Help Us Stay Paywall-Free

We rely on readers to keep our website open to all. Help sustain a public space for collective reasoning and imagination—make a tax-deductible donation today.

Tag: Children and Family

Will Holub-Moorman

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

Essiah Ritchie

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

James G. Chappel

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

Jennifer C. Nash

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

Michelle Morse, Bram Wispelwey, Dorothy Roberts, Ruha Benjamin

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

Michael Bronski
Challenges to Christian political control are often spun as being threats to child welfare. “Don’t Say Gay” laws are the latest in a long history dating back to medieval attacks on Jews.
Judith Levine

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

nia t. evans, Dorothy Roberts

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

Jonna Perrillo

Laws controlling what schools teach about race and gender show an awareness that classrooms are sites of nation-building. During the Cold War, El Paso public schools knew this too when they taught the children of former Nazis how to be white Americans.

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

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 as fine?

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay
On language and belonging.
Christine Henneberg
My patients and I don’t use words like “choice” or “viability.”
Sophie Lewis

Recent works depict the agonies and rage of being a low-wage housekeeper or nanny. But all fail to identify capitalism itself as the culprit.

Joseph J. Fischel
Arguments that kink has no place in a post-#MeToo Pride may appear reasonable, but celebrating public sexuality is an important step toward a future free of racism and homophobia.
John Crowley

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.

Ben Zdencanovic
Direct payments to families should replace backdoor tax breaks, which obscure the failures of capitalism to sustain social reproduction.
Briana Last, Joanna Wuest
On the surface, Fulton v. Philadelphia poses a question about religious conscience—but its proponents hope it will enable conservatives to pick and choose which laws they have to follow.
Deborah Taffa

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

Ellen Wayland-Smith
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.
Michael McColly
Indifference toward the most vulnerable has driven the death toll of COVID-19, just as it did during the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Against this backdrop, even small acts of kindness can make a difference.
Paul M. Renfro

A new book shows how Trump’s family separation policy belongs to a much longer history of child-taking by the U.S. government.

Julie Kohler
Neoliberalism rests on the myth that “good” families can provide for their own without public support.
Lelac Almagor
Accountability is important. But tests that tie school funding to student performance only make things worse.
Christine Hume
Bizarre restrictions are levied against people on the sex offense registry on Halloween. But do they actually make children safer or simply reveal what we fear?
Peter Coviello
Two recent books about Mormon women highlight the success of the church in redefining itself as a modern liberal religion. But to become that, the Latter-day Saints dramatically reworked both their theology and history.
Gina Schouten

Balancing work-life pressures is often considered the holy grail, but men can still opt out of these policies. To move the needle on gender inequality, the state needs to take more coercive action. 

Erik Loomis
Sixty-five years after Brown v. Board of Education, U.S. schools remain largely segregated. This matters not only because white and black students experience very different educational outcomes, but also because school is where children form many of their ideas about race and privilege.
Tao Leigh Goffe
Jordan Peele's ‘Us’ depicts the terrors faced by black mothers in a way that owes as much to Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved’ as it does to classic Hollywood horror. 
Nara Milanich

The meaning of fatherhood remains elusive, even in the age of DNA-based paternity testing.

Albert W. Dzur
Education’s most important job is to teach students to take an active role in their democracy, starting in their own communities.
Hugh Ryan

Did the success of gay marriage erode the radical potential of queer politics?

Jessie Kindig
A woman’s body is both a site of exploitation and a site of resistance. It is out of this vexed space that the witch is conjured.
Jocelyn Simonson

The Mass Bail Out at Rikers Island shows that freedom is a critical part of public safety.

Deborah Chasman, Merve Emre
The Myers-Briggs Bias: An Interview with Merve Emre
David Auerbach
Through the experience of parenting his daughter, a software developer came to see Google and Facebook as the first digital children. 
Nancy Scheper-Hughes
The pontiff still hasn't commented on Ireland's abortion referendum. That could all change when he visits the country in August. 
Sarah Sharma

From laundry to meal prep, apps tend to mimic maternal care. Is this good for women?

Michael Bronski

Seventies activists wanted to emancipate kids and destroy the nuclear family—so how did we end up with gay marriage instead?

Walter Johnson

A childhood steeped in guns shows that toxic masculinity and racism are at the heart of U.S. gun culture.

F. M. Kamm

What constitutes a good death? On end-of-life care and assisted suicide.

Christopher J. Phillips
It is no longer necessary to feel ill in order to be ill.
Melinda Cooper

How neoliberals and conservatives came together to undo the welfare state.

Judith Levine

Why did the alt-right, so eager to excuse Milo Yiannopoulos, finally turn on him?

Judith Levine

She is the first major politician to support abortion without qualification. And she has never polled better with millennials.

Now’s the time to get our latest issue!

Until September 29, sign up for a print membership and get a copy of On Solidarity, plus four forthcoming issues—that’s 5 issues for the price of 4 (and 50% off the cover price)!

Use code FREECOPY at checkout.

Now’s the time to get our latest issue!

Until September 29, sign up for a print membership and get a copy of On Solidarity, plus four forthcoming issues—that’s 5 issues for the price of 4 (and 50% off the cover price)!

Use code FREECOPY at checkout.