...many of the world's humanitarian organizations have been willing to overlook and excuse the trade in women and children. The reason is as simple as it is tragic: The sex slaves are a high-risk group for HIV infection. Unfortunately, efforts to curb the global HIV/AIDS crisis have led to "nonjudgmental" condom distribution campaigns that ignore some of the world's worst crimes and human rights violations. Indeed, the HIV/AIDS prevention educators often make deals with perpetrators.

For instance, in Kerala State in India, where organized crime groups and corrupt political officials control the red light districts, a former police commissioner tells me that social workers must get permission from the pimps to give condoms to the women. In return, the social workers agree to ignore the presence of children and never to tell the women how to get out of prostitution. It should be obvious that if health educators can't gain access to women and children in brothels without making deals with pimps, the women and children are not free to leave, and are, in the truest sense of the word, enslaved.

Despite higher incomes, better health and much greater opportunity for women, Britons are increasingly depressed, unhappy in their relationships, and alienated from civic society, according to an exhaustive study to be published next week ... Fourteen per cent of men born in 1970 were as likely to admit to depression and anxiety in 2000, compared with only 7% of the 1958 group in 1991. For women the differences in the same years were almost as dramatic - 20% in 2000 and 12% in 1991 ... Of those born in 1970, 22% of men and 24% of women admitted to being unhappy with their first marriage in their early 30s, compared with just 3% of men and 2% of women of those born in 1958 at the same age. Single people too were similarly much more likely to be unhappy with their lot ... Of the 1946 group, 97% of fathers and 94% of mothers when in their 30s were living with their own children. Among the 1970 group, this was the case for just 63% of fathers and 59% of mothers ... "In the latter half of the 20th century the economic and social role of marriage and family gave ground to its emotional aspects," the study says. "This links with the rise of individualism, in which relationships are seen less in terms of social responsibilities and obligations and more in terms of personal resources and fulfilment. When competing demands of employment and domestic work put the relationship under further strain, break-up may seem the only solution."

Roughly one in 10 U.S. adults ages 25 to 34 are living with their parents, according to findings by the National Survey of Families and Households, as well as the U.S. Census Bureau. Current numbers could be higher: Dot-com jobs have disappeared, student debt has risen, and the cost of housing is up nearly 40 percent since 1997. And social trends indicate that the pattern will continue. "If I had to gaze into a crystal ball, I'd say it will increase," says Barbara Mitchell, a sociologist at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and the leading researcher of boomerang kids. "It's not the 1950s anymore."

As the child of divorced parents--her biological father is musician Bill Hudson of Hudson Brothers fame and her mother is actress Goldie Hawn--Hudson decided the best way to start her marriage was to concentrate on being a wife for a while. It was a bold move, given that her star was on the rise and in Hollywood it's best to strike while the iron is hot. Nevertheless, Hudson heeded the advice of her twice-divorced movie star mom to stay home and establish a relationship with her husband. Hudson says it was the smartest move she's ever made.

Am I supposed to believe that some guy who doesn't have more than eight minutes to spend with me at a Friday night speed-dating session is going to have the time and energy to be a decent boyfriend or husband?

This, of course, is what the issue is really about: sex.

Yikes. I don�t think so. Concern about rising levels of cohabitation is driven by the concern that the cultural status of marriage will be further weakened, introducing instability and removing fathers from the lives of children. At this point it is unclear if living together before marriage significantly increases the odds of divorce (once selection effects are taken into account). But when 40% of out-of-wedlock births occur to cohabiting couples, and more and more children live with a cohabiting parent, concern about the implications of cohabitation for children is justified. It is quite revealing that the Times article doesn�t think to ask what this all means for children.

Indeed, according to Rayner, even if you care about family instability, cohabitation need not be of any concern. Why?

It is difficult to assess whether unmarried relationships are any less committed than married ones.

Pace Rayner, it�s actually quite easy to assess whether unmarried relationships tend to be more or less committed than married ones.

First, you can ask people who are living together, Why aren�t you married? Research indicates that �I�m not ready to make that kind of commitment� is a more common response than �Because a marriage certificate amounts to a stamp of approval from an antiquated, homophobic bigot.�

Second, you can observe how people act. Even with high divorce rates, marriage tends to be a much more stable arrangement than just shacking up. Most cohabitations are short-lived; the couples either break up or decide to tie the knot.

�32.9 percent of married girls in Kisumu (Kenya) were HIV-positive, compared to 22.3 percent of unmarried girls. In Ndola (Zambia) the ratio was 27.3 percent to 16.5 percent. The likelihood of infection, therefore, was 48 percent higher for married girls in Kisumu and 65 percent higher in Ndola.

�These girls typically marry a man five to ten years older than themselves,� Clark says. Husbands often are older in part because it takes men years to save for the traditional �bride price� given to a girl�s family. �He will have had more sexual partners, including prior wives, since many of these marriages are polygamous,� Clark says.
Given HIV�s low transmission rate (women have a 0.3 percent chance of infection for every act of unprotected sex with an infected partner, while men have a 0.1 percent chance), Clark says, the risk posed by frequent, unprotected intercourse�far more prevalent among married girls�is a more critical determinant in the likelihood of infection than is the number of one�s sexual partners. This helps to account for the unexpected finding that even single girls with multiple partners are at less risk than their married counterparts.

I am part of a new and growing demographic segment, the divorced, straight, middle-aged male with no desire to put my head again into the legal noose known as marriage. My mother is first-generation Italian and, of course, expects that everyone wants, needs and is supposed to be married. But like I told her, in her day people got married because they wanted sex; now they get married because they're tired of it. When asked if I ever want to get married again, my standard line is, ``What's in it for me?''

It is certainly against Islam to beat a good wife. An erring wife should be warned first and advised. If that does not work, then the husband could give her a light beating, the purpose of that being to embarrass rather than inflict pain.

A wife does have rights. She has the right to ask for divorce from her husband if he is unjust to her. ... Too often, �for the sake of the children,� or perhaps as a result of family pressure, she fails to exercise this right.

An African Proverb: "He who can not dance will say the drum is bad."

It seems clear that for too long, studies and research about black family life have been done by "people who could not dance." ...

Nobles, currently a professor at San Francisco State University, has also been known to peddle "Afrocentric" pseudoscience about the biological superiority of black people. How did this guy get to publish in the Journal of Marriage and the Family?

Functionality of the home is positively related to the parents developing the skills necessary to manipulate the American economic system.

It was hypothesized that different types of black single-parent families will differ considerably from each other.

The state won't defend a court challenge of an adoption law that requires some women who want to put their babies up for adoption to detail their sexual pasts in local newspapers ... Enacted in 2001, the law requires a birth mother to take out legal notices in a newspaper when she is unable to track down a birth father to notify him about adoption proceedings. She has to list her name, describe herself, name or describe the possible father, and list the date and city of conception ... Adoption attorneys blame the law for a 17 percent decrease in adoptions statewide for the first half of 2002 ... Charlotte Danciu, the Boca Raton attorney representing four women contesting the law, said she has never heard of a situation in which the state doesn't even attempt to ward off a constitutional challenge. "I've also never heard of such a ridiculous law in the history of the state of Florida," she said.