Coming of age in South Los Angeles, I’ve seen first hand how families in the throes of poverty struggle. They struggle to put food on the table, keep the lights on, and pay for basic needs like diapers and milk. This year we have an opportunity to change that for thousands of families in California.  → Read More

Like many boys who came of age in the 1980s, I learned that men show their care for others with action. Like generations before me, I was taught to take care of the people in my life, particularly women, by paying for dates, killing bugs that got in the house, being the primary breadwinner, and solving their problems. Caring was defined by doing. But like many men of my generation, I want to be involved in my daughter’s life in a way that’s different from how my dads were involved—or, really, not involved in my emotional life.  → Read More

Do we need to do it all at once in order to be a modern woman, or dare I say a feminist? All of us face challenges and make hard choices. Women supporting each other, especially in this “man’s world” is important for all of us to succeed in what ever circumstance we find ourselves. Whether we’re running a company, heading the PTA, managing a household or working our way through college, women of all ages need to know we have each other’s back. Let’s be advocates for one another because having choices is what feminism is all about.  → Read More

A few years ago, I asked my husband out on a date. I remember this evening in particular because I had to talk to him about something important and I thought that he would not be too pleased with the news. We had made a number of appointments with a reproduction specialist. My husband and I had organized a long trip in the hopes that we would conceive our child. That evening, I told him that I could not follow through with our plan.  → Read More

“What is the point of this again?” That’s the question my thirteen-year-old recently asked on a gorgeous afternoon as she flew through the trees on a zip line about twenty feet above the ground. Teen daughter’s angst one, weary father’s plan zip (literally). I had been trying to find an outdoorsy adventure to wow my two daughters. The trip thrilled my ten-year-old, but my teen’s surprising reaction led to a gentle accusation: “Dad, I think you wanted boys instead of girls.”  → Read More

This is not sexist. It is DNA and it is truth: women are natural born caregivers who, though we may not like to admit it, are similar to men in that some of us are “alpha.” There is always the one woman who emerges as the Matriarch of her clan; sometimes she’s granted the place because she’s the only mother, the clear and natural choice for the position, but sometimes she has fought hard among female siblings to earn that title.  → Read More

Almost immediately after he was born, we realized my son, Zack, was a very challenging baby. He did not cry; he screamed. He was incredibly difficult to take care of and soothe.
As he became a toddler, he began to have lengthy rages sparked by the most minor incident. His unpredictable rages could, and would, last hours. They would begin in a flash and he would literally turn into an unrecognizable child. Then when they were over he would return to a sweet, loving, and remorseful little boy.  → Read More

When I got pregnant, I swore up and down that I would not become one of the many women I knew, both personally and as a reader, whose release from the maternity ward came with what felt like a requirement to shelve their previous interests and write about motherhood. Not me, I said: babies be damned, I’ll write instead about religion, ideology, and sometimes war. But once I became a mother, I quickly learned that motherhood in America is religion and ideology. And it is war.
But it’s not the right war.  → Read More

But rather than pining for family structures of an earlier generation, we heard loud and clear from Americans in this study that government and businesses have failed to adapt to the needs of modern families. Men and women are ready and willing to work out the details of their stressful lives.  → Read More