Men older than 50 hate Hillary Clinton, he said: "She reminds them all of their first wife."

What we have heard over the past few decades about life there is technically true - there is a well-developed system of family-friendly initiatives that allows women more maternity leave, better pay and more flexible working opportunities. But when you look more broadly at the whole picture, at where women fit into the wider employment map across Sweden, there are a few nasty surprises.

What we all expect - but what is never actually said - about Sweden and countries such as Norway and Denmark is that because they have such a forward-thinking attitude to the needs of working parents, women have a much better deal, are able to work more effectively and to progress better. Wrong, wrong and wrong again, says Hakim. "Swedish women don't have it made - they still end up paying a price in terms of their career or employment. What you find, if you look closely at the figures, is that there is a pay threshold in Nordic countries below which are 80% of all women, and above which are 80% of all men.

"What is more, the glass ceiling problem is larger in family-friendly Sweden than it is in the hire-and-fire-at-will US, and it has also grown as family-friendly policies have expanded. In Sweden 1.5% of senior management are women, compared with 11% in the US."

And that's not all. Take another barometer of equality - the gap between men's and women's pay - and Sweden puts on another poor show. It is difficult, says Hakim, to get accurate figures, but she reckons that Swedish women are paid around 20% less than Swedish men - a similar pay difference to the one that exists in the UK. Interestingly, other EU countries with a lower pay gap don't show a correlation with better family-friendly packages: Italy has a 15% pay gap, Spain a 12% gap and Belgium and Portugal an 8% gap. None of these countries is held up as providers of great family-friendly packages - indeed, some of them, including Portugal, have systems in place that are not only a great deal less generous than that of Sweden, but also a lot less accessible.

Now that early studies have quantified the frequency of and sex practices that take place during hookups, researchers are becoming more interested in the emotional aftereffects. Some researchers are doing longitudinal studies that follow the same students from freshman year onward, to see how their attitudes change. For her current research Paul is asking more questions like "Do you think your hookup experiences are going to help you be a good relationship partner someday?" The students don't really have an answer. Some researchers worry that hooking up gives students sexual experience but no real relationship experience, which could affect their ability to segue into more adult, committed relationships. But Allison Caruthers, a Michigan Ph.D. student who's doing her dissertation on hooking up, cites research showing that people who've experimented with alcohol or marijuana are often psychologically healthier than people who abstained entirely. She believes there's a similarity in hookups. "People are looking at hooking up as this horrible, wretched thing, but some experimentation may actually be positive in terms of the way you think about sex and relationships," she says. For the freshmen gathered in the lounge last week, the next four years offer plenty of chances to learn those lessons.

Barry Deutch of Alas, A Blog has a post criticizing the effort to create a Kansas Healthy Marriage Initiative:

So let's review:

• In Kansas, when they won millions of bonus federal dollars for their effective and well-run Temporary Aid for Needy Families (TANF) program, the TANF program administrator said "With our recent TAF caseload increases, these bonuses will really be needed to serve additional families" (Kansas' TANF caseload has increased 11% in the past two years). (Source).


• The non-partisan Coalition on Human Needs, in their report on Kansas TANF, wrote that "Kansas needs every cent to serve its low-income families." (Source).


• 11% of low-income Kansas families who return to TANF, could have avoided it if they had adequate assistance with child care or transportation. (Source)

So what should we do? Well, according to the "Kansas Healthy Marriage Institute," it's time to divert TANF money away from helping poor people with little petty things like food, shelter, child care, employment training, and the like.

...At a community summit organized by the Kansas Healthy Marriage Institute... Joyce Webb, director of counseling for Catholic Charities, gathered with about 20 community leaders to talk about what Kansas could do to strengthen marriage by interweaving counseling, research and social policy ...Webb said one key may be money. About $200 million in federal funding will become available next year under a reauthorized Temporary Assistance for Needy Families welfare program, which could be used for marriage initiatives.

Oh, is that what the money could be used for? Well, as long as there's nothing important it could be spent on.

Now, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure which of two possible criticisms Barry is making. Not surprisingly, I think both of the possible criticisms are wrong, and I'll try to address both (Tom is the real HMI wonk on the blog, though, so maybe he'll jump in).

Possibility #1: Barry may be saying that it makes no sense for Kansans to "divert TANF funds away from away from helping poor people with little petty things like food, shelter, child care, employment training, and the like" and towards promoting healthy marriages. This would be wrong because the $200 million dollars available to the state of Kansas under the president's Healthy Marriage Initiative is only available for state marriage efforts. So, either Kansas can launch a Kansas Healthy Marriage Initiative and get some of that $200 million to help fund it, or it can not and not get any of that money. Either way, there's no effect on the other TANF funds that the state of Kansas will receive for more traditional antipoverty efforts; the state of Kansas won't be choosing to divert funds anywhere, just choosing whether or not to take advantage of a set of funds that have been earmarked for a specific purpose.

Possibility #2: Barry may be saying that it makes no sense for the federal government to "divert TANF funds away from away from helping poor people with little petty things like food, shelter, child care, employment training, and the like" and towards promoting healthy marriages. This is a common complaint, but it's a false choice. I see absolutely no reason why there isn't room for several different strategies within TANF, and the ACF makes it clear that

Work is the ACF anti-poverty program. ACF and the Federal government currently provide an array of services to support work as an anti-poverty program e.g. education, child care, food stamps, subsidized housing, etc. The healthy marriage initiative is just one additional support service that is being added to these other support services to increase the likelihood that through work families become self-sufficient.

Here's how this issue was addressed in a statement by supporters of the Healthy Marriage Initiative from across the political spectrum:

Does support for the marriage initiative imply a rejection of economic-empowerment strategies for strengthening marriage? Does support for the marriage initiative imply a rejection of other strategies for reducing poverty and helping families?

Of course not. We believe that these community-based education and mobilization programs aimed at stabilizing and strengthening marriage can be one valuable way of helping families to realize their goals and enrich their lives, including helping some of them to avoid poverty and build economic assets. But there are obviously many other vital public policy strategies regarding both marriage and poverty reduction, including jobs, job training, access to education, legal reform, and numerous others. Supporting one good idea does not require anyone to reject other good ideas.

I just don't believe that spending $200 million on strengthening marriage out of the $17 billion in TANF funds available to the states this year is a serious "diversion" of resources. This is not, as far as the government goes, a whole lot of money, and much, much, much more money continues to be spent on other, more traditional antipoverty efforts.

Honestly, I think this whole line of argument is kind of silly. There are all kinds of things that the government spends money on that could, hypothetically, be spent on other things; I never hear anyone complaining that the $218 million in pork that got sent to Mississippi could have been spent on job training, though. My suspicion is that many of the people who use this line of argument against the Healthy Marriage Initiative actually oppose it for other more ideological reasons, which is fine, but I wish they were honest about what those reasons are.

Government pensions of single mothers have sparked bitter debate in society over the unprecedented and exceptional move in the Arab world.

Opponents see a deep sense of injustice to other female divorcees, who receive a meager one-fifth of the sum allocated to single mothers...

[others] however praised the decision as humanitarian and a positive step as it encourages those mothers to provide for and take good care of their babies, born out of wedlock, instead of handing them over to orphanages and social institutions...

Monicque McKay saw her baby girl for the first time Monday. She doesn't know when the next time will be.

As an inmate here at the Dakota Women's Correctional Rehab Center, McKay brushed away tears last week as she tried not to think about her newborn baby being taken away.

McKay is one of seven inmates who will have given birth during the first year of the prison's operation. Some inmates, like McKay, have the baby's father or a relative take custody of their children until they're released from prison. For others, their babies are put into foster care hundreds of miles away.

Tara Bieber, the prison's medical director, said 75 percent of the inmates are mothers...

"Chronicles," which will be in stores Oct. 5, may have been a detour from Dylan's real work: it occupied him on and off for three years...

Critics may complain that the book doesn't include the back pages they want most: his famous 1966 motorcycle accident gets a single sentence, and there's nothing about his 1977 divorce, his 1978 conversion to evangelical Christianity or the origin and the making of such masterworks as "Blood on the Tracks" (1975), "Slow Train Coming" (1979), "Infidels" (1983) or "Time Out of Mind."

Leaders of two dozen Loudoun County churches and religious organizations vowed over the weekend to support the institution of marriage, saying they hoped to prevent thousands of divorces in the county over the next decade.

The pledge, signed at First Mount Olive Baptist Church in Leesburg by 24 pastors and heads of religious communities, seeks "to empower and enrich life-long marriages and to raise up the standard of two-parent families in the community," according to the document. "In this way, our community will foster an environment that has the greatest likelihood of ensuring the wellbeing of its members, especially its children."

Also at the weekend's meeting were David Weintraub and Jonathan Weintraub, partners for 21 years and founders of Equality Loudoun, a group that advocates on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues. David Weintraub said that he supports the idea of encouraging couples to take inventories prior to marriage but that his agreement with the Marriage Savers ends there. He said he is concerned that those involved in the weekend's pro-marriage pledge are opposed to homosexual marriage.

...Years ago I was very sympathetic (I've been divorced myself) and when things didn't work out between couples, I usually worked out some kind of refund.

That was then...this is now. I came to realize that a jeweler in Southwest Florida with a sympathetic attitude will be filing Chapter 11 faster than you can say "I'm leaving, I want a divorce."

So what's a young divorcee to do with the diamond that doesn't shine anymore? Don't toss it in the Marco River or pawn it. Redesign it.

The advertising blitz for the woman's right-hand ring couldn't have come at a better time. Add a few extra gemstones to the jinxed diamond, wear it on the right hand, and presto -- no more engagement ring look. It says, "I'm single and available."...

But that's nothing compared to dragging children themselves into the spotlight, which Dr. Phil's "systems" approach requires. Like the judges on American Juniors, he does go easier on the kids, whom he generally sees as having been dealt a raw deal in a disorderly, divorce-prone world. Still, Dr. Phil gets them spilling their guts on video and in his studio--and whatever you think of the growing trend of underage reality TV stars, public child therapy is another story. It's bad enough that the 8-year-old boy on the HBO show Family Bonds got filmed crying as he learned to ride a bike. But Dr. Phil goes considerably further. On the CBS special, a 13-year-old was cornered by the camera as he tearfully confessed that he was sure his dad, who had refused to talk to him for a year, thought he was worthless. And the decision to film the subsequent father-son rapprochement as the two communed beside a stream seems indefensible. Eyes darting uneasily toward the unseen film crew, they looked as though they would have liked to crawl under the rocks they were sitting on.

"I'm not comfortable with the poster-child mentality," says Jesse about the unspoken expectations for how children should talk about their lives. "If speaking on the topic of gay parents is reduced to a cheerleading role, where you just have to give them the strength to carry on, you can never have a real conversation about it."

Jesse says that when LGBT parent groups invite him to speak, they usually expect his perspective to be completely positive. "They want me to go up there [in front of the audience] and say, 'Everything was fine. The rest of the world sucks, but you parents are great.'"

He remembers one time in particular when his candid comments made parents especially uncomfortable. "I was under the impression that I had been invited to speak because they actually wanted that honesty," says Jesse. When the parents grew annoyed that he shared difficult aspects of his childhood, he says he felt like telling them: "If you don't like what I'm saying right now, wait until your kids grow up. You've got a baby boom right now, and they look pretty cute, but wait until they are in their twenties." (p. 17)

...Dr Leigh said women were generally left poorer after a divorce.

As poorer voters were more likely to support Labor than the coalition, it followed that as more women found themselves divorced then they would back the ALP.

It used to be that the greatest thing you could do for your country was to die for it. Today women are being urged to breed for it. Propagation is nothing less than our civic duty, according to Trade Secretary Patricia Hewitt, who last week came over all Lord Kitchener and proclaimed: "Shag for Britain: Your Country Needs You."

...In Blairite Britain, children are not individuals whose strengths and weaknesses are to be cherished, they are future recruits for the army of taxpayers that is required to solve the pensions crisis.

...But even the Trade Secretary's comments on the moral obligation to procreate were tempered so as not to provoke a backlash. Because when Hewitt says women ought to have more children, what she really means is well-educated, middle-class women: women who can be relied upon to give birth to a succession of miniature doctors, lawyers and accountants; not single mothers in sink estates whose drug-addict offspring will simply lengthen the dole queues and clutter up the hospitals.

...For all the emphasis New Labour has placed on family-friendly policies (it has improved maternity pay and introduced the working families' tax credit), it is still distinctly ambivalent towards mothers, particularly those who choose to stay at home with their children.

"I protect the single girl living in the big city," says Terrifica, sporting blond Brunhild wig with a golden mask and a matching Valkyrie bra. "I do this because women are weak. They are easily manipulated, and they need to be protected from themselves and most certainly from men and their ill intentions toward them."
...
Terrifica says she will continue carrying on her mission as long as there are still women getting drunk in bars, going home with men they barely know and feeling badly in the morning, wondering whether the men will ever call.

The conservative critique that seems more on point concerns the absence of responsible fathers, a condition that had shaped the Caples family for at least three generations and that speaks more directly to the broader underclass dilemma. The lack of a father means the lack of the income, affection, and discipline that a father can provide. Kids can overcome it, and they do so all the time, but for someone growing up poor, having just one parent amounts to a double dose of disadvantage. Not too long ago, a statement like that would have been controversial; a generation of leftist and feminist scholars celebrated the strengths of single mothers and argued their children fare no worse on average than children with both parents at home. Several large-scale data sets have given subsequent scholars an empirical edge, and not many still argue that single parenthood carries no special risks. (They do argue over the risks' magnitude and the underlying causes of the fathers' absence.)

An illustrative figure here is Sara McLanahan of Princeton, a liberal sociologist (and then a single mother herself), who set out in the mid-1980s to disprove what she saw as the prejudice against the single-parent family. Toiling in the fields of multivariate analysis, she found the opposite of what she had expected. Her 1993 book with Gary Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent, remains a definitive text.

We have been studying this question for ten years, and in our opinion the evidence is quite clear: Children who grow up in a household with only one biological parent are worse off, on average, than children who grow up in a household with both of their biological parents, regardless of the parents' race or educational background.... [They] are twice as likely to drop out of high school, twice as likely to have a child before age twenty, and one and a half times as likely to be "idle" -- out of school and out of work -- in their late teens and early twenties. [italics in original]

They are also more likely to commit crimes. McLanahan didn't argue that all fatherless children would be better off with their particular father in the home; were he, say, violent or drunk, things could be worse with him nearby than gone. But on average at all tiers of society, having a father helps. It's true that troubled fathers are often the product of poverty and social disadvantage. But in turn, they become a cause.

Hattie Mae didn't grow up with her father (or, in her case, her mother, either), and she wound up a repeated victim of sexual abuse. Jewell, never knowing her father, despised his stand-in so much that she was relieved when he put her out. Angie did know her father -- knew him as a drunk. Neither Greg nor Tony knew his father (they both had working mothers), and as they were serving a combined 150 years, their children faced a fatherless future, too. Among Angie's kids, the longing for a father was palpable. Angie saw Redd's gradeschool fights as the product of his smoldering anger over the absence of Greg. Seven when she witnessed her father handcuffed and swept away, Kesha had processed the loss by airbrushing the memory. As she pictured it for the rest of her life, the police returned, removed the shackles, and let a father give his little girl a parting embrace.

The condition of central-city fathers was catastrophic -- but was it welfare's doing? Fatherhood was a troubled institution in sharecropper society, too, as Hortense Powdermaker had found. ("Often there is no man in the household at all.")...

Every movement that seeks to change society faces two great tasks. The first is to discredit the old order. The second is to offer a new one. Without the assurance of a new order, the debate becomes a choice between order and chaos, and order wins. This is the challenge now facing the gay marriage movement. Evan Wolfson, one of the movement's foremost legal advocates and the executive director of Freedom to Marry, meets the challenge with a point-by-point brief. George Chauncey, a historian and the author of "Gay New York," meets it with a wonderfully readable account of the how the issue emerged. Together, they thoroughly debunk the myths of "traditional" marriage. But they fail to clarify how gays can be admitted to this institution without spreading chaos.

Wolfson defines marriage loosely, calling it "a relationship of emotional and financial interdependence between two people who make a public commitment." ... He defends homosexuality as a choice, likening it not to race but to religion and so deserving of Constitutional protection: "As gay people and as Americans, we want what all human beings deserve: both the right to be different and the right to be equal. We want our freedom to make personal choices in life, to pursue happiness. . . . No American, no human being, should have to give up her or his difference in order to be treated equally under the law."

Equal treatment regardless of choice. Think about that. In such a country, you would be forbidden to treat others differently based on their behavior. You would be free to express anything but your morals. No privilege or honor could be withheld. Preferential treatment of married couples under family leave laws would be dismissed, in Chauncey's words, as ''inequities.'' Even granting gay couples all the benefits of marriage but using a different word -- a compromise that moves those benefits halfway toward majority support -- would be ruled out under the Massachusetts supreme court doctrine favored by Wolfson, on the grounds that such semantic discrimination fosters ''a stigma of exclusion'' and denies same-sex couples ''social and other advantages.'' No permissible stigma, no permissible social advantage. This is the totalitarianism of the antitotalitarian.

This larger menace -- the abolition of moral discrimination -- is what frightens reasonable people into joining the antigay resistance. They worry that marriage is losing its meaning and being supplanted by less stable relationships. Wolfson and Chauncey vindicate their fears. ... Neither author asks why couples who can marry but choose not to do so deserve [domestic partnership] protections.

We can absorb gay marriage into our society not because it's gay but because it's marriage. It's compatible with the moral distinctions we already understand and treasure. We don't have to honor every lifestyle we tolerate or treat cohabitation like marriage. It's the enemies of gay marriage who want to make this debate an all-or-nothing, order-or-chaos proposition. Let's not help them.

...Her parents split when she was 12, and she was shuttled between them, and like most kids who grow up that way, she made an anthropological study of what's cool. She was a loud, pudgy kid with milk-bottle-thick glasses, and when she finally settled into high school in Nebraska, she immediately ran for class president. She was thrown out of "gifted and talented" camp for weaving, drunk, through the girl's bathroom one night, and when she told me about it, she described it as "the story of my life": the smart girl getting booted out of a place where she belonged...

..."I can't have kids until I feel ready," I said. In my mind, it was simply a careful weighing of the commitment it takes.

"What is your worst fear?" [my girlfriend] asked.

"That they will feel unwanted," I said. Then, unexpectedly, I broke down in tears.

When I was 4, my mother became a disciple of the notorious Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. She took a Sanskrit name, dyed her clothes orange and began to do loud meditations in our living room. Soon she left me with my father -- they already lived apart -- and flew off to the guru's ashram in India. She replied to my shaky letters with variations on the same answer: "I'll be home soon." When she claimed me back from my dad, she dyed my clothes orange too. For the next seven years, I bounced around the world behind her...