Ruth Institute Blog

From NPR. Click to listen.

Some scientists have proposed that when a woman has a baby, she gets not just a son or a daughter, but a gift of cells that stays behind and protects her for the rest of her life. That’s because a baby’s cells linger in its mom’s body for decades and — like stem cells — may help to repair damage when she gets sick. It’s such an enticing idea that even the scientists who came up with the idea worry that it may be too beautiful to be true.

Found here.

An urban high school teacher in Connecticut talks about unwed motherhood, fatherlessness, and how it affects the kids in his classroom.

by Gerry Garibaldi

…Here’s my prediction: the money, the reforms, the gleaming porcelain, the hopeful rhetoric about saving our children—all of it will have a limited impact, at best, on most city schoolchildren. Urban teachers face an intractable problem, one that we cannot spend or even teach our way out of: teen pregnancy. This year, all of my favorite girls are pregnant, four in all, future unwed mothers every one. There will be no innovation in this quarter, no race to the top. Personal moral accountability is the electrified rail that no politician wants to touch… Read more…

by Erika Bachiochi

Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Vol. 34, No. 3, Summer 2011

Abstract:

Within legal academic circles and the general pro-choice feminist population, it is axiomatic that women’s equality requires abortion. Indeed, pro-choice legal scholars, foremost among them Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, have argued that the Equal Protection Clause provides a far more appealing constitutional justification for the abortion right than the roundly criticized right to privacy offered in Roe. Read more…

Marcia Segelstein – OneNewsNow Columnist -

Authors Suzanne Venker and Phyllis Schlafly, in their new book, The Flipside of Feminism, have courageously laid bare the false premises — and promises — of “the women’s movement.”  And they have mercilessly quantified, to the extent possible, the negative effects that the feminist movement has had on American culture. Read more…

from Yahoo News:
France’s top court refused Wednesday to allow French citizenship for 10-year-old twin girls born to a surrogate mother in the United States, in a ruling that affirmed France’s legal ban on surrogacy.

In a case straddling international legal rights and bioethics, the Court of Cassation ruled a California county went too far by ruling that a French couple are legally the twins’ parents.

Keep reading…

“Surrogacy is also banned outright in most European countries, including Germany, Spain, Finland, Italy, and Switzerland. But the French have articulated the reasons for this rejection most eloquently”: Read more…

At most Pregnancy Centers you’ll find a (regrettably) thriving Post Abortion Syndrome Support group – and many of the volunteers at the clinic are often members.

Those of you who have been hurt by abortion (or know someone who has) will want to read this.

For more information, visit Abortion Recovery InterNational’s websites: Read more…

I could see Ari appreciating this article. More stories of people abandoning their families for love—only this time love of themselves. Is making any sort of self-sacrifice for others, particularly those whom you  married or created, passe now? What happened to commitment? What ever benefit these women sugarcoat the abandonment of their children with, does not cover the harm and the crime they committed. Heaven forbid any mothers hold these women up as examples.

by Mariette Ulrich

Salon, the Woman’s Day of the Manhattan set, has a feature called Real Families, described on the site as “a personal-essay series that celebrates the surprising and ever-shifting nature of domestic life in the 21st century.”

“Surprise” is hardly the word for what I felt, though, when I came across an account of Salon’s latest “real life” in an article on Yahoo. It was, by turns, so depressing and exasperating, I hardly knew where to being writing about it.

The original story is headed, “Why I left my children”. Here is the gist of it. Read more…

Two of Dr J’s recent “Issues, Etc.” interviews are now available here and on our podcast page.  Yesterday’s interview was on  Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, the author who decided she no longer wanted to be bothered with motherhood or marriage.  February 4th’s interview concerned Barbara Bush and New Yorkers for Equality.

by Rachel Campos-Duffy

During my appearance on “The View” this week, Barbara Walters asked me, “Did you ever think, ‘I wish I had a career and I didn’t have six kids?’ ”

It was a provocative question, especially since baby #6 was sitting on my lap at the time. I simply responded, “Being a mom is the best job in the world!”

Politico called the answer “diplomatic,” and National Review’s Kathryn Lopez tweeted that it was “graceful,” but I couldn’t help being disappointed with my response. Not that it wasn’t true -– being a mom is the best job in the world – but I felt that a question as culturally loaded as this one deserved a better answer, especially from someone who has written countless columns and an entire book on the subject of at-home motherhood and the sad fact that our culture does little to applaud or elevate this noble calling. Read more…

by Mariette Ulrich

According to this Wall Street Journal blog piece:

That’s the question of new, dueling research articles out in the February issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family, which try to explain the decline in marital happiness of some new mothers.

I don’t need a research article (never mind two) to answer that question. When I had my first baby, my “decline in marital happiness” could be summed up in one word: exhaustion. Chronic sleep deprivation can undo your sanity, never mind your relationships. But I’m being facetious. Overall, my marital happiness didn’t decline; it changed—into something richer, fuller, certainly more challenging, but ultimately soul-expanding. My marriage changed, but that’s what you can expect with any major life transformation, which parenthood undoubtedly is.

This line is slightly amusing: Read more…

by Carolyn Moynihan

The “maternal brain” debate has spiked again with the release of a study showing increased grey matter in the brains of mothers who have recently given birth.

I am catching up with slightly old news, here, and although there were only 19 women involved in the (US) study it is an interesting counter to periodic reports that “women’s minds turn to mush during pregnancy and birth”, as the Telegraph puts it. Read more…

by Carolyn Moynihan

One of the most studied aspects of childhood in recent decades is early, non-maternal childcare. Research tends to show benefits for a child’s cognitive development but not for emotional wellbeing and behaviour. Now a study has found that youngsters are less likely to succeed at school if their mothers return to work within a year of their birth. Read more…

Lately there have been quite a few blog posts about the goings-on at last weekend’s Catholic Women’s Conference in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where Dr J gave two talks.  They’re now available on our podcast page so you can go straight to the source.

Female without Apology

Marriage without Adjectives

I thought this was interesting enough to share. Anyone with children should take heed.

by Mary Rice Hasson

James, a teacher-friend of mine, lamented recently how “morally challenged” his high school students seem to be. “They don’t think twice about lying or slamming someone’s reputation. Cheating on tests is no big deal. They only worry if they’ll get caught.” Read more…

Economists have known for a long time that discrimination per se accounts for relatively minor part of the wage differences between men and women. By far the largest factor is the impact of children on people’ work/life decisions. Children affect men and women differently. This was already very apparent in data when I started in economics back in the 1970′s.

Now, here is a story from USA Today that demonstrates that the process of wiping out labor market discrimination is complete:

Single, childless women in their twenties are finding success in the city: They’re out-earning their male counterparts in the USA’s biggest metropolitan areas.
Women ages 22 to 30 with no husband and no kids earn a median $27,000 a year, 8% more than comparable men in the top 366 metropolitan areas, according to 2008 U.S. Census Bureau data crunched by the New York research firm Reach Advisors and released Wednesday. The women out-earn men in 39 of the 50 biggest cities and match them in another eight. The disparity is greatest in Atlanta, where young, childless single women earn 21% more than male counterparts.

Take away the impact of children, and voila! No more wage difference. Read more…

Nice sound, eh? I met the brains behind CatholicMom, the original Catholic Mom, Lisa Hendrey, at the NACFLM conference this past weekend. I don’t know how she does it. I thought I was hyper-active. Check out this site of hers, all you Catholic Moms! Or non-Catholic moms. Or Jewish dads. Or, whatever!
she also blogs at the Faith and Family blog, put out by Circle Media.

Bishop Victor Galeone of St. Augustine tells a story that his mother told him, 30 years ago.  I didn’t know that this kind of pressure was being exerted on the poor as far back as the Great Depression.

[My mother] continued: “I’m going to tell you something that I’ve told no one except your father. It was during the Depression years. The social worker came by to see how things were going. I told her that everything was fine except that I had missed two of my periods in a row.

“‘Oh that’s very bad news, Signora Rita! I’ll come back on Thursday afternoon and take you to see this doctor, and he will make your period come.’   Read more…

By Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse

This article was first published May 12, 2010, at the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. 

Well, we have survived another Mother’s Day. But what is the holiday really all about, besides an excuse to sell chocolates, flowers, greeting cards and a bit of guilt? Why should we “celebrate” motherhood, when motherhood itself is under attack, or at least, undergoing some kind of cultural renovation? Read more…

Chuck colson’s Center just published an article of mine by that title.

We’ll have the whole thing up soon, I’m sure. In the meantime, here is a snippet. And don’t forget to visit the Colson Center for more cool info.

As a woman who has given birth to a child, who has been an adoptive mother, and who has been a foster mother, I think I know what I’m talking about here. It really wouldn’t have been good for our son for us to share parental rights with his birth mother in Romania. And we actually did kind of share parental rights with the birth parents and the social workers when we were foster parents. The birth parents did not have custody of their children, but they still had the right to see their children. Read more…

Can we judge the status of a woman by her pay check? Have women arrived when they have half the seats in the legislature and their husbands do half the chores at home? This is Part I of a symposium by Mercatornet.com on improving the status of women by 2020.

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse’s take on the situation:

I have a radical idea for promoting the dignity of women: the idea that giving birth to children inside marriage is good and worthy use of one’s time and talent. This idea has come under assault from many directions. Read more…