family

Hating Motherhood

by Judith Levine

Feminist thought that has questioned "the inexorable tie between mothers and children" and imagined women's lives without motherhood have been the "demon texts" of the movement; 

Why Hollywood Can't Change a Diaper

by Janet Golden

While Hollywood portrayals of motherhood have adapted to incorporate single and working mothers, popular culture images of fatherhood have remained stubbornly stuck in the past. Would supports for child care and parental leave in the budget reconciliation bill help bring movie dads up to date? 

Family Values, Social Reciprocity, and Christianity

by Stephanie Coontz

Family historian Stephanie Coontz argues in a chapter excerpted here that relationships of care and mutual obligation have been much more complex than the nuclear family.

Women Asked for an Independence Day. They Got Mother’s Day Instead

by Kimberly A. Hamlin

Mother's Day was established by Woodrow Wilson to blunt demands by suffragist and feminist movements for policy changes that would make women "citizens in fact as well as in name." The burdens of domestic work experienced by women during COVID should inspire a return to these more radical proposals. 

A New Deal, This Time for Everyone

The New Deal emphasized that American democracy must be healthy for its economy to enjoy legitimacy, and vice versa. It's time, says NYT editor Binyamin Appelbaum, to extend that commitment to the economic participation of women. 

The Many Faces of the ‘Wine Mom’

Historian Lisa Jacobson explains that the "Wine Mom" meme is rooted in gender and middle class norms regulating women's obligations to their children (and women's desire for freedom from them).

The Coronavirus Is a Disaster for Feminism

by Helen Lewis

When people note that Shakespeare and Newton did some of their best work while England was ravaged by the plague, there is an obvious response: Neither of them had child-care responsibilities.

A Historian Finds Women, Children, and ‘Family History’ at the Boston Massacre

“What happens when we think of this as an event that is populated by women and children as well as just guys with guns?”

A Personal History of Vietnam War Refugee Policies

by Ron Steinman

The story of how a Vietnamese family came to America after the Vientam War and started a new life. 

I Needed to Save My Mother’s Memories. I Hacked Her Phone.

by Leslie Berlin

After she died, breaking into her phone was the only way to put together the pieces of her digital life.