“Why are working mothers so furious all the time?” I was asked recently. An answer, not entirely rational, springs to mind: “Personally, I could use a travel agent.” It’s a joke, sort of. School vacation is coming up. I’m swamped at work, and trip planning has become a time-consuming hell. A simple family vacation requires innumerable visits to destination websites; …
What was Jed Rubenfeld doing while wife Amy Chua was calling their children garbage and threatening to burn their stuffed animals? Colleagues speculate the brilliant Yale law professor may have tacitly signed on to those techniques, reports Newsweek’s Lisa Miller. One has to wonder. While the Tiger Mother was screaming at her two children to practice their instruments for hours upon hours; …
A memoir of a woman’s take-no-prisoners parenting style hits a nerve. Amy Chua’s email in-box has become the latest front in the mommy wars. Ever since Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, her warts-and-all book on parenting the Chinese way, inflamed the mommy-blogger universe with its publication last week, Chua has been under attack. “Oh. My. Gosh,” she says, when asked …
The leering mug shot, the six dead, including a child—Jared Loughner may be the most unsympathetic defendant since Timothy McVeigh. And death penalty opponents worry his trial could spike support for execution. Death penalty opponents in the United States have become optimistic of late, even cheerful. Support for capital punishment has declined to 64 percent, according to Gallup, the lowest …
Jared Loughner Trial Could Expand Support for the Death Penalty Read More
Families don’t move to Washington anymore, and lawmakers live on the road. Is this any way to govern? In its midcentury heyday, 50 or so members of the Senate Wives’ Club, met at 10 o’clock each Tuesday morning, Democrats and Republicans alike, sitting together in Red Cross uniforms, rolling bandages and exchanging the intimate details of their lives. “We became …
The imam behind the so-called Ground Zero mosque reflects on the “insanity” of religious radicals. How have the events of the summer changed you? We learned a number of lessons, the most important of which is this: the real battlefront is not between the West and the Muslim world. It’s between the moderates of all faith traditions and the extremists …
As recently as 2004, when evangelicals were credited with reelecting George W. Bush, sexual mores defined the culture wars. But as the economy has become the political priority for liberals and conservatives alike, traditional culture-war issues—abortion, gay marriage—have been blunted as weapons in the political theater. As recently as 2004, when evangelicals were credited with reelecting George W. Bush, sexual …
Powerful new rhetoric on the religious right pits Obama and big government against ‘God’s America’—and promises to galvanize Christians in 2012. On Nov. 30, about a dozen moderate Christian leaders gathered for a meeting in Washington, D.C. Their colleagues on the religious right had been delivering a potent new message about God and country, of fear and domination, that was resonating among …
These novels raise questions about modern life. Why can’t we all be a little more like the Amish? This question lies at the heart of the Amish romance novels, churned out now with such regularity—and with such -success—that publishers are beginning to worry that the market is saturated. “We’re seeing Amish fiction splintering into everything imaginable: Shakers, Puritans,” says Steve …
As more of us indulge our passion for local, organic delicacies, a growing number of Americans don’t have enough nutritious food to eat. How we can bridge the gap. For breakfast, I usually have a cappuccino—espresso made in an Alessi pot and mixed with organic milk, which has been gently heated and hand-fluffed by my husband. I eat two slices …