...
May 6, 2011 9:09 AM
Mother's Day is a tricky holiday. Like any holiday, it is sweet for some and bitter for others. For some, it’s both. I remember feeling on the outside looking in on Mother’s Day, first as a single woman and then...
May 4, 2011 9:10 AM
Have you ever connected with someone through a mutually loved book? Of course, there are many ways to love the same book, but some books inspire a similar kind of devotion in their fans. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series...
April 20, 2011 11:30 AM
I don’t know how to explain Easter to my children — Penny, 5, and William, 2. I’ve tried two approaches so far. I’ve talked about it directly: “Some people killed Jesus and he died and God made him alive again.”...
April 18, 2011 11:23 AM
In case you missed the news story that Jon Stewart has named "Toemageddon," here are the facts: Retailer J. Crew sent out an online ad last week in which creative director Jenna Lyons appears in a photo with her 5-year-old...
April 1, 2011 10:30 AM
Amelia Brown, principal of the William D. Kelley School in Philadelphia, recently called on parents and Operation Town Watch Integrated Services (which helps neighborhoods fight crime and drug deals) to position themselves strategically around corner stores around the school. Their...
February 15, 2011 10:23 AM
The saga of Barbie and Ken isn't exactly the Song of Solomon. For one thing, the Mattel match is made of plastic. For another, Mattel probably doesn't mean for the couple to teach us a lesson about God's prevailing love....
February 9, 2011 11:52 AM
What do Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables and an African American single mother in Ohio have in common? Both faced gut-wrenching realities that sometimes cause law-abiding individuals to blur the lines between what’s legal and what seems morally permissible. The shades...
February 1, 2011 12:15 PM
I have never once second-guessed my gender, my sexuality, or my femininity. But a new book has tempted me to. Even though I recently spent eight years either growing babies in my womb or feeding them from my breasts, according...
January 28, 2011 11:05 AM
The featured article on the new website AnonymousUs.org is about a bad breakup. A middle-aged woman discovers that her boyfriend is accused of incest. What does she do? She has herself artificially inseminated by an anonymous sperm donor, but then...
January 25, 2011 11:59 AM
Cowboys stadium. Troy Polamalu. Black Eyed Peas. Ben Roethlisberger. Sex trafficking of minors. Christina Aguilera. Doritos’ controversy-tinged “Crash the Super Bowl” contest. Those irritating Go Daddy commercials. Which of these things is not like the others? Believe it or not,...
January 18, 2011 10:03 AM
Editor's Note: This is the second Her.meneutics post responding to Melanie Thernstrom's New York Times Magazine article on twiblings. Ellen Painter Dollar covered it last week. As millions around the world celebrated the birth of Jesus, Elton John and his...
January 17, 2011 10:27 AM
Amy Chua’s essay for The Wall Street Journal, “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior,” sprinted across media outlets and the blogosphere, prompting responses at Motherlode, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Slate, among many others. The essay spawned an interview on the...
January 13, 2011 9:00 AM
What do you call two siblings, with the same genetic parents, gestated by two different women, born five days apart, raised by a father with whom they share genes, and a mother with whom they do not? Twiblings, who were...
January 10, 2011 9:00 AM
It’s everywhere, bursting from our schools and neighborhoods and playgrounds. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 1 in every 110 children in the U.S. is diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. But with numbers like this,...
January 3, 2011 11:38 AM
The most recent issue of Vogue Paris (or should I say l'issue de janvier/février?) struck a nerve when it hit newsstands, upsetting the very readers who count on the magazine to be provocative. They’re guaranteed it. Vogue Paris’s editor in...
December 20, 2010 10:50 AM
The blogosphere has been agog recently over one feminist journal’s feature-length article, “House Proud: The Troubling Rise of Stay-at-Home Daughters.” If you are like me and hadn’t heard of the stay-at-home daughters (SAHD) movement, here’s a primer. SAHD is connected...
December 7, 2010 9:56 AM
The Chronicle of Higher Education, the primary news source for university and college faculty and administrators, recently published a remarkable opinion essay by a University of North Florida English professor about life with his 10-year old son, a legally blind...
November 23, 2010 11:26 AM
I knew my parents were coming, and not to visit — which was often, though living on the opposite coast, not often enough — but coming to live. Forever. To understand what a great adjustment this would mean, it helps...
November 12, 2010 11:01 AM
I jumped on a bandwagon Wednesday. I was one of the thousands who tweeted out against Amazon.com’s decision to carry on its Kindle store the e-book The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-lover's Code of Conduct. According to...
November 9, 2010 10:15 AM
For a few years now, we’ve begun our family meals with a blessing. We started with “The Lord’s Been Good to Me,” otherwise known in our household as “Johnny Appleseed.” The song’s theology is pretty innocuous. It acknowledges God’s existence...
October 28, 2010 9:49 AM
I picked up Time with trepidation. I’m nearly six months pregnant, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what Annie Murphy Paul had to tell me in her cover story, “How the first nine months shape the rest of...
October 21, 2010 8:00 AM
It’s a typical story in our global economy: Citizens of wealthy nations hire Indians to provide goods and services that cost less than the same goods or services domestically produced. But in the case of “reproductive tourism,” the Indian laborers...
October 20, 2010 11:36 AM
Splashed across the front page of The New York Times last week was a sobering report on the demise of picture books, a long-standing staple of children's literature. According to the NYT, more parents are giving their children text-heavy books...
October 13, 2010 10:30 AM
Banned Books Week got off to a rousing start this year with the publication of a letter from Wesley Scroggins, Missouri State University professor of management, in The Springfield News-Leader. The letter, “Filthy books demeaning to Republic education,” listed books...
September 10, 2010 10:22 AM
Harriet Brown’s new memoir, Brave Girl Eating: A Family’s Struggle with Anorexia, challenges popular beliefs about eating disorders. Many psychologists and nutritionists say that getting anorexics to eat won’t work until “underlying psychological issues” are dealt with, yet many anorexics...
August 10, 2010 9:00 AM
World Breastfeeding Week has just ended, we are in the middle of National Breastfeeding Month, and I feel like I've been boob-deep in lactivist reading. Oops — did my use of the word boob bother you? If so, then you...
August 6, 2010 8:45 AM
Take a moment to think of the last movie you saw. Did it have: (1) Two women with names (2) who had a conversation (3) about something other than a man? If so, it passes the three-point Bechdel Test, named...
July 19, 2010 11:25 AM
"One and Done," Lauren Sandler's Time cover story this week, offers a series of reasons why many parents in the West are choosing to have only one child. First, the economic strain: “The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that...
July 14, 2010 9:50 AM
In The Washington Post last week, Gillian E. St. Lawrence wrote about her and her husband's decision to undergo in vitro fertilization (IVF) and have the resulting embryos frozen for later use, essentially donating their embryos to themselves. The Washington,...
June 30, 2010 2:25 AM
Several Sundays ago my kids were playing outside when we called them to get in the car for church. They stalled. They whined. They asked, “Why do we always have to go to church?” My responses became less patient and...
June 22, 2010 9:39 AM
On Saturday night I attended a dinner party in Laguna. A guest seated next to me pulled out a snazzy looking camera, and raved about how he got it for a steal on Craigslist. In the car, I asked my...
June 17, 2010 12:10 PM
The other night my husband, Rafi, and I clicked through old photos on his laptop. He stopped on a picture of our son, who is now 8 years old but was 4 in the photograph. Rafi smiled at our son’s...
June 3, 2010 9:19 AM
It’s been a few weeks since the viral video debut of a dance routine featuring girls as young as 8 gyrating to Beyonce’s “Single Ladies.” The furor has mostly died down, but I find myself still thinking about it —...
May 17, 2010 11:28 AM
When my baby was about nine months old, he started giving out hugs with his own unique twist: He’d wrap his chubby arms around whomever he was hugging, and then gently pat their back. It made sense; his bedtime routine...
May 14, 2010 9:28 AM
After the FDA intervened this week, Walgreens has decided to postpone selling do-it-yourself DNA testing kits in 6,000 of its stores nationwide. The drugstore chain had arranged to sell kits made by Pathway Genomics that promised to reveal your risk...
May 11, 2010 9:57 AM
Over the past month, NPR has addressed various aspects of Williams syndrome, a rare chromosomal condition in which a series of genes on one chromosome has been deleted. Williams syndrome (also Williams–Beuren syndrome, or WBS) is characterized by learning disabilities...
May 5, 2010 10:30 AM
The Pill turned 50 this year, and Time magazine commemorated the anniversary last week with Nancy Gibbs’s cover story, “Love, Sex, Freedom and the Paradox of the Pill." Gibbs thoroughly and thoughtfully provides a scientific and sociological history of birth...
April 27, 2010 8:49 AM
A Tennessee woman's decision send her troubled 7-year-old son, Artyom Savelyev, alone on a plane back to Russia this month with a note saying he had psychopathic issues has turned the international adoption world upside down and seems to have...
March 18, 2010 3:03 PM
The word retarded has made the news lately. The Special Olympics designated March 3rd as a day of awareness about the hurtful and inappropriate ways that word is used. Before that, Sarah Palin excoriated Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s Chief of...
March 11, 2010 3:04 PM
Perhaps you’ve heard about the controversial billboard campaign sponsored by Georgia Right to Life, that state’s largest pro-life organization, in partnership with a Christian group called the Radiance Foundation. In signs put up around Atlanta, as well as through a...
March 9, 2010 10:30 AM
The detention of U.S. Baptist missionaries who tried to take 33 children out of Haiti after the January 12 earthquake shone a bright light on complex moral questions related to the country’s adoption practices. The Wall Street Journal reports that,...
March 2, 2010 10:26 AM
As President Obama presided over a seven-hour cross-party debate on health care last week, First Lady Michelle Obama continued to make headlines in the advancement of her latest cause: childhood obesity. In an historic appearance at the annual winter meeting...
February 26, 2010 8:23 AM
Imagine sitting in a doctor's office and receiving this news: Good morning, Mrs. Santos. I have the results of the screening test you had last week, 12 weeks into your pregnancy. The test indicates a high likelihood that your baby...
February 25, 2010 9:05 AM
True or false: Our educational system gives boys an academic advantage. Answer: A resounding yes, when Leave It To Beaver was the TV ratings champ. But Richard Whitmire, author of Why Boys Fail: Saving Our Sons From An Educational System...
February 23, 2010 9:11 AM
Last Friday a friend forwarded me a link to an article titled “Are Pregnant Athletes Selfish?” She guessed correctly that I might have something to say about it. It took one glance at the big black letters of the headline...
February 18, 2010 9:24 AM
A team of researchers at Georgia’s health science university, the Medical College of Georgia (MCG), announced last week that they are conducting a clinical trial using stem cells from umbilical-cord blood as a treatment for cerebral palsy. The trial will...
February 5, 2010 8:47 AM
Justice is what love looks like in public, so says Princeton professor and pop philosopher Cornel West. When we think of justice though, we generally think of that which is found in courts or through political activism, or, failing these...
February 3, 2010 9:41 AM
When is the right time to leave home? Italian government minister Renato Brunetta thinks it’s age 18, and recently suggested a new law to require it. Brunetta’s proposal is a reaction to an Italian judge's decision that Giancarlo Casagrande resume...
February 2, 2010 9:12 AM
While American children and young adults might be reading more than in years past (says a 2009 study from the National Endowment for the Arts), they also are on the whole spending more time lost in a media blitz....
January 20, 2010 9:44 AM
I was spanked. Not often, because I was a good kid. But still, I have one clear memory of getting a solid swat across my butt: I was probably 5 and had thrown a doozy of a tantrum in the...
January 6, 2010 12:04 PM
For evangelicals who uphold both the boundlessness of redemption and the care and protection of “little ones” (Matt. 19:14), having sex offenders in church makes it hard to apply both beliefs at the same time. In mid-December a Superior Court...
December 9, 2009 9:37 AM
My mind is still reeling from the news that a 4-week-old infant was unable to be resuscitated after the baby stopped breathing on a flight from Washington, D.C., to Kuwait. The plane made an emergency landing in London, but the...
November 18, 2009 9:41 AM
Women want their spouses to be more involved in raising their children, but they need to allow fathers to father, not force them to mother. The New York Times reported last week on new research that suggests that women...
November 9, 2009 11:51 AM
Irresistible cuteness, in pictures and videos online, is overwhelming America, says Jim Windolf in December’s Vanity Fair. Office workers gather around YouTube videos of toddler antics, the Mini-Cooper has been out-cuted by the Smart Car, and the website Cute Overload...
November 6, 2009 2:47 PM
Many people who know me as an author and women's ministry speaker are often curious about why I started a film company. They seem to assume there is a split focus there. Perhaps there is, but because I see media...
November 2, 2009 4:28 PM
When it comes to the chance for those with genetic defects to live, the news has not been good on either side of the Atlantic. Last week’s Telegraph reported that of all women in the U.K. who find out through...
October 30, 2009 9:04 AM
In August, Beloit Juvenile Correctional Facility in northern Kansas closed its doors. Heather Hollingsworth’s coverage for the Associated Press highlights the triumphs and downfalls of one of the country’s longest-running girls’ reformatories. Beloit was started in 1888 by the Women’s...
October 23, 2009 11:11 AM
Every night while I was growing up ended just the same. "Mommy loves you, Daddy loves you, and Jesus loves you most of all," my mom would say as she tucked me into bed. The ritual was a reminder,...
October 14, 2009 10:33 AM
The New York Times tackles pro-life issues The New York Times featured a report on pro-life street protesters explores the role of faith, particularly evangelical Christianity, as a motivation to action, and describes not just the controversy surrounding the practice...
September 25, 2009 9:07 AM
My toddler son is taking a class this fall about bugs. "Learn about insects and their important role in our environment and everyday lives through stories, crafts and games," the brochure boasts. "Great class for boys and girls!" As long...
September 16, 2009 9:05 AM
National Adoption Month is coming up, and churches are mobilizing like never before to encourage people to adopt. But there is a secret underneath it all: Single Christians need not apply. When I was considering adopting my daughter, one of...
August 27, 2009 9:35 AM
This past weekend, The New York Times Sunday Magazine devoted its entire issue to "Why Women's Rights Are the Cause of Our Time." Some very sober and powerful reading there — and not what you might think upon encountering a...
August 24, 2009 8:48 AM
Let me start this post off by saying that I'm a little bit of a lactivist. I don't think I'm the scary kind, but I do champion the rights of nursing mothers, practice child-led weaning, and, well, use words like...
August 5, 2009 8:40 AM
If nothing else, the latest box office horror flick has people talking. In Orphan, 12-year-old Isabelle Fuhrman plays the eponymous Esther, who is adopted by John and Kate Coleman (Peter Sarsgaard and Vera Farmiga) after their third child is stillborn....
July 29, 2009 10:41 AM
Reports began emerging late last week that while China is not lifting its one-child policy - heavily criticized for leading to forced abortions - it is considering amending it based on the needs of Shanghai, which hosts a rapidly aging...
July 8, 2009 8:57 AM
While most moms were celebrating Mother's Day this spring with a family of three or four, Glen Ellyn, Illinois, resident Tiffany Kriner celebrated a graduation ceremony with thousands of college students. Kriner, 31, an English professor at Wheaton College, has...
June 22, 2009 9:07 PM
And now it's official. As many have speculated in the week since commercials first aired promoting tonight's "big announcement" that would affect the entire family, Jon and Kate Gosselin announced their separation, and, later in the episode, their divorce. This...
June 12, 2009 11:35 AM
Several women's groups have joined Sarah Palin's fight with David Letterman over his joke that Palin's daughter got "knocked up" by Alex Rodriguez during their recent trip to New York. "It's worse than poor taste; it reflects ugliness in him....
June 12, 2009 9:53 AM
Even in the wake of the media circus that surrounds the Gosselin family, another reality TV show about an unusually large family premiered last night. WeTV showed Raising Sextuplets, which follows Bryan and Jenny Masche as they navigate raising six...
May 27, 2009 1:52 PM
I'm very grateful to have been asked to join the list of contributors to Her.meneutics. I have worked as a full-time religion reporter, but I also veer off into related topics, such as a piece I did for Mother's...
May 27, 2009 9:09 AM
The other day, a friend of mine was telling me about a recent trip she took to the park with her preschoolers. "Two women were sitting on the bench by the slide, chain-smoking," she complained. "They must've gone through an...
May 21, 2009 8:41 AM
Earlier this month, the Pennsylvania Senate approved state budget SB 850, which includes severe reductions in funding for the arts for the upcoming fiscal year. The budget, which passed by a 30-20 vote, cuts funding for the Pennsylvania Council...
May 18, 2009 7:30 AM
A few weeks ago, a friend's ten-year-old daughter came home from school, turned to her mother with a frown, and speaking low, so as to stay out of earshot of a younger sibling, asked, "Mom, what does the word...
May 14, 2009 9:33 AM
The same feature that has made Craigslist so popular - namely, unlimited free advertising - has brought the decade-old website under heavy criticism for providing unmonitored forums for prostitution in its 570 city hubs. After several state representatives met with...
May 4, 2009 8:43 AM
This is going to sound odd, but I have fond memories of receiving WIC benefits as a young mother. For about two years, I gratefully took advantage of both Medicaid and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants...
April 22, 2009 8:42 AM
Recently, Rick was trimming a vine around our patio cover and accidentally dislodged a bird's nest with two blue speckled eggs. He brought it to me to see if I thought our grandkids would like to have it. Instead of...
April 13, 2009 3:47 PM
Judith Warner's April 2 New York Times op-ed piece, "Ban the Breast Pump," is sure to stir up a hornet's nest: Warner comments favorably on Hanna Rosin's "The Case Against Breast-Feeding" in the April Atlantic. A La Leche League enthusiast...
April 1, 2009 9:02 AM
The caricature is so common it's become a stereotype: the Deadbeat Dad, trying to weasel his way out of paying child support. But what happens when Dad — through no fault of his own — really doesn't have the money...