Women & work:

Report finds gender stereotyping slows advancement of women executives

New brief on multi-generational workforce

More news and commentary on women & work

Child well-being:

2007 America's Children report released, plus related articles

Mothers, mothering & momism:

Selected news and commentary on family law, caregiving, and contemporary parenting

Women, men & gender:

Notable news and commentary on women & politics, boys & girls, and being dangerous

Losing Ground:

Weak economy leads to higher spending on work supports
for low-income families

Selected news and commentary on income inequality and economic insecurity in America

Reproductive Health & Rights:

Sex & health, abortion access, and other noteworthy news and commentary

Report finds gender stereotyping slows advancement of women executives

A recent report from Catalyst, an organization dedicated to expanding opportunities for women in business, finds that gender stereotyping creates a "double-bind" for women business leaders, who are typically assessed as either too tough, or not tough enough. Based on interviews with senior business executives from the United States and Europe, the study found that men are still viewed as "default leaders," while women are viewed as "atypical leaders" and perceived as violating accepted leadership norms regardless of their leadership style and abilities.

One outcome of the impact of gender bias on women executives is that women are held to higher standards and have to work harder for the same rewards given to male peers. When women demonstrated stereotypically male leadership skills, such as assertiveness, they were perceived as high competent but were not well-liked. Executive women were judged more likable when they adopted a more stereotypically feminine leadership style, but were seen as less reliable leaders. “Ultimately, it’s not women’s leadership styles that need to change," remarked Catalyst President Ilene H. Lang in a July 2007 press release. "Only when organizations take action to address the impact of gender stereotyping will they be able to capitalize on the 'full deck' of talent."

The study also notes that

The impact of stereotypic bias is often underestimated. Some argue that stereotypes must reflect real differences in the behavior of men and women, or else they would not exist. But research shows that stereotypes do not accurately represent reality; they misrepresent it. Others might argue that belaboring the issue of stereotypes dilutes the focus from inroads already forged. But that progress has been remarkably slow.

According the report, women make up over 50 percent of the management, professional, and related occupations, but only 15.6 percent of Fortune 500 corporate officers, and 14.6 percent of Fortune 500 board directors, are female.

Catalyst
www.catalyst.org

Damned or Doomed:
Catalyst Study on Gender Stereotyping at Work
Uncovers Double-Bind Dilemmas for Women
Press Release, 19.jul.07
Study examines how a "men-as-default-leaders" mindset derails women’s advancement to business leadership.

The Double-Bind Dilemma for Women in Leadership:
Damned if You Do, Doomed if You Don't
Catalyst, July 2007. 48 pages, in .pdf

Related articles:

Workplace anger viewed differently by gender
Reuters, MSNBC, 3.aug.07
A man who gets angry at work may well be admired for it but a woman who shows anger in the workplace is liable to be seen as "out of control" and incompetent, according to a new study presented on Friday.

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New brief on multi-generational workforce

An issue brief from the Center on Aging and Work at Boston College addresses different perspectives on age and generation in the changing workforce. The authors explain that while employers typically think of workers age, life course and career stage as following a "traditional timeline," key life events, age and career trajectories will not necessary track to a predictable pattern as today's workforce changes and matures. "Employers have started to consider how age diversity -- like so many other diversity factors -- can offer both opportunities as well as challenges to 'getting the work done well'." Written primarily for employers, this informative brief discusses demographic trends in the changing workforce from the perspectives of chronological age, generation, life course and career stage.

Center on Aging and Work
agingandwork.bc.edu

The 21st-Century Multi-Generational Workplace
Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes and Michael A. Smyer,
The Center on Aging and Work, June 2007. 12 pages, in.pdf

Also:

Center on Aging and Work: Publications and Fact Sheets

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More news and commentary on women & work

What's a Working Mother Worth?
Judith Stadtman Tucker, American Prospect Online, 20.jul.07
The majority U.S. families depend on mothers' earnings to get by. So why do Americans remain deeply divided about the value of maternal employment? (Discusses Pew Research survey on mothers' work preferences).

Attitude gap widens between working, stay-at-home moms
Sharon Jayson, USA Today, 12.jul.07
"Among working mothers, 60% now say part-time work is the ideal situation, compared with 48% in 1997. Among at-home moms, 48% say staying home is ideal, up from 39% in 1997."

Finnish Women Reflect at Superwoman in Mirror
Diane Saarinen, Women's eNews, 5.jul.07
Women in Finland enjoy such a hardy political reputation that the country's famous wife-carrying contests are treated as something of a national joke. But some women have begun probing their uber image and finding a few puncture points.

Tough Luck, Ladies
Katha Pollitt, The Nation, 7.jul.07
While decades' worth of previous judgments have always held that each discriminatory paycheck constituted a new act for purposes of meeting Title VII's six-month deadline, the Roberts Court holds that only the original one counts. Six months into being screwed over by your boss, pay discrimination is your own damn fault--like so much else in life!

High-powered executives rarely value families
Penelope Trunk, San Francisco Chronicle, 19,aug.07
"We have a double standard in our society: If you are poor and you abandon your children, you are a bad parent. But if you are rich and you abandon them to run a company, you are profiled in Fortune magazine."

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2007 America's Children report released

The latest report from the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics on children's well being in the United States in now available from the ChildStats web site. The 2007 report was restructured to track the changing population of children in America and assess 38 indicators related to children's well-being in the areas of family and social environment, economic circumstances, health care, physical environment and safety, behavior, education, and health.

In 2006, there were 73.6 million children age 0-17 living in the U.S.

Other random facts:

• 37 percent of all children born in 2006 were born to non-married mothers.

• 78 percent of American children lived with at least one adult who worked full-time, year round.

• In 2005, 31 percent of children in married two- parent families had both parents working year round, full time, up from 17 percent in 1980, but down slightly from the peak of 33 percent in 2000.

• 89 percent of U.S. children had health care coverage in 2005, down from 90 percent in 2004. Between 1999 and 2005, the number of insured children with private coverage dropped from 70 percent to 66 percent, and the number of children covered by public insurance grew from 27 percent to 30 percent.

• From 1998 through 2002, the rate of substantiated reports of child maltreatment varied between 12 and 13 reports per 1,000 children and has remained at approximately 12 reports per 1,000 children since 2002. Girls experienced higher rates of maltreatment than boys.

• For children ages 1-4, the mortality rate for White and Hispanic children was 27 per 100,000 in 2005 (down from 46 per 100, 000 in 1985), while the mortality rate for African American children was 44 per 100,000 (down from 81 per 100,000 in 1985). The most common cause of death in this age group was unintentional injury.

• 25 percent of high school seniors reported binge drinking in the two weeks prior to a youth survey

• 46 percent of high school students reported having had sex at least once

The full report report and tables are available in .html and .pdf formats.

Forum on Child and Family Statistics
www.childstats.gov

America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2007
June 2007

Related articles:

Death rate for U.S. children falls
Frank Greve, McClatchy Newspapers, 3.aug.07
Death rates from all causes dropped 53 percent among children ages 1 to 4 and 45 percent among children ages 5 to 14. It adds up to survival for about 8,000 children a year who would've died in 1980.

The Teenage Birth Rate Has Dropped to a 65-Year Low
Jennifer Liss, AlterNet, 29.jun.07
What's working -- less sex or better contraception? "The decrease did not happen overnight. Abstinence didn't instantaneously come into vogue. Nor was there a surge of birth control pill popping. Instead, there has been a steady drop in the number of teenage girls giving birth since 1991. That year the birth rate was at a record high of 61.8 per 1,000 teens. In 2005, the rate dropped to 40.4 births per 1,000 teens. The abortion rate among this age group is also going down."

An Immoral Philosophy
Paul Krugman/New York Times, AlterNet, 1.aug.07
What kind of philosophy says that it's O.K. to subsidize insurance companies, but not to provide health care to children?

Children Deserve Veterinary Care Too
Barbara Ehrenreich, AlterNet, 11.aug.07
If Bush vetoes the SCHIP bill that would expand state health insurance coverage for children, the fallback demand should be: Open up pet health insurance to all American children now!

States let adult kids keep insurance longer
Daniel C. Vock, Stateline.org, 15.aug.07
Legislatures in eight states -- Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, Maryland, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Washington and West Virginia -- voted this spring to require insurers to let adult children stay on their parents’ health insurance, even after the traditional cut-off dates of a child’s 18th birthday or college graduation.

Kids Safer Online Than Ever Before
Annalee Newitz, AlterNet, 7.aug.07
"People have been freaking out about how new distribution networks bring pornography to children for nearly half a century. Today's cyberteens aren't the first to go hunting for naughty bits using the latest high-speed thingamajig either."

States trying to extend foster-care benefits
Christine Vestal, Stateline.org, 23.aug.07
"Federal funding for payments to foster parents and group homes is cut off when foster kids reach 18, leaving those who have not been adopted or returned to their families to fend for themselves, with little state support. Two states are footing the bill to help foster-care youths who turn 18. Vermont this year became the second state, after Illinois, to use state money to extend its foster-care services to age 21, if a youth chooses to remain in the program."

Study: Troubled homes better than foster care
7.03.07, USA Today, Wendy Koch, USA Today, 7.jul.07
"Children whose families are investigated for abuse or neglect are likely to do better in life if they stay with their families than if they go into foster care, according to a pioneering study. …Kids who stayed with their families were less likely to become juvenile delinquents or teen mothers and more likely to hold jobs as young adults, the study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Joseph Doyle found."

Wide disparity exists in sentences for leaving kids to die in hot cars
Allen G. Breed/Associated Press, USA Today, 29.jul.07
"An Associated Press analysis of more than 310 fatal incidents in the past 10 years found that prosecutions and penalties vary widely, depending in many cases on where the death occurred and who left the child to die -- parent or caregiver, mother or father…Mothers are treated much more harshly than fathers. While mothers and fathers are charged and convicted at about the same rates, moms are 26 percent more likely to do time. And their median sentence is two years longer than the terms received by dads."

Early education gains momentum in states
Pauline Vu, Stateline.org, 25.jun.07
This fall, states will see the results of the big bucks they are promising to plug into early education programs.

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Selected news and commentary on family law, caregiving, and contemporary parenting

Custody Disputes Often Bypass Abuse Assessments
Marie Tessier, Women's eNews, 6.jul.07
As advocates for battered women and children work to improve custody decisions in the nation's family courts, they say valid psychological assessments that measure trauma in children are often ignored.

Families' futures decided with little oversight
Claudia Rowe, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 8.aug.07
Parent evaluators set own fees while wielding enormous power. "In recent decades, as dockets have become clogged with warring parents battling for custody of their children, overwhelmed judges have turned increasingly toward this cluster of psychologists and social workers for guidance. But as there is almost no check on their influence, any human foible might result in a faulty or unfair report -- with enormous implications for those families under the microscope."

Women Learn to Make Change Count After Abuse
Sharon Johnson, Women's eNews, 17.jul.07
Helping women gain financial strength while they transition away from their abusers is receiving a new focus from advocates who work with survivors of domestic violence.

Grandmothers Strain Resources to Raise Grandkids
Molly M. Ginty, Women's eNews, 19.aug.07
One in 12 children is in the care of a grandparent. A growing number of these caregivers are grandmothers, who are often struggling to meet the emotional and financial challenges of parenting later in life.

Why Do We Pay Our Plumbers More Than Our Caregivers?
Terrence McNally, Riane Eisler, AlterNet, 27.jumn.07
Surely leaky pipes aren't more important than our children. Yet, in America, most plumbers make five times what caregivers do. Author Riane Eisler shows how our economic system, rooted in gender inequality, is failing us. An excerpt from her latest book follows. McNally interviews Eisler, author of "The Chalice and the Blade" and "The Real Wealth of Nations."

Stop Setting Alarms on My Biological Clock
Carrie Friedman, Newsweek, 23.jul.07
If I'm ever going to fulfill my dream of becoming a mother, I'm going to need some better role models. "So why don't I have kids or even the inkling right now? It's because of you. Yes, you: the fanatical mothers of the world."

Yummy vs. Slummy
Kathleen Deveny, MSNBC/Newsweek, 13.aug.07
And the winner is ... who cares? We've become narcissist mommies, obsessed with our parenting choices and defensive when confronted with others'.

Bratz Dolls: Worse Than Barbie?
Abby West, AlterNet, 22.aug.07
"What is with these incredibly popular little dolls who just so happen to embody that Britney-esque spirit now imploding in a gossip magazine near you? Are they worth worrying over? Could they be destroying the next generation of females with their future-Maxim-cover-girl look? And most of all, how did they manage to turn Barbie into a good girl, a near feminist icon even, in comparison?"

In Some Circles, Four Kids Is the New Standard
Tovia Smith, NPR/Weekend Edition, 5.aug.07
The newest status symbol for the nation's most affluent families is fast becoming a big brood of kids. Historically, the country-club set has had the smallest number of kids. But in the past 10 years, the number of high-end earners who are having three or more kids has shot up nearly 30 percent. Some say the trend is driven by a generation of over-achieving career women who have quit work and transferred all of their competitive energy to baby making. They call it "competitive birthing."
Full story in audio.

Also:
Million-dollar babies
Rebecca Traister, Salon Broadsheet, 7.aug.07
"The story is about how, among a minuscule, affluent, mind-bogglingly wealthy segment of the privileged United States, accepted socioeconomic reality is being turned on its head. According to the piece, 'in certain circles, a big family is now the hottest fashion trend,' and 'in the world of the wealthy, four has become the new two'."

Spend, Spend, Spend: The New Model for Parenting
Helaine Olen, AlterNet, 7.aug.07
In spite of being racked with debt, Gen X parents are increasingly pouring their paychecks into luxury items for their children that seem seem frivolous to the point of ridiculousness.

Robbing the Cradle?
If Marketers Get Their Way, That Bundle of Joy Can Cost a Bundle
Knowledge@Wharton, 25.jul.07
"As a group, parents are definitely vulnerable to marketing strategies, says Wharton marketing professor Leonard M. Lodish. 'They are one of the vulnerable pockets' of consumers, the same way 'people are vulnerable when someone dies' and they are preyed upon by the funeral industry, or when 'someone gets married: Look at weddings -- the cost and excess. Parents are vulnerable because they have always wanted the best for their kids.'" Free registration required to read.

Parents dialing 'manny 911' for help:
Male nannies bring their own distinct flavor to child care - and love their work
Mike Adamick, San Francisco Chronicle, 5.aug.07
"Mannies say they try to care for their charges differently - providing trips to the auto shop or impromptu rock concerts - and some admit they've been hit on, but for most it's really about finding a job they love."

'Momblocked' mothers edged out by dads
Victoria Clayton, MSNBC, 11.jun.07
Caregivers can clash when stay-at-home fathers step up their game.

Mothers start a food fight
Nanci Hellmich, USA Today, 7.aug.07
"Real food doesn't come from a science lab. It grows in the ground, flies in the air, swims in the sea and walks on the ground," says Rubin, 47, one of the stars of Two Angry Moms, a new documentary film about a parental war against the sale of highly processed, sugary foods in U.S. schools.

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Notable news and commentary on women & politics, boys & girls, and being dangerous

Men Also Share Fruits of Women's Equality Day
Rob Okun, Women's eNews, 24.aug.07
"Some believe the advances women have made--increased job and career opportunities, improved wages, better child care--have come at men's expense, as if freedom and independence were finite: "If she has it, then I've lost it," the thinking goes. Truth is, liberation is like love: there's an infinite supply."

Millions of Women Still Fail to Cast Ballots
Jacqueline Lee, Women's eNews, 7.aug.07
U.S. women mark their 87th year of suffrage under the 19th Amendment on Aug. 26. But millions of women remain stubbornly disenfranchised by factors such as under-representation, social instability and culture gaps.

What Women See When They See Hillary
Lakshmi Chaudhry, AlterNet, 27.jun.07
Putting Hillary Clinton in the White House would shatter an enormous glass ceiling, yet many feminists aren't cheering at that prospect. Here's a look at how some of Clinton's most ardent supporters became her biggest resisters.

Bush's War on Women Is a War on Science
Caryl Rivers, AlterNet, 20.jul.07
"The ideological matrix into which the administration has tried to cram science policy should have been one of the biggest stories in the nation. But the press failed its women readers in particular (and their children)."

Hey Pollsters, Leave My Ring Finger Alone
Eugenia Chien,/New America Media, AlterNet, 1.aug.07
Unmarried women may be the next big group of swing voters. "But what do unmarried women really have in common? Many unmarried women simply haven't found the right kind of men. Thousands of single mothers are unmarried because the men in their lives refuse to commit. Unmarried women may be divorcees or widows. And let's not forget lesbians who are unmarried because the law forbids their union."

The Myth About Boys
David Von Drehle, TIME Magazine, 26.jul.07
"Observers of the boy crisis contend that families, schools and popular culture are failing our boys, leaving them restless bundles of anxiety--misfits in the classroom and video-game junkies at home. They suffer from an epidemic of 'anomie,' as Harvard psychologist William Pollack told me, adrift in a world of change without the help they need to find their way. Even in the youngest grades, test-oriented teachers focus energy on conventional exercises in reading, writing and other seatwork, areas in which girls tend to excel. At the same time, schools are cutting science labs, physical education and recess, where the experiential learning styles of boys come into play. No wonder, the theory goes, our boys get jittery, grow disruptive and eventually tune out."

Spirited Play Is Good for Boys and (Yes!) Girls
Caryl Rivers, Women's eNews, 9.aug.07
Authors of a bestselling book argue that boys need more freedom to take physical risks and test their spirit of adventure. Caryl Rivers says bravo to that, as long as girls join in the play too.

Caucasian Please! America's Cultural Double Standard For Misogyny & Racism
Dr. Edward Rhymes, AlterNet, 26.jun.07
The public is far more disturbed by misogynistic lyrics in rap music than in rock music -- the domain of white musicians. Seems it isn't sexism that the dominant culture is opposed to, but rather the black voices communicating the message.

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Weak economy leads to higher spending on work supports
for low-income families

A June 2007 issue brief from the Urban Institute finds that public spending on work supports for low income families increased between 2002 and 2005, with Medicare and SCHIP accounting for most of the growth. As fewer low income parents were able to find employment, spending on state child care subsidies and federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) declined, while spending on food stamp programs increased.

According to the authors of the summary, "The growth in work-support spending between 2002 and 2005 has not necessarily boosted well-being for struggling families." They also report that low-income families receive different levels of support depending on where they live. Low income families living in Alaska, Maine, Maryland, New York, and Vermont received more than twice the support of the average low-income family living in Alabama, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Nevada, or Utah. The authors also express concern about declines in child care spending:

Child-care subsidies represent a paltry share of the actual cost of care, and the share has declined over the past three years. Families need child-care subsidies even more during weaker economic times to encourage job search and employment. Also, the 2005 reauthorization of welfare forces states to increase work among parents on welfare to avoid significant financial penalties. States likely will focus more child-care dollars on families on welfare and less on working families outside the welfare system in the future.

Urban Institute
www.urban.org

Trends in Work Supports for Low-Income Families with Children
Sheila Zedlewski and Seth Zimmerman, Urban Insitute, June 2007
8 pages, in .pdf

Also:

Framework for a New Safety Net for Low-Income Working Families
Olivia Golden, Pam Winston, Greg Acs, and Ajay Chaudry
Urban Insitute, June 2007
"Helping low-income working families also requires paying attention to the adults’ lives as both parents and workers. Because low-income families are less likely than better-off families to have flexibility at work, are more likely to be raising children with physical or emotional health problems, and are more dependent on each week’s paycheck without significant private resources, they face even more wrenching conflicts between family and work than other Americans. …Doing justice to this complexity requires a carefully designed framework. A narrow, program-driven approach to policy development is unlikely to meet the needs of these families."

Related articles:

Maine leads states in aid to working poor: study
Joan Gralla, ABC News, 10.jul.07
Maine led all U.S. states in aiding poor families with children, providing $6,401 a year on a per capita basis, while Utah offered the least of any state at $1,712, a new study said on Tuesday.

Interview with Karen Bogenschneider and Heidi Normandin,
Family Impact Seminars
Sandee Shulkin and Karen Corday, Sloan Network News, July 2007
Bogenschneider and Normandin discuss linking current social research and public policy and working with state lawmakers on the impact of public policy on families. Bogenschneider comment on why work-life reconciliation has not been a hot policy topic in most states, and suggests strategies for advocates.

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Selected news and commentary on income inequality and economic insecurity in America

Nation's poor spend most of earnings on rent
Tony Pugh, McClatchy Newspapers, 15.jul.07
"Growing numbers of the nation's poorest households are using more than half their earnings for rent while waiting years for federal housing assistance that may never come….While some view housing assistance as welfare for the poor, the nation's largest housing subsidy by far is the federal mortgage interest tax deduction. It's projected to provide U.S. homeowners an estimated $75.6 billion in tax breaks this year. Most of that relief will go to higher-income families."

After Six Years of Growth, Wages Are Still Stagnant
Bonddad, AlterNet, 24.jul.07
The Corporate Right sees Americans' economic anxiety as part of their "liberal media" conspiracy theory. The truth is that people are hurting because, with the exception of those at the top, they haven't had a raise in a long time.

The Crash of 1929: Are We on the Verge of a Repeat?
Scott Thill, AlterNet, 26.jul.07
Hedge funds have helped create a counterfeit economy that some experts say could lead to another full-blown economic depression.

Is the US Heading for 'Developing Nations' Inequality Levels?
Paul Harris, AlterNet, 30.jul.07
The American Dream of riches for all has turned into a nightmare of inequality: welcome to Richistan, USA.

Lost Opportunity
Alan Jenkins, TomPaine.com, 17.jul.07
Recent figures from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development bring home what millions of Americans already know: that the very promise of opportunity in America is fading for everyday people, with grave implications for everyone in our country.

If This Is Such a Rich Country, Why Are We Getting Squeezed?
Heather Boushey and Joshua Holland, AlterNet, 18.jul.07
While the rich are getting richer, they're slashing social security, medicare and other social programs for the rest of us. What gives?

Smashing Capitalism
Barbara Ehrenreich, Huffington Post, 20.aug.07
"This may be the first case in history in which the downtrodden manage to bring down an unfair economic system without going to the trouble of a revolution."

When staying alive means going bankrupt:
Health insurance didn't keep cancer-stricken California woman solvent
Mike Stuckey, MSNBC, 15.aug.07
"Aldrich was paying 17 cents out of every dollar she took home for her Blue Shield policy when she ran up the disputed charges. And she recently got a "birthday card" from the insurer stating that now that she has turned 50, her monthly rate will rise to $619 -- just slightly less than her $650 rent. In any year that she needs any major treatment, she’ll be liable for an additional $7,000 in deductible and co-payments, meaning that she would have to devote $14,428 -- well over a third of her take-home pay -- to health care."

Can State Governments Set Up Universal Health Care on Their Own?
Ezra Klein, AlterNet, 8.aug.07
The idea of letting states continue to take the lead on universal health care may sound tempting, but here's why it would likely be disastrous.

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Sex & health, abortion access, and other noteworthy news and commentary

Sisters Sing the Healthy Sex Medley
Jeff Fleischer, Women's eNews, 25.jun.07
AIDS continues to kill a disproportionate number of women of color. A recent gathering in Chicago brought together activists trying to break through cultural barriers when it comes to educating women about reproductive health

Reproductive Justice: Voices from SisterSong
National Radio Project, 27.jun.07
Women in the reproductive justice movement seek the basic human right to control their bodies. This includes a woman¹s right to terminate her pregnancy, and the rights to have a child, and to parent that child. On this program produced by the National Radio Project's Women's Desk, we hear from three women advocating for comprehensive reproductive health. Audio file, available in several formats.

Can Women Separate Love and Sex?
Jennifer Armstrong, AlterNet, 11.jul.07
"If we're going to do this putting-off-marriage thing we're now officially doing, according to last year's breathlessly reported census results, and we're going to focus on careers instead of kids, and we're going to wait until we find the Big Love before settling down, well, how is it that we're not going to act like nut jobs in the meantime?...Girls, there's only one answer: We have to break the ironclad love-sex bond. It's simply the only way to survive all this without going mad."

Real Men, Real Choices
Robert Jensen, VoiceMale, Spring 2007
"My argument is simple: When men choose to spend their money on pornography, they are (1) contributing to the subordination of women in the sexual exploitation industries; and (2) robbing themselves of the possibility of being fully human."

Child Health Care Tangled in Anti-abortion Politics
Carole Joffe, AlterNet, 6.aug.07
Bush's deplorable response to expanding child health care represents more than a fierce opposition to government-provided services.

Pregnant and poor in Mississippi
Sharon Lerner, Salon, 2.jul.07
Mississippi law limits abortion to the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. But for poor women short on time and money, that can be an impossible deadline.

Court Coverage Got Personal for Pregnant Reporter
Allison Stevens, Women's eNews, 10.jul.07
While pregnant, journalist Allison Stevens covered the Supreme Court's recent decision to uphold a ban on a certain abortion procedure. In her condition, it was a particularly scary assignment.

The Politics of Stillbirth
Allison Stevens, The American Prospect, 16.ju.07
A new movement seeks to award special certificates to fetuses that are stillborn, but pro-choice advocates worry that this is yet another step toward fetal personhood that could endanger abortion rights.

Breastfeeding Advocates Battle for Stronger Rights
Nancy Cook Lauer, Women's eNews, 2.aug.07
World Breastfeeding Week encourages nursing mothers in a practice recommended by leading health authorities. But legislative battles across the U.S. show that the right to engage in this natural mother-child act is still challenged.

Latina Teen Pregnancies Spur Push for Family Talks
Alison Bowen, Women's eNews, 21.aug.07
Latina teens have a pregnancy rate that's twice the national average. Advocates working to lower the numbers point to inadequate sex education--including family conversations that don't happen--as a primary barrier.

Cohabitation, unwed motherhood soaring in younger generation
Sharon Jayson, USA Today, 1.jul.07
"Younger adults tend to worry less about the stigma attached to having a child or living together without being married, finds new research that shows a generation gap in behaviors related to marriage, divorce, parenthood and cohabitation."

Test-tube nation
Jennifer Niesslein, Salon, 18.aug.07
Beth Kohl, author of the new book "Embryo Culture," talks about abortion, faith and her personal struggle with the ethics of assisted reproduction.

Genetic Disorder
Dana Goldstein, In These Times, 6.jul.07
Parents with limited incomes are being denied access to genetic tests and the counseling that experts say should accompany them

What Causes Cancer: Probably Not You
Barbara Ehrenreich, AlterNet, 7.aug.07
The perennial temptation to blame disease on sin or at least some grave moral failing just took another hit.

States adopt marriage ed courses
Christine Vestal, Stateline.org, 7.aug.07
"Texas is the latest state to push marriage education, appropriating $7.5 million this year for programs aimed at reducing divorce rates and, in turn, promoting family stability and economic wellbeing. Couples who attend the Lone Star State’s optional marriage courses will be able to save the $60 they would otherwise pay for a marriage license starting September 1, 2008. At least 28 other states have similar initiatives or will soon."

Gay Family Values
Tim Padgett, Time Magazine, 5.jul.07
"The gay adoption boom may be less about support for gay rights than it is about the urgency of finding homes for abandoned children. There are as many as 120,000 in the U.S. waiting to be adopted. After Congress ordered states in 1997 to move faster to find more families willing to take in these kids, 'child-welfare organizations banded together to get legislatures to allow any qualified parent to adopt, irrespective of sexual orientation,' says Rob Woronoff, gay and lesbian program director at the Child Welfare League of America in Washington."

June Shows Gay Marriage Is Winning Friends
Deb Price, AlterNet, 26.jun.07
Support for gay marriage is inching toward a majority -- to 46 percent in the national Gallup Poll released May 26. Support is overwhelming -- 62 percent -- among voters under 35.

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