Hermenuetics

Silencing the Maternal Nag

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 are unintentionally blocking men from greater participation in child-raising because they insist that men do it their way. Women need to find a way to encourage their partners for the good of the children. The research shows that children thrive when both mom and dad are involved, not one or the other.

The article hit close to home. As a new mother, I confess to needing to fight the temptation to turn my husband into my employee in the Raising Our Son business. We both work outside the home, but because I’ve chosen to exclusively breast-feed, I’ve arranged my schedule so that I’m with our baby more than my husband is. Naturally, I feel like the expert on what each of our son’s cries and coos mean. Sharing information on our son’s development is helpful, but when I swoop in to rescue our fussy baby from my husband’s arms, I know I’ve gone too far. More often than not, the baby keeps fussing in my arms, anyway.

But shouldn’t my husband be quietly humming Brahms Lullaby instead of singing the raucous Rocky Raccoon song (our own creation) while he is getting our son ready for bed? Isn’t PBS better than the Golf Channel for their television viewing? Should they even be watching television? Again, I have to silence the inner nag. The point is that my husband is involved in the raising of our son. Our child needs a mother and a father, not two mothers.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:41 AM | Comments (5)

The Day We Let Our Son Live

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 prenatal testing that their baby will have Down syndrome, about 90 percent choose to have an abortion. And yesterday, ABC News reported a near-identical rate among women in the U.S.: 92 percent of those who find out their child will have the chromosomal defect decide to abort. One geneticist at Children’s Hospital Boston found that, without prenatal testing, the number of Down syndrome births would have increased by 34 percent between 1989 and 2005. Instead, the number of Down syndrome births has dropped by 15 percent over that time.

Upon hearing such news, I remembered Ellen and Al Hsu (pronounced shee), a Christian couple who works at InterVarsity Press in Downers Grove, Illinois, and who faced the same situation as the women above. This is Ellen’s story of Elijah, their 4-year-old with Down syndrome, as originally told on their family blog, Team Hsu.

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I gazed in wonder at the blurry form on the screen. “Hi, Baby,” I whispered. The image of our baby was much clearer on the level-two ultrasound. The technician rolled the ultrasound wand over my growing abdomen, and I marveled as I watched our son squirm and suck his thumb. A new life forming within me.

Our OB/GYN had referred us for a level-two ultrasound after he noticed choroid plexus cysts on our baby’s brain during the standard 20-week ultrasound. I was anxious about what the maternal health specialist might find. We knew a couple whose ultrasound also had showed choroids plexus cysts, but whose baby was perfectly fine when he was born. We had spent the past week praying for our baby and hoping for the best.

Al walked into the exam room as the technician was finishing up. She hadn’t said much and explained that the doctor would be in to take a look for himself and to explain what he found. Al and I chatted quietly while we waited. I was relieved that he had made it before the doctor came in. Little did I know how much I would need him.

The doctor came in and began his exam. I was delighted at the chance to see more images of our baby. But my world was shaken when the doctor finally began explaining what he saw. “Something is very wrong with this baby.”

He continued to roll the wand over my tummy as he pointed to various spots on the screen and began listing all the “abnormalities”: larger than usual nuchal folds; clenched fists; possible club feet; something wrong with the liver; enlarged ventricles in the brain; possibly no stomach. My tears flowed as his list grew longer. My delight at the new life within me turned to icy fear, and I clutched Al’s hand tightly.

The doctor suspected a chromosomal problem, possibly Trisomy 13 or 18, birth defects caused by an extra 13th or 18th chromosome. He explained that both of these conditions are generally “incompatible with life.” We were told that if our baby was born alive, he was likely to die within a day. If we were lucky, he might survive for 6 to 12 months. We wondered if we should begin preparing for death instead of life.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 4:28 PM | Comments (23)

Where Someone Loves Us Most of All

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, enforced through years of repetition, that no matter how far I ventured out into the world, which can be scary, cold, and unloving, I would always have a safe place with the people who love me and a God who loves me more. This is such an important lesson; children need to know that no matter what happens "out there," they are loved. Love doesn't make problems go away, but it grounds us in something greater than ourselves and our problems.

Most children's movies emphasize can-do messages: You can do anything you want if you believe in yourself! Go out and have an adventure! And then along came Where the Wild Things Are.

Perhaps you've heard of it? In production for nearly 10 years, it was last weekend's highest-grossing film. It's also been the source of much controversy, particularly over whether the children's movie is even appropriate for children.

When a Newsweek reporter asked Maurice Sendak how he would respond to parents who might ask if the adaptation of his book is too scary for children, he replied, “I would tell them to go to hell. That's a question I will not tolerate.”

But what we allow our children to watch is important. And many children will want to see this movie; the trailer set the hype machine in motion months ago (the first time I saw it, I cried). The movie has been called too philosophical, too postmodern, too psychological, and too bleak for children. Perhaps we think children need something easy to digest. But that is the true genius of the original book, and of great children’s literature: It does not talk down to children or their ability to understand and process, whether consciously or subconsciously, the complexities of their own lives.

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Posted by Laura Leonard at 11:11 AM | Comments (8)

Trouble with Online Love

More Australians are being duped by “romance fraud” or “love scam,” particularly Christian women, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. Through dating or social networking sites and Christian chat rooms, online scammers posing as love interests have convinced people to send millions of dollars to places like Nigeria.

"They go into Christian chat rooms and a lot of the time when they ask for money, there's a Christian element to the [scammer's] story," Queensland police Fraud Squad chief Detective Inspector Brian Hay said. "It's a comfort thing for the victim. "We are seeing more targeted attacks because people put information about themselves on to the web."

USA Today’s Cathy Lynn Grossman poses the question: “Do you worry that sharing your faith on dating or social networking online sites could attract people who treat your values as stepping stones to a scam -- financial or spiritual?”

Christian Dating Watchdog lists various dating sites that Christians should avoid because of a site’s secular ownership, gay/lesbian profiles, or “questionable methods of advertising.” However, it doesn’t mention any troubling sites due to romance frauds.

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 10:52 AM | Comments (3)

Stranded in Manila, A Mother Prays

Twin typhoons Ketsana and Parma pummeled the Philippines and surrounding regions last week, taking more than 250 lives in Metro Manila and bringing the worst floods in 40 years to the capital. When Ketsana struck, Normi Son — an evangelical who works for a Montessori school downtown — found herself separated from her two children, ages 8 and 14. Below is her first-hand account of the floods that threatened to split her family in two.

At about 11 a.m. in my office at Cainta City, Metro Manila, I received a text message from my nephew: “Aunt, you won’t believe [this], but the river behind our house overflowed and the streets are now submerged into 2-meter-deep floodwater. Our neighbor’s fence has collapsed and their house is flooded. A landslide had occurred blocking the only road that would lead us to safety. Do not attempt to come. The roads are impassable.”

I phoned home to find out how my children were. They told me the river was still rising and that the walls behind our house could crumble anytime. My home was built on a piece of land 6 meters from Antipolo River. I felt numb at the thought of my children being stranded at home by themselves. I went to a corner and poured out my heart to God. “Please stop the rain now.” I kept uttering these words throughout the day, but the rain grew heavier. I wondered if God was listening.

Meanwhile, a member of my staff said that her husband had to swim to escape their submerged house. She said that flooding had started around our office. I looked out the window and saw dirty water rising up. Within a few minutes, it turned into a brown river raging in every direction; it engulfed plants, vehicles, bungalow houses, and small trees.

More complications hit us as the day wore on. The electricity was cut off by noon. Everyone on staff failed trying to go home by foot. I spent the entire afternoon with three of them, helping about 50 children and adults who had arrived at our office building. By nightfall, I completely lost contact with my children.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 3:29 PM | Comments (3)

Snakes, Spiders, and the Science of Gender

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 as I don't have to be one of those girls, I'm fine. I plan to spend the class time hanging out with my 6-month-old, as far away from the bugs as is legally allowed. While my son hears stories about spiders and makes crickets out of pipe cleaners and black plastic combs, I'll be doing something else — anything else. And while he and his classmates are tromping outdoors with boxes of live insects, I'll be practicing that Lamaze breathing that does nothing for labor pains — but perhaps does something for bug phobias.

According to a recent Boston Globe article, women are four times more likely than men to be afraid of bugs, spiders, snakes, and the like. Yet no discernible gender difference exists for specifically modern phobias (the article mentions needle injections and flying). Why is this?

To find out, David Rakison of Carnegie Mellon University conducted an experiment with 11-month-old infants. He showed them a series of pictures — a snake, a spider, a flower, and a mushroom — paired with either a happy face or a frightened face. Baby girls quickly associated the snake and the spider with the frightened face, reports Science News. Baby boys did not.

Rakison believes the discrepancy may be evolutionary in nature. In prehistoric times, he theorizes, snakes and spiders posed a greater threat to women than to men, in terms of the survival of the species, because children could not survive without their mothers. Thus, the female brain has evolved in such a way as to recognize this danger from an early age.

Debates about evolution aside (although feel free to take it up in the comments section!), I could probably come up with an alternative explanation for why girls are more afraid of snakes, at least, and it would probably run something like this: Snake tempts girl. Girl succumbs. Sedition, eviction, perdition.

Any takers?

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:07 AM | Comments (10)

A Good Man Is Hard to Find

If you thought navigating the 20-something dating and marriage scene wasn’t complicated enough, former President Bush speechwriter and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson just put his oar in.

In an argument similar to Mark Regnerus’s cover story in the August issue of Christianity Today, Gerson says that “it doesn't seem realistic to expect most men and women to delay sex until marriage at 26 or 28.”

He believes that kind of self-control is possible but not likely, even among churchgoers. Besides, marrying late in one’s 20s can result in unhappier marriages, while early-20s marriages have the happiest results.

Where does Gerson get those numbers, you might ask? Slate’s XX Factor did some digging and found this 2004 study from the National Fatherhood Initiative. (Especially check out the graphs on page 19.) XX Factor also notes that some key information, like statistical significance, is missing from the graphs, so it’s hard to tell how seriously we should take the information.

Statistical reliability aside, Gerson’s argument — marry young, because people cannot handle not waiting to have sex until their late 20s — is weak on many levels. Is marriage really an excuse for sex? Should a lack of self-control be rewarded with early gratification? To say nothing of evangelical churches and families, it doesn’t seem like that mindset will lead to a healthy society at large.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:05 AM | Comments (82)

Adoption: Single Christians Need Not Apply

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 the most disheartening things was the active discouragement of many Christians who told me point-blank that only married couples should adopt. It was bad enough, I thought, to be consigned to a life of singleness because of the lack of unmarried men in church. For people to say singles are unworthy to adopt a child who would otherwise be living in an orphanage boggled my mind.

The other day, I received a copy of SBC Life, the Southern Baptist Convention’s denominational magazine, where I saw David Roach’s piece “Adoption Ministries Thriving in SBC Churches.” First, the good: It pointed out how any church, large or small, can be involved in adoption ministry toward those who want to adopt, how scandalous it is how many orphans are in this world, and that it’s up to Christians to do something about it. I was gratified to learn of a few loan programs out there for those wishing to adopt, as the costs — especially for international adoption — usually climb well past $30,000. It was also refreshing to see how many parents were supporting interracial adoption. And it providing some good ideas for preparing for November 8, which is Orphan Sunday.

All the photos and the pronouns used in the article, however, referred to couples. This was true on some of the related websites, such as Highview Baptist Church in Louisville, where I found no mention that some of the adoptive parents might be single men or women. This was certainly true on the application forms attached to these sites. I e-mailed Highview's adoption ministry director about this, and she was not aware of any singles adoptions there. “The leadership of Highview believes that it is the best for children to be adopted into traditional homes with a father and a mother,” she told me.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:05 AM | Comments (82)

The President's Speech and Parental Rights

Children in many U.S. schools yesterday heard President Obama exhort the values of hard work and personal responsibility in his back-to-school address. Reformed pastor John Piper of Bethlehem Baptist Church praised the speech as “a wonderful gift of common grace from God to the students of our land.” Before the speech, many parents had protested the way it was framed — the Department of Education had given schools a “menu of classroom activities” that suggested students write about “how they could help the President” — rather than its content. Many parents demanded that their school districts provide alternatives to watching the speech or that they not show it at all. School districts were forced to respond with less than two weeks’ notice to the Education Department’s announcement.

Meanwhile, in Quebec, a court struggle recently broke out over a new, mandatory “Ethics and Religious Culture” course that will replace three separate religion courses for all students. Some Christian parents protested it as a violation of their right to choose their children’s religious education, but Quebec’s Superior Court ruled August 31 that the class does not violate the right to “freedom of conscience and religion” in the Canadian Charter of Rights. Here's how one law professor at the Université de Sherbrooke defended the ruling:

What parents were demanding was the right to ignorance, the right to protect their children from being exposed to the existence of other religions. . . . This right to ignorance is certainly not protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Freedom of religion does not protect the right not to know what is going on in our universe.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:10 AM | Comments (26)

Half the Sky: A Must-Read Book

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 magazine with a title like that. In fact, these are real, global, and serious issues that should have the attention and ministry of Christians everywhere. More on that in a moment.

The lead feature was an excerpt from the forthcoming book by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn,a former Times correspondent who now works in finance and philanthropy. Here's a summary of the book, titled Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide — one that includes an honest fact about abortion that I was stunned to read in a mainstream publication. This is a good indicator of the journalistic veracity of this book's research:

Traditionally, the status of women was seen as a “soft” issue — worthy but marginal. We initially reflected that view ourselves in our work as journalists. We preferred to focus instead on the “serious” international issues, like trade disputes or arms proliferation. Our awakening came in China.

After we married in 1988, we moved to Beijing to be correspondents for The New York Times. Seven months later we found ourselves standing on the edge of Tiananmen Square watching troops fire their automatic weapons at pro-democracy protesters. The massacre claimed between 400 and 800 lives and transfixed the world; wrenching images of the killings appeared constantly on the front page and on television screens.

Yet the following year we came across an obscure but meticulous demographic study that outlined a human rights violation that had claimed tens of thousands more lives. This study found that 39,000 baby girls died annually in China because parents didn’t give them the same medical care and attention that boys received — and that was just in the first year of life. A result is that as many infant girls died unnecessarily every week in China as protesters died at Tiananmen Square. Those Chinese girls never received a column inch of news coverage, and we began to wonder if our journalistic priorities were skewed.

A similar pattern emerged in other countries. In India, a “bride burning” takes place approximately once every two hours, to punish a woman for an inadequate dowry or to eliminate her so a man can remarry — but these rarely constitute news. When a prominent dissident was arrested in China, we would write a front-page article; when 100,000 girls were kidnapped and trafficked into brothels, we didn’t even consider it news.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:35 AM | Comments (6)

Breast-feeding Dolls: Cute or Creepy?

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 lactivist.

And I'll admit to having filched the toy bottle out of the package before giving my daughter a new doll for her birthday, in an effort to minimize the bottle-as-normative aspect of our culture. (See what I mean? That's lactivist logic.)

So having said that. My reaction to the news of a new breast-feeding doll from Spanish toy company Berjuan?

Eww. Gross.

Meet Bebe Gloton — which translates out to "Baby Glutton" according to The New York Times, and "Greedy Baby" according to The Daily Mail. (I'll hold my comments on the name.) The doll, sold in both baby boy and baby girl versions, is being marketed as the world's first breast-feeding doll. When held up to the chest of young mommies-in-training, electronic sensors in Bebe Gloton's mouth "suckle" at strategically-placed daisies on the girl-sized halter top that comes in the box with the doll.

I'm creeped out just writing that. And I'm not alone. Bebe Gloton is garnering criticism as videos of the doll in action go viral, with readers' comments ranging from concern about the sexualization of young girls to fear over an unhealthy ramp-up in early maternal desires.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:48 AM | Comments (20)

Running in the Shadow of 9/11

I have loved New York City my whole life. By that I mean since I was a preschooler living across the Hudson in North Bergen, New Jersey. Even from the relative distance of the Jersey Shore, where my family moved when I was 6 and where I’ve spent most of my days, “the city” has been as prominent a backdrop as the cool green Atlantic. From trips up north to see family, I watched the derided Twin Towers get built. While flying into Newark Liberty International Airport when I lived in California post-9/11, I pondered the void.

It was as a hometown girl that I ran (and walked) the New York City Half-Marathon last Sunday on behalf of the Children’s Tumor Foundation (CTF). I love to run and have been doing it since winning ribbons at elementary school field days. Running with CTF’s NF Endurance Team for research into a disease that may have contributed to my son Gabriel’s death is a particularly rewarding experience. Not only is CTF the world’s leading non-government funder of neurofibromatosis research, it has given me education and encouragement ever since Gabriel was diagnosed with NF as an infant.

CTF is headquartered on Pine Street in New York City, so it was a hometown race for the team as well. It was more than that for me though. Life for my family had been pretty idyllic for a decade before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Two nights before those attacks, Gabriel’s friend Christopher Braca was at our house. His dad Al picked him up. Al Braca worked for Cantor Fitzgerald and had lived through the first World Trade Center bombing. He didn’t live through the second. He was known as “The Rev” at work because of his outspoken faith. Stories came back to his family after his death that on that fateful morning, when all hope of survival was lost, Al had gathered people around him to passionately invite them to go to heaven with him.

A week after the attack, I dropped Gabe off at Christopher’s house to hang out. His mom, Jeannie, said, “I realized last night that Al isn’t coming home and neither is his body.” A little later, I got a call that I needed to come pick Gabe up. Despite Al's body having fallen more than 100 stories amidst tons of debris, it was found intact. We called it a miracle in the midst of unspeakable tragedy.

As it happens, our hotel near the finish line at Battery Park in Lower Manhattan was a block from Ground Zero. I hadn’t anticipated that, nor had I spent time there since volunteering at a relief worker respite station in spring 2002. On Saturday morning before the race, my husband and I strolled around the site and took in the changes, including a visitor center and a bronze memorial to firefighters who had died there. Locals were giving tours, telling tourists about human remains found as late as a year ago.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:07 AM | Comments (8)

The Persecuted Rifqa Bary?

Fathima Rifqa Bary's story is quickly circulating on blogs and Christian media as proof of Islam's violent roots and the cost of following Christ. While the latter is true no matter who's doing the following, the former is disputable in the case of the Ohio teen who fled her home two weeks ago to meet up with Blake and Beverly Lorenz, Florida pastors she had met on Facebook.

"They [my parents] threatened to kill me," Bary says tearfully in a YouTube video (above) posted Tuesday. She goes on to explain the logic of honor killings: "They have to kill me. My blood is now hallal, which means that because I am now a Christian, I am from a Muslim background. It's an honor, they love God more than me. They have to do this."

Bary says she hitchhiked and rode a bus July 19 from New Albany, a Columbus suburb, to Orlando, calling the Lorenzes upon arriving. She stayed with the pastors of the nondenominational Global Revolution Church until Monday, when she was placed into emergency custody with the Dept. of Children and Families.

"We are doing everything we can to protect her," Blake Lorenz told The Orlando Sentinel. Beverly Lorenz told The Columbus Dispatch they hardly knew Bary but took her in and called an abuse hotline last Friday, which prompted a visit from state police. Blake Lorenz said that he's "very concerned that the system will let her down."

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:15 AM | Comments (42)

The Horrors of Orphan

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.

(Yes, you read that right, John and Kate. I'll try not to get too derailed by non sequiturs involving other Jon and Kates.)

This John and Kate bring the newly adopted Esther home, only to learn that "happily ever after" apparently wasn't in the script. Bad things start happening — this is, after all, a horror movie — and Esther turns out to be a whole lot more than anyone bargained for.

Which is a problem, according to some people, especially for the Christian Alliance for Orphans, a Virginia-based parachurch ministry. Through its newly created website Orphans Deserve Better, the alliance is hoping to start a grassroots movement that will counter what it sees as the negative impact of Orphan. "However far-fetched some stories are," the alliance says, "they can still subtly shape our values and perceptions. So when a major motion picture leaves a lingering impression that orphans are damaged goods and that adoption can tear apart your life, those who know the deeper truth must speak up."

Rubbish, says Salon writer Kate Harding:

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:40 AM | Comments (3)

Florida's Other Marriage Amendment

The key to a lower divorce rate and healthier marriages starts before the vows are taken, according to advocates for mandatory premarital counseling.

Many states, including Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Maryland, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Arizona, have laws in place that provide economic incentives for couples who attend a specified number of hours of marriage education. Citing research proving the success of premarital counseling in reducing long-term divorce rates, some organizations are pushing for legislation that provides even more reasons for couples to attend premarital education.

In Florida, the Marriage Preparation Act proposes to raise the price of a marriage license by a $100 fee that can be waived if the couple attends eight hours of premarital counseling. It also raises the number of required hours from four to eight and promotes a premarital inventory test as part of the education. The act, which increases the statute already in place, is supported by the Christian Coalition of Palm Beach County and the Florida Family Policy Council, both Christian organizations that promote pro-life and traditional marriage legislation in the state.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:23 AM | Comments (10)

Young Pups in Love

Forty-one years ago last March, when my husband, David, and I went to get our marriage license, he had to bring a letter of permission from his parents. In California in 1968, a woman could marry without permission at age 18, but a man had to be at least 21. I was 19 and David was 20 - though in the excitement of the moment, he forgot his age and told the clerk he was 18. Good thing he had that letter.

Twenty-one years later, our 18-year-old daughter, Molly, brought an entire choir to our Illinois home from Rice University in Houston, Texas. After the choir left, one young man stayed. As we were getting ready to sit down for Sunday dinner, Molly said, "Byron and I have something we'd like to discuss with you and Dad. Would you rather do it now, or after dinner?"

I gulped, thinking of only two possible conversational topics. "Now," I said.

"Okay," said Molly. "We would like to get married as soon as we can support ourselves. We were thinking maybe next year."

"Whew!" said David and I.

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 8:40 AM | Comments (21)

2D Love and Lars and the Real Girl

Falling in love with caricatures of girls and women, such as blow-up dolls or pillows imprinted with female characters, is still on the margins of Western culture, but it's getting noted enough to merit a recent New York Times Magazine story about the phenomenon in Japan.

"2D love," what the phenomenon is called in Japan, emerges from a subculture of people who have real relationships with characters in the imaginary worlds of video games, anime, and manga (cartoons and print comics popular in Japan). The NYT Magazine story featured 37-year-old Nisan, a single man who fell in love with the video game character Nemutan. He has a stuffed pillow with her image imprinted on the fabric. He calls Nemutan his girlfriend and takes her out on dates and extensive road trips.

Japanese analysts think the trend reveals the difficulty men (in particular) have negotiating relationships with 3D women. It's easier to control a relationship with an inanimate object than with a real woman who can talk back and will from time to time have her own ideas. A similar explanation has been used to explain the attraction many males have to pornography in the States.

A particularly dark side of 2D love is the sexual obsession men have with prepubescent female characters. Momo, who makes and sells X-rated anime images of prepubescent females, says he has sex with his imaginary lovers. He also says he neither views child pornography nor is attracted to his young niece. Whether or not this trend will translate into harmful behaviors toward young girls is to be determined, but the question has at least been raised. Regardless, being obsessed with 2D images says something has gone terribly awry.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:53 AM | Comments (5)

China Eases One-Child Policy in Shanghai

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 population and weakening workforce.

Shanghai's Population and Family Planning Commission has begun sending out officials and volunteers to pass out leaflets and offer emotional and financial counseling to families who might be willing to have a second child. More births would help even out the age proportion and bolster the city's economy. And younger people will be needed: Shanghai is home to more than 3 million people over 60, about one-fifth of its population. In 2020, those over 60 are predicted to make up one-third.

At the start of Communist rule in 1949, China's government encouraged population growth and even banned birth control. But the population outgrew the food supply, causing over 30 million deaths from starvation by 1962. The government instated the one-child policy in 1979, and for 30 years has kept a tight rein on the country's population (the world's largest) of 1.3 billion people by monitoring pregnancies, sometimes forcing parents to terminate them.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 10:41 AM | Comments (3)

Dancing Down the Aisle

If you haven't seen "Jill and Kevin's Wedding Entrance," the video that's shown up all over the Internet since late last week, I recommend you watch it now. It's five minutes of pure joy as the St. Paul, Minnesota, couple and their wedding party break into a choreographed dance down the aisle to the tune of R&B singer Chris Brown's hit "Forever." As soon as I finished watching it, I immediately posted it to Facebook and sent it to my friends with only the comment, "Stop whatever you're doing and watch this right now!" In sum, I would say that I like it.

And I'm not the only one. So far it's the second-most-watched video on YouTube this month, with over 10 million views as of today. And only five of those are mine (so far).

From the first beats of "Forever," it's clear that this isn't going to be your standard wedding ceremony. Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz's playful reinterpretation of the tradition re-injects life and, perhaps, meaning into the procession. As Sarah Kaufman writes for The Washington Post:

By dancing their entrances and sending that upbeat, physical energy right back out to their guests, the Peterson-Heinz wedding turns the rote behaviors into spontaneous reactions. Of course the guests watch attentively as the wedding party bobs in. You can bet not a single child had to be shushed at that point. This was no longer a display of bad posture and dyed-to-match pumps - it was an uplifting swell of celebration with a beat. The bride - unescorted - was and wasn't the center of attention. The true focus was on the unified, wordless but palpable emotions of her whole support system.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 3:58 PM | Comments (31)

Julia Duin: The Anna Syndrome

Summertime is when weddings abound. No one longs for them more than the abundance of single women in our nation's churches. The dearth of marriage opportunities for most of these women calls forth certain coping strategies, one of which I'll call the "Anna syndrome" after the prophetess in Luke 2:36-38 who hung around the Jerusalem temple and happened to catch the baby Jesus on a good day.

Anna had been married at one point and as a widow was presumably living off her husband's estate. But he'd been dead many years and she had no children to provide for her, so perhaps she was quite poor. But instead of resorting to prostitution, which was the sole choice for women back then, she lingered about the temple and prayed.

I bring this Bible passage up because of memories that arose while helping a single female friend move. I got the job of organizing the piles of notes she had lying around. It struck me that so many were related to various church events geared to keeping members busy: retreats, visiting speakers, conferences, and Bible studies. This woman was in her 60s, poor and headed toward an old age on Social Security. She hung around church because it's the only family she has in the area.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:58 AM | Comments (48)

Cohabiting Couples on the Rise

A new national study suggests that the trend toward cohabiting continues its forward march for young adults, many of whom still expect to marry someday.

More than three-quarters of 20- to 24-year-olds in the U.S. said they believe that "love, fidelity, and making a lifelong commitment are very important to a successful relationship." Women, predictably, aspire to marriage at significantly higher rates than men. Perhaps less predictably, married young adults tend to have negative views of living together with no intent to marry, even though (or perhaps because) more than half of them have cohabited themselves.

In 2008, the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University published "Cohabitation, Marriage and Child Well-being," a report in which sociologist David Popenoe traces the history of cohabitation back through the sexual revolution. He concludes,

It should be obvious . . . that in an era of relatively unrestricted premarital sex, women in the work place, delayed marriage, and high marital breakup, there is a profound logic - almost an inevitability - about the practice of living together before marriage. What are the alternatives? Either marriage at a young age (not a good idea because, among other reasons, it limits access to higher education and is associated with a much higher risk of divorce), no sex before marriage (hard to imagine reinstituting this social norm across the population), or ‘sleeping around' rather than living with one sex partner (not good for a variety of reasons). It seems likely, therefore, that non-marital cohabitation is a practice that is not going away anytime soon.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:49 AM | Comments (29)

Harry Potter and the Vampire Battle

No, I'm not talking about Severus Snape and his vampiric qualities. Last night's midnight opening of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the latest installment in the blockbuster book-movie franchise, brought with it comparisons to another teen fantasy phenomenon, Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series.

The sixth Harry Potter film features front and center the budding hormones of the now-16-year-old wizards, but, compared with Meyer's vampire oeuvre, J. K. Rowling's Harry seems downright innocent - a phrase rarely attached to the magical tales, at least among many evangelicals.

The "question" of Harry Potter - good fun, or evil vehicle for witchcraft? - has circulated through Christian culture since the first movie introduced the boy wizard to the mainstream in 2001. Eight years later - years that have brought the series' conclusion and Rowling's admission that her Christian faith deeply influenced her work - many evangelicals still oppose the book's positive portrayal of witchcraft and wizardry, fearing it gives curious children an entry point into the occult.

Christianity Today magazine has weighed in on the controversy; I personally believe the books are not only harmless, but can also deepen our faith by engaging our hearts and minds in an epic story that explores some very biblical ideas, a la Tolkien and Lewis. The series' conclusion relies heavily on Christian imagery (I'll stop there to avoid spoiling Deathly Hallows' incredibly powerful finale), and in the end, we see that the spells and potions are merely plot devices to depict themes of good vs. evil, the importance of sacrifice, and the power of love. Even the Vatican has stepped out in support of Half-Blood Prince, giving the film a surprising two thumbs up to its treatment of adolescent love.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 11:27 AM | Comments (14)

Breadwinning Moms and Stay-at-Home Dads

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 two young children - 9-month-old Beckett and Fiona, 3. Her husband, Josh, 32, is a stay-at-home dad while Tiffany is the family's primary breadwinner, a decision based on necessity that has since worked out to both parents' benefit.

Tiffany is one of a growing number of women in the United States who are primary earners for their household. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 25.8 percent of wives had a higher income than their husbands in 2007, an increase from nearly 23 percent in 1997 and 18 percent in 1987.

The Kriners' situation is unusual at Wheaton College, Tiffany said; most working mothers at the college have husbands also working outside the home, so are balancing a co-parenting situation. Their situation evolved when Tiffany gave birth to Fiona while in a post-doctoral program and Josh stayed home to care for her, and then when Josh decided to stay home when the couple moved to Wheaton for Tiffany's job about three years ago.

"Most people do ask whether I stay home with my kids or not, especially if they meet me in a context where they see me with my children," Tiffany said. "I don't think there's any stigma especially, but definitely an awareness."

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:57 AM | Comments (11)

Am I My Sister's Keeper?

My Sister's Keeper, director Nick Cassavetes' (The Notebook) new weeper film starring Cameron Diaz and Abigail Breslin, releases today.

Fans of the original 2004 Jodi Picoult novel may be expecting a cinematic exploration of the ethical ramifications of PIDG (pre-implantation genetic diagnosis), the medical practice of engineering and selecting embryos for specific medical reasons.

After all, in both the novel and the movie, the drama centers on a cancer-stricken teenager and the younger sister who was engineered in a test tube to be an ideal donor of blood and bone marrow. (USA Today's Cathy Lynn Grossman, a fan of the novel, offers a succinct summary of the issue and its implications on her Faith and Reason blog.)

Although the film is faithful to the book in a number of ways, a significantly altered ending and a shift in emphasis make PIDG more of a plot point than a central theme. Intriguingly, a different, but closely related issue, bubbles up in its place.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:06 AM | Comments (3)

The Friendship Boost

"What Makes Us Happy?" It's an eternal mystery, and the title of a fascinating article by Joshua Wolf Shenk in the June Atlantic. Shenk was given access to archives of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has been following a group of men - Harvard College sophomores in the late 1930 - for over 70 years. About half of the original 268 men are still living.

Reading their stories and talking with the study's longtime director, psychiatrist George Vaillant, Shenk tried to find reasons for some men's happiness and others' dissatisfaction, failure, or ill health. The key to happiness proved elusive and complex, but one factor stood out. Shenk reports:

In an interview in the March 2008 newsletter to the Grant Study subjects, Vaillant was asked, "What have you learned from the Grant Study men?" Vaillant's response: "That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people."

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 4:23 PM | Comments (5)

The Duggars: the Anti-Gosselins

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 16-month-olds. Like the Gosselins, the Masches are professing Christians. (In the show's opening sequence, Jenny shares that, despite the dangers involved in carrying a large pregnancy to term, "because of our faith, selective reduction was not an option.") In light of the Gosselins' recent troubles, it seems odd for any family to choose to expose themselves to the scrutiny that likely at least contributed to the Gosselins' marital problems. As Christians, we might ask, is it wise to enter a "public marriage" when the dangers have been so clearly laid out?

For proof that reality TV exposure does not itself destroy a family, we need look no further than TLC's 18 Kids and Counting, which offers a weekly peek into the life of the Duggar family. As part of the Quiverfull movement, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar abstain from all forms of birth control and, according to their website, "asked God to bless them with as many children as he saw fit in his timing." The show has followed them through multiple pregnancies, planning, building, and moving into a 7,000-square-foot home (built debt-free), and even the courtship, marriage, and pregnancy of Jim Bob and Michelle's eldest, Josh, and his wife, Anna.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:53 AM | Comments (27)

Declining Female Happiness

The data have been collected and analyzed and the determination made: Women are less happy than they were 35 years ago, less happy than men, and the gap between men's and women's happiness is growing. The National Bureau of Economic Research released the report in May, and according to its researchers, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, this decline in happiness is pretty much true for women across the board in industrialized nations.

But women can be CEOs, politicians, and college presidents. They are better paid and have more visibility and opportunity than they did 30 years ago, so why are women less happy?

Stevenson and Wolfers speculate that perhaps it's the overall decrease in social cohesion, or increased anxiety and neuroticism. Or maybe now that women have multiple roles, they are satisfied in one role, but miserable in another, bringing down their overall sense of happiness. Maybe the women's movement raised expectations for women, and their lives don't measure up to those expectations.

I'm sitting in a window seat on a flight mulling this over, heading home after spending a day at Pine Rest in Grand Rapids talking to psychologists, counselors, social workers, and pastors who work with girls and women. Bob Hosack, my editor at Baker Books, extended the invitation believing my ideas from Growing Strong Daughters would be useful. I tossed my speculations about why women are less happy than we used to be into the mix. Here they are:

Our raised expectations have a fair bit to do with it. So does a form of individualism that redefined women's expectations in the aftermath of the feminist movement. (Important note: I call myself a feminist.) We are predisposed to fall into an individualism that is all about me, and women followed men into that particular pit rather readily, but with somewhat different consequences.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:54 AM | Comments (23)

Jon and Kate Plus a Lot of Bitterness

I admit that for a while I was hooked on certain reality TV shows, but I've pulled the plug on several as of late, keeping my viewing list a lot shorter. (However, I've kept Deadliest Catch on the list because I can't get enough of men battling the Bering Sea - it's quite thrilling!) Reality TV has destroyed its share of relationships, so I have been hesitant to spend time becoming emotionally involved with the real-life people who inhabit it.

Sadly, its most recent casualty seems to be Jon and Kate Gosselin. The once-happy couple that has endured the challenges of multiple births have now turned on one another, and Monday night's episode, the fifth-season premiere, revealed the pain that pride, anger, blame-shifting, and resentment bring to a marriage.

Watching as a counselor, I was squirming in my seat. The problems they were describing (in separate interviews) were actually quite common and normal in most marriages. I've heard many people express their anger and sadness about feeling underappreciated, having to put dreams on hold, and enduring their spouse saying and doing hurtful things. The biggest test will be how the Gosselins, who are professing Christians, choose to deal with these universal marital issues. If Monday's episode was any evidence of how they are proceeding, things do not look good.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:53 AM | Comments (75)

When Childbirth Means Risking Your Life

"Pregnancy and childbirth kill more than 536,000 women a year, more than half of them in Africa," writes Denise Grady from Tanzania in the May 24, 2009, New York Times. Her article, "Where Life's Start Is a Deadly Risk," contrasts the World Health Organization's (WHO) estimate of Tanzania's maternal mortality rate - 950 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births - with Ireland's: 1 per 100,000.

In other words, a Tanzanian woman has a 1 in 24 lifetime risk of dying in childbirth; an Irish woman's risk is 1 in 47,600. (U.S. statistics, which you can check at the WHO website: a mortality rate of 11 deaths per 100,000 births, with a 1 in 4,800 lifetime risk.)

"The women who die are usually young and healthy, and their deaths needless," Grady writes. "The five leading causes are bleeding, infection, high blood pressure, prolonged labor and botched abortions."

Most women give birth at home (50%) or in local clinics (30%), going to a hospital - sometimes by bicycle! - only when they have been in labor for days and realize they need a caesarean. Because hospitals are understaffed and overcrowded, the surgery may be performed by a physician's assistant, and the woman may end up sharing a twin bed with another woman. This is scary enough to read about, but the shock value is even higher in the series of 21 photos, "Childbirth in Tanzania," accompanying the article.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:48 AM | Comments (4)

Forgotten Little Pitchers

You would think she'd been talking to a classmate, but no; as it happened she had read this in a book on Ancient Rome. Since the school's fourth grade bookshelf includes a number of colorfully illustrated reference books on the period, her mortified teacher's first thought was that one of these adult books was the source. It wasn't; the information came from an Usborne book. In other words, it came from a book written and designed for children.

It is not very original of either this mother or me to complain that our children are under siege, but they are. Some days, the pervasiveness of it seems remarkable.

I have fourth grader myself, who loves to read and loves words, so many nights now she and her father tackle the Jumble word puzzle which lies opposite the comics page in our increasingly thin Louisville Courier-Journal. This is a new game for them, and it took a day or two for my husband and I to notice that right above ATCATK and YLROLWD lies the "Annie's Mailbox" column, with its sad parade of grief, trouble and abuse. We cut or fold the page now.

Our daughter would like to look at the rest of the paper also, but since the front page may feature a large colored photograph of people exploded by a suicide bomber, or the murder of a child, or a personal assault highlighted in large type, some days she can't. (I don't complain that the paper reports bad news, but I do object to the increasingly tabloid fashion in which some stories are covered.)

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 7:30 AM | Comments (6)

The Upside of Never-Empty Nests

Many white Americans commonly assume that once children and parents go their separate ways, they should keep those ways relatively separate. Good parenting is captured by mother robins that push their children toward independence by knocking them out of the nest. We encourage our children to move out and away and our parents to retire in the Sunbelt or in a community filled with other older folks. If they come back home, we interpret it as a sign that something has gone wrong.

Yet the autonomous, nuclear family is a rather new arrangement in the scope of history, and Africa, Latin America, the Mediterranean - as well as Latinos, African Americans, and Asian Americans in the U.S. - still practice extended family living, and are comfortable with extra adult family members coming and going. Recent trends in the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom show more young-adult children moving back in with parents, and more parents moving in with adult children.

Our daughter Megan Anna and son-in-law Luke moved into our home this week for a yet-to-be determined time. They've just landed in Oregon after finishing a grad-school stint in the East, and are looking for employment and a life here. Right now they are choosing locale and family over career opportunity, which is a tad un-American for white folks, but I'm hearing college students of every hue singing the same tune.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:45 AM | Comments (12)

Never Been Kissed

It turns out that Susan Boyle has been kissed. But her earlier claim that she hadn't was met with disbelief. So, too, are pre-20th century European mores, when premarital kissing was forbidden. Can you think of a recent historical movie where the hero and heroine didn't kiss before their wedding? Is it even possible?

Well, yes. It's more than possible. Some people have never been kissed without ever having decided against kissing. Others, like the Virgin Lips Movement, which The Tennessean recently profiled, are saying that premarital kissing is a morality issue for Christians.

The article starts off with Katy Kruger's wedding day, where she kisses for the first time in front of 200 guests. "I wasn't sure what to do . . . I thought I would mess up," she told The Tennessean. It turned out just fine.

The University of Missouri?Columbia's student newspaper also published an essay on the movement, which emphasized that the idea isn't that weird.

Al Mohler writes that not kissing before wedding is an admirable decision, given our culture:

In the space of little more than a single generation, we have seen the breaking down of virtually every social and cultural support for sexual abstinence. Arousal and intimacy come with the romantic longing that marks the deepening relationship between a man and a woman. Young couples no longer court on the porch swing with the girl's parents sitting inside and very close at hand. Now, most young couples face the temptation of romantic contexts in which intimacy - and this means sexual intimacy - is a likely outcome.

The Virgin Lips Movement represents a serious effort to push back against this expectation and to create boundaries that will protect virtue and honor marriage.

The Tennessean's article mentions the usual objections to purity pledges: if you haven't, you won't know whether you and your fianc? have chemistry; if you try and fail, you'll feel terrible; purity shouldn't be a goal the way earning a bachelor's degree should. Idealists are unlikely to base their decisions on arguments like that.

Instead, they are likely to respond to I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris. The Tennessean calls it "the Virgin Lips Movement bible."

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Posted by Susan Wunderink at 9:23 AM | Comments (31)

The Matriarchal Blessing

With Mother's Day just around the corner, I've been thinking about the matriarchal blessing - the moment when an old woman, staring death in the eye, communicates to a younger female relative or friend that life is good and love is eternal.

As far as I know, the only mention in the Bible of an older woman blessing a younger woman is when Elizabeth says to her young, unwed, pregnant relative Mary: "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb" (Luke 1:42). Elizabeth probably wasn't the matriarch of her family, and she wasn't about to die, but her Spirit-inspired words were still similar to a matriarchal blessing. She welcomed the new life growing in Mary, and her loving hospitality surely must have given courage to the baffled young mother-to-be.

The more typical matriarchal blessing, however, is a deathbed event: think of Isaac blessing Esau and, inadvertently, Jacob; or Jacob blessing his own sons and grandsons.

"The last time I saw my mother alive was very, very special," my friend Kathleen told me. Her mother, who was 90 years old, had been declining from Alzheimer's disease for several years. "She was trying to talk about something but couldn't make words that were comprehensible, so she just decided to go to sleep. She must have napped for about a half hour. I stayed with her and held her hand. Her skin was so transparent that I wondered if she would die right then. But no. She woke up and squeezed my hand, and we had a chance to tell each other how much we loved each other. It was one of the best times I ever had with my mother."

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 7:00 AM | Comments (4)

Nutrition for Nascent Human Life

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 and Children (WIC). Perhaps because I was working in a health food store at the time, I liked the idea that WIC only covered nutritious foods like milk, peanut butter, and the soy formula my highly allergic toddler needed for his Cheerios. It also didn't carry with it the stigma of the Medicaid card. Unlike some medical professionals, grocery store cashiers didn't seem to begrudge my benefits.

In its annual report, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reveals that it spent $60.7 billion on food assistance programs in 2008, an 11 percent increase from 2007 and the eighth consecutive record-breaking increase. WIC was the fastest growing program of the year, even though it only accounted for a tenth of the outlay.

WIC ensures basic nutrition for nascent human life. It's a program pro-lifers can heartily support. I would even say we have a moral obligation to support it. With an appallingly high infant mortality rate, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention links to maternal poverty, the United States is shamefully derelict in the health of its youngest members.

In a recent Atlantic post, Marion Nestle, professor of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at New York University, wondered "what it means that half of U.S. infants are born into families so poor that they are eligible for WIC benefits." I can't answer that question because I wasn't poor, I was just eligible. I worked, lived with my parents, and later repaid my debt many times over through taxes and a public school mentorship to teen mothers. Three vital elements were at work in overcoming my situation. First was the support of my middle class family. Second was my own sense of responsibility for my circumstances. Third was government assistance. (Marriage eliminated this element.) Thus, I'm in no position to begrudge people their benefits.

Nonetheless, I've been struggling with one of the Capitol Hill Day action items I received at the Mobilization to End Poverty event sponsored by Sojourners and World Vision last week.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:43 AM | Comments (5)

Is There Such a Thing as Too Many Children?

The last of Nadya Suleman's octuplets has been discharged from the hospital and is now at home with his family. Following a three-month stay at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Bellflower, California, Jonah Angel Suleman - who weighed only a pound and a half at birth - now weighs just over four and a half pounds and has been deemed strong enough to survive outside the hospital.

The Suleman babies' hospital stay may be over, but the many questions raised by their birth - questions about in-vitro fertilization, medical ethics, single parenting, and welfare, just to name a few - are still raging.

Nadya Suleman, 33, has become a familiar face online as the single mother of 14 children, the oldest of whom is seven. All of her children were conceived, Suleman states, through in-vitro fertilization. Amid talk that Suleman will soon be starring in her own reality show, is trademarking the name Octomom, and has cost the La Habra police department $4,000 in overtime fees for watching over her family since their move to the neighborhood in March, it's hard to sort out my feelings from the furor.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:33 AM | Comments (21)

Breast-feed, If You Can Afford To

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 in the early 1970s, I expected to disagree with Warner. I nursed my two babies for a year apiece, and I was a lot like Rosin's Mama-Nazi playground pals even though I'm at least as old as their mothers. So I was surprised at how much I appreciated Warner's viewpoint, especially this insightful question:

Why, as a society, have we privileged the magic elixir of maternal milk over actual maternal contact, denying the vast, vast majority of mothers the kind of extended maternity leave that would make them physically present for their babies?

As both authors point out, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months - that is, no water, no supplements, no formula, no additional food - and breastfeeding with other foods for the next six months, or longer.

That's easy for the pediatricians to say.

Trouble is, more than half of American mothers of infants work outside the home, and America is one of only five countries in the world that do not guarantee new mothers any paid leave (the others are Lesotho, Liberia, Swaziland, and Papua New Guinea).

Right now the European Union is pressing member countries to extend fully paid leave from 14 to 18 weeks. By contrast, as the Institute for Women's Policy Research reported in August 2007, "only 8 percent of workers [in the United States] have paid family leave to care for newborns and other family members." Even the companies ranked among the 100 best by Working Mother magazine offer considerably less leave than needed by nursing mothers: over half allow six weeks or less.

Is anyone wondering why so many mothers feel guilty most of the time? When they're not too tired to feel anything at all?

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 3:47 PM | Comments (21)

Your Responses: AIDS in Uganda

The initial success of the ABC (Abstain, Be faithful, use Condoms) program in Uganda was dramatic, with the HIV prevalence rate dropping from 15 percent in 1991 to 5 percent in 2000. (See Avert's lengthy analysis here.) I completely agree with Edward C. Green's statement that "condoms have not worked as a primary intervention in the population-wide epidemics of Africa" (emphasis mine) - the primary approach must be based on abstinence and fidelity, because the epidemic in Africa spreads through a vast web of "ongoing multiple concurrent sex partnerships."

However, I also agree with Green's statement that "all people should have full access to condoms, and condoms should always be a backup strategy for those who will not or cannot remain in a mutually faithful relationship." This indeed is how condoms were used in Uganda in the nineties: "The number of condoms delivered and promoted by international groups rose from 1.5 million in 1992 to nearly 10 million in 1996."

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 11:06 AM | Comments (72)

Meanwhile, What about the Women and Children?

On March 18, my friend Tim Morgan posted an article on Christianity Today's Liveblog called "Why the Pope Is Right about Condoms and HIV in Africa." "You can't resolve [the AIDS crisis] with the distribution of condoms," the pope told reporters aboard the plane heading to Yaound?. "On the contrary, it increases the problem."

Maybe the pope had to say that. He's a spiritual leader, and it's his job description to hold up the ideal, no matter how difficult it may be to fulfill in real life. Certainly sexual abstinence and fidelity are the best ways to prevent the spread of HIV. But such either-or idealism may be harmful to millions of people whose morality is exactly what the pope prescribes - the faithful wives and innocent children of HIV-infected men.

According to international AIDS charity Avert, in 2007, 22 million people were living with AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. Only 37 percent of these were men (defined by the survey as males over the age of 15). Women made up 55 percent of the total, and children the other 8 percent. Another grim statistic: 11.6 million children under the age of 18 had lost one or both parents to AIDS.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:32 AM | Comments (12)

When Deadbeat Dads Are Really Trying

Family courts around the country are hearing the same story over and over again, according to an article last week in The New York Times: I can't make my child support payments. Can I have the amount reduced?

"Presented with documentation of falling incomes and rising expenses," the article goes on to say, "judges often have little choice but to grant the downward adjustments, even in the face of protests from mothers struggling to support children." Yet for many families, these child-support payments aren't exactly funding the kids' weekly allowance or iTunes purchases. This is money that's going toward rent or groceries.

But what to do? It's hardly fair to force non-custodial parents — mostly fathers — to make payments they can't afford, yet most custodial parents aren't seeing a commensurate drop in their expenses. The resulting gap between income and expenditures leaves families in tight places, as parents — both custodial and non — struggle to find ways to meet their children's needs in an increasingly tight economy.

In Lee County, Florida, this gap has led to a 77 percent spike in contempt orders when non-custodial parents fail to make timely support payments, according to a recent News Press article. And a contempt order can mean jail time. That's a tough sentence for a parent who's trying to do the right thing in the face of layoffs, pay cuts, or unemployment, especially when a court-approved reduction in child support payments can take up to a year to be processed.

It's a tough situation, regardless of how you look at it. So how can we, as Christians, respond to these parents who are struggling in our churches and communities?

Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:02 AM | Comments (20)

eHarmony Launches Gay Dating Site

Online dating site eHarmony launched a version of its match-making service for homosexual couples Tuesday in response to a settlement late last year.

The company agreed to launch Compatible Partners after a user had filed a complaint against eHarmony, citing New Jersey's discrimination law. Elizabeth Holmes compares the company's new site with its heterosexual site for The Wall Street Journal.

Compatible Partners mirrors the features of its sister site, beginning with the same extensive relationship-preferences questionnaire for which eHarmony is known. There are just a few minor modifications between the two 34-page documents. For example, an eHarmony question reads, "I greatly appreciate the physical beauty of the opposite sex." The Compatible Partners version reads, "I greatly appreciate physical attractiveness when looking at people." The company changed so little in the surveys that it put a disclosure on the Compatible Partners home page. The notice says the site was developed "on the basis of research involving married heterosexual couples." It adds: "The company has not conducted similar research on same-sex relationships."

... Last month, eHarmony was the sixth-most-visited online personals site, with roughly 2.3 million unique visitors, according to comScore.

It's not a comfortable fit for eHarmony's founder, Neil Clark Warren, David Colker writes for the Los Angeles Times.

"It's what I did for 40 years," said Warren, 74, who is retired but remains on the board. "I never had a gay couple."
... Even Warren is finding out that gay couples might not be so different after all. He and his wife are friends with a male couple they met in Maine, where they live most of the year.
"I asked them, 'Are you guys committed?' " Warren said, "and one said yes and the other said, 'I think so.'
"And the first one said, 'You'd better be!' "

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 2:32 PM | Comments (39)

Ted and Gayle Haggard to Appear on 'Divorce Court' April 1

Three months after Alexandra Pelosi's documentary The Trials of Ted Haggard debuted on HBO, the founder of New Life Church and former president of the National Association of Evangelicals and his wife will be appearing on Divorce Court, the longest-running court TV show.

The Colorado Springs Gazette reports that Ted and Gayle Haggard are in Los Angeles now filming the show, which will premiere April 1. In an interview with Judge Lynn Toler, the couple will discuss Haggard's sex-and-drugs scandal involving a male escort that surfaced in November 2006 and led him to resign as pastor of the Colorado Springs megachurch. They will be speaking about how their Christian faith has kept their marriage from ending in divorce.

To promote the HBO documentary, the Haggards also appeared on Oprah and CNN's Larry King Live in late January. On the latter, Haggard described himself as a "heterosexual with complications." The couple tells Colorado Springs Gazette that they are scheduled to speak at prominent evangelical churches in coming months.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 3:01 PM | Comments (1)