So, What Do You Do?

A perfectly reasonable question, right? It’s social shorthand for “who are you?” a convenient fall-back in the face of awkward silence or prolonged mingling; polite, simple, safe chit-chat. Um, right? Well, consider: A couple of years ago, I reconnected with an old friend who’d since moved to Alaska. I asked him what it was like [...]

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Freedom, Fertility and Feminism (Redux): The Real Cost of The Pill

At long last: your birth control pills will finally be covered by insurance! The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has announced sweeping new guidelines for women’s health care to take effect Aug. 1, 2012. Among other things, these new guidelines will classify birth control pills as preventative medicine, meaning they’ll be covered without [...]

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Maybe, Baby (But Not Yet)

Life begins at 40? I don’t know about that, but, for an increasing number of American women, 40 is around the time motherhood begins. The CDC, which surveyed data between 2007 and 2009, found that the birth rate for women over 40 in the United States rose steadily in those two years. In other age [...]

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Caught in the bubble? It’s about the genes …

Or, you know, the jeans. What got me thinking today was word of a new study suggesting that one of the reasons we birds of a feather flock together could be more than a common interest in flying south.  It turns out, there’s often genetic similarity in the folks we choose as friends. As in: [...]

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Beware the Echo Chamber

Is this the trouble with girlfriends?  They tell us what we want to hear? That’s what controversial writer Lori Gottlieb (she of “Marry Him: The case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough” fame) suggests in a piece in the July issue of Marie Claire that I came across the other day.   She’s writing mainly about [...]

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The Case(s) For (And Against) Settling For Good Enough

I’m guessing by now you’ve heard about Lori Gottlieb’s new book, based on her contentious 2008 Atlantic essay I wrote about awhile back. Charmingly entitled “Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough,” the book has earned a ton of ink, both positive and negative, and the movie rights have already been snapped [...]

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Too Many Choices… In Bed

As it is in fortune cookies, so it is in women’s lives and the choices they face… which is to say that, while the greatest measurable strides we’ve made have been in the realm of work–even, perhaps, as a result of those strides–we’ve found ourselves stumped when it comes to the choices we face over [...]

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