Children and Family

The Care Factory

In the decades since the Wages for Housework movement, care work has become a site of profit in ways its leaders could never have predicted.

The Parenting Panic

Contrary to both far right and mainstream center-left, there’s no epidemic of chosen childlessness.

Who Speaks for Autism?

The movement must reckon with its diversity.

What Are Families For?

A liberal economist and a family abolitionist agree: our economic system makes human flourishing depend on social units it can’t sustain.

Family Feud

Family policing is deeply unjust. The nuclear family is too.

Father of War

My son’s violent illness humbled my sense of control and transformed my understanding of what it means to parent.

The Frozen Politics of Social Security

The tone of exhausted pragmatism—even among friends of the program—is counterproductive. It is beyond time to fight fire with fire.

The Value of Care Work

Without it, society would fall apart.

The Ordinary Pleasures of Black Motherhood

Freedom means a world where how I parent is simply mundane rather than overburdened with meaning. 

The Racial Capitalism of Care

A recording and transcript of our event on inequities in medicine and child welfare.

Grooming and the Christian Politics of Innocence

Challenges to Christian political control are often spun as threats to child welfare.

Father Knows Best

“Don’t Say Gay” laws can be traced to the Reagan-era crusade to put “parents’ rights” before the interests of children.

The “Benevolent Terror” of the Child Welfare System

The system’s roots aren’t in rescuing children but in the policing of Black, Indigenous, and poor families.

Who Gets to Be American?

During the Cold War, El Paso public schools taught the children of former Nazis how to be white Americans.

Hating Motherhood

Some feminists think we can improve motherhood. But what if abolishing it is the only way to alleviate its problems?

The Shocking School

The Judge Rotenberg Center, a Massachusetts school, still uses electric shock therapy to punish disabled students. How can an entire field of mental health accept this?

Unlearning Our Settler Colonial Tongues

On language and belonging.

Why I Provide Abortions

My patients and I don’t use words like “choice” or “viability.”

How Domestic Labor Robs Women of Their Love

The glaring omission in recent works depicting the agonies of nannying and housekeeping.

Working on Our Primal Scream

Amidst a boys’ club of ’70s-era comics, Shary Flenniken’s Trots and Bonnie was unique for its feminist depiction of the political and sexual awakening of young women.

One Simple Policy to Save Welfare

Direct payments to families should replace backdoor tax breaks.

Eroding the Regulatory State

The stakes of religious exemption challenges.

The Millions

A trip to Machu Picchu ends up offering surprising insights into what it means to be a survivor of the genocide of Native Americans.

The Logic of Eugenics Still Haunts Virginia

Elizabeth Catte’s new book examines how Virginia progressives believed the forced sterilization of poor whites would pave the way to a bright future—and how their legacy endures in national parks and prisons.

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