Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage by Stephanie Coontz (Viking, 448 pages, $25.95) Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America by Jonathan Wauch (Times Books, 224 pages, $22.00) Marriage is a shape-shifting institution if there ever was one. Those […]
Ann Crittenden
Ann Crittenden is an award-winning journalist, author, and lecturer. She was an economics and investigative reporter for The New York Times from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, winning numerous awards and a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize. Prior to her work at the Times, she was a staff writer and foreign correspondent for Newsweek and a reporter for Fortune magazine. She has been a visiting lecturer at MIT and Yale, an economics commentator for CBS News, and executive director of the Fund for Investigative Journalism. Since leaving the Times, Crittenden has written four books and a play, in addition to numerous magazine articles for publications as diverse as Barron’s, Foreign Affairs, and Glamour.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
What Do Mothers Want?
The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women By Susan J. Douglas and Meredith W. Michaels, Free Press, 383 pages, $26.00 Maternal Desire: On Children, Love, and the Inner Life By Daphne de Marneffe, Little, Brown, 401 pages, $25.95 The natives are restless again. For the past […]
Posted inArticle
Feminist Face-off
On Sunday, April 25, an abortion-rights march — known as the March for Women’s Lives — is being organized in Washington, D.C., by groups such as the National Abortion Rights Action League, Pro-Choice America, the National Organization for Women, and the Feminist Majority in Washington. Here, Ann Crittenden, author of The Price of Motherhood, talks […]
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
The Muscle State
Closing the Leadership Gap: Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World By Marie C. Wilson, Viking Press, 256 pages, $24.95 Americans are currently living under the most stereotypically male leadership we have seen in decades, if not longer. The president is a parody of the swaggering, steely-eyed gunfighter; the vice president […]
Posted inFeatures
Mothers Most Vulnerable
For some time I’ve tried to convince anyone who will listen that mothers — including those who are educated and middle class — are the most financially vulnerable people in the United States. Mothers of all races and income levels are less secure economically than comparable men or childless women, to such an extent that […]
Posted inFeatures
Parents Fight Back
Ms. S. is a young, attractive single mother who used to work full-time for a marketing company in New York City. She was named employee of the month several times, and when the company decided to do some television promotion, she was asked to appear in the ads. She agreed, and, partly because of the […]
Posted inFeatures
A National-Security Gender Gap
We’re hearing a lot about national security these days, but it’s always defined in one-dimensional terms — as protection from external enemies. But there is another aspect of national security that is traditionally recognized as vital to any nation, and this is protection from the internal enemies of neglect, ignorance and despair. These may not […]
Posted inFeatures
The Pregnant Governor:
The Fitness of Mothers Wendy Kaminer’s piece on Jane Swift (“Mama’s Delicate Condition,” TAP, April 23, 2001) has stirred up quite a fuss, and it is easy to see why. The underlying assumptions of her argument are as calculated to shock as one of those tabloid TV shows on “animals that kill” or alien invasion. […]