This article originally appeared in the magazine Brain, Child. Republished here with permission. Katy’s mother, Donna Koonce, wanted a baby girl. The year was 1962. Donna and her husband, a small-town Texas football coach called Big Phil, had two strapping young sons. But Donna yearned for a soul mate, a confidante, a fashion plate. In […]
When most people think of long-term, multiple-partner relationships, the only thing that comes to mind is probably patriarchal, religion-based polygamy of the Sister Wives and Big Love variety. In actuality, however, there are a sizable number of people living in far more egalitarian polyamorous relationships: folks with two or more romantic partners, in all imaginable […]
This originally appeared on HuffingtonPost.com. Republished here with permission. So what’s your name now? Life used to be so simple. Women didn’t worry too much about what they majored in at college because they expected Mrs. Degrees; to marry men who would support them for the rest of their lives. When a woman married, she […]
This article originally appeared at Charlie Glickman’s website. Republished with permission. I’m generally in favor of anything that gets more discussion of sexual and relationship diversity into the news, but the recent allegations by Newt Gingrich’s second wife about his demand for an “open marriage” after having an affair for six years has highlighted the […]
Alison and I met when we were both fresh from graduate school. It was impossible to get full-time jobs in our field without books or much experience yet, so we both applied and got jobs at a college preparatory organization looking for people to teach high school students how to write college acceptance letters. We […]
Cohabitating is perfectly normal in today’s society. Yet “perfect” is not always what it seems and “normal” may not always be best. According to the National Survey of Family Growth, a 2002 survey of 13,000 respondents, 61 percent of women in their late 30s had cohabitated at some point in their lives, and 28 percent […]
What is it about marriage—an institution that was originally a means of transferring wealth along with domestic and reproductive services horizontally within society and vertically in a family—that we still fetishize so much? A lot of people, grandmas and older aunts and uncles notwithstanding, will tell you that marriage is the ultimate goal. You know […]
I’ve accumulated several licenses after 37 years. These documents empower me as a woman and contribute to my identity. My transition into adulthood is unequivocally tied to my credentials. My paperwork is a timeline of personal and professional growth. When I received my driver’s license, I felt incredibly free. (It’s amazing what four wheels and […]
This article originally appeared on The Nation. Republished here with permission. New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor released a new book yesterday about the Obamas titled, appropriately, The Obamas. It’s clear from promotional materials and Kantor’s own interviews that what’s different about this book is its positioning of first lady Michelle Obama as the pivotal […]
One spring, I am at an art show, and my fabulous midwife Michelle Fitzgerald stops by my show. I’m delighted to see her. She asks after my kids first, then my husband. I stumble a bit, trying to say that we weren’t together anymore. It hadn’t been but two-and-a-half years since she delivered our youngest […]
This week, we came across an article in Businessweek called Behind Every Great Woman by Carol Hymowitz. It explores the changing rules of many modern families—as more women earn high-level corporate roles, more husbands are staying home to raise their children. And since 23% of wives now out-earn their husbands, women now fill a (slight) […]
This article originally appeared on CharlieGlickman.com. Republished here with permission. I’ve been teaching workshops on male gender socialization for about 15 years or so. The foundation of my presentation is the Act Like a Man Box, which I learned about from Paul Kivel’s book, Men’s Work: How to Stop the Violence That Tears Our Lives […]
