Articles

To most Americans, the most heart-rending image of the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal had to be that of his ashen-faced wife standing silently beside him at the podium Monday as he apologized for his transgressions and then again, on Wednesday, when he resigned. One reporter noted during the unfolding scandal that Silda Wall Spitzer was "living through the worst nightmare for any political spouse."

Combining traditions has always been a challenge. But it's particularly difficult today because so many older family members embrace rituals that were developed long ago when the wife was home full-time and could spend her days cooking and preparing for the holidays. These traditions are totally inappropriate for today's families, when women work and men share in the household responsibilities, so it makes sense that families are struggling to rethink them. I've seen a…

WHY do people gay or straight need the states permission to marry? For most of Western history, they didnt, because marriage was a private contract between two families. The parents agreement to the match, not the approval of church or state, was what confirmed its validity.

The US census has just reported that in at least five major American cities, the majority of women in their twenties now earn more than men of the same age group. You might think people would have seen this coming. In most of Western Europe and North America, females have been a majority of university students for the past 10 years. In the United States, they now comprise almost half the students in traditionally male fields such as law, business, and medicine.

A recent study shows that, on average, American men now report themselves happier than women do. This is the opposite of what polls found in the early 1970s, when women tended to report themselves happier than men.

Over the past seven years, two small changes in the participation of mothers in the workforce have generated almost as much attention as the initial entry of wives and mothers into the working world in the 1960s. Between 1998 and 2000, the labor force participation of women with babies under the age of 1 dropped for the first time in more than 30 years, falling from 59 percent to 55 percent. Then, between 2000 and 2004, the labor force participation of mothers with preschoolers also fell.