Ladies and gentlemen, your moral authority!

Is the problem really that people aren't hooking up? Or is the problem that the culture isn't very hospitable to working parents? Because that seems like the likelier issue.

One study found that covering contraception lowered premiums by 10 percent or more.

My friend's three year old had a meltdown in TJ Maxx, and as my friend was carrying her out, the three year old starts screaming, "Put me down. You're not my mother. Put me down. Help! Help!" Then my friend's five year old helpfully suggested, "Mom, come on, just leave her."

That's tricky where she's kind of sensitive. On long car rides, my mom used to play a kind of game with us where she'd ask us, "What would you do if..." She always said it lightly and cheerfully and it was almost never something truly traumatic (more like, "What would you do if someone broke into the house", not…

I have a friend who is currently attending a Catholic college and we've had a number of arguments recently about the Church's political adventures (with him defending them). The bishops are now actually making my argument for me. If the Catholic Church gets to make up its own rules for its employees based on…

Let's not give them any ideas, shall we?

Most very small companies are exempted from these rules. For instance, your parents' employees aren't covered under the FMLA because the company is too small. I believe the same is true for the breast feeding requirement.

Yeah, I would hate it, too. But, hey, different strokes.

I have a friend who lives like this. She and her boyfriend have been together for eight years and have a six year old son. Money got tight after the boyfriend lost his job, so he went to live with with his brother and mother and she moved in with a friend who had an extra bedroom. The son shuttles back and forth…

I feel like Ron Paul would argue that an employer could have you take a drug test and if you don't like it you should go find a job that doesn't drug test. Then, if enough people don't like it, the company won't be able to find employees and will be forced to change their policy and that's the free market at work. …

Pro-lifers have this fantasy that if a woman just sees the ultrasound and hears the heartbeat, she will be so moved by the idea of life growing inside of her that she will be unable to go through with the abortion. In reality, all the ultrasound does is make women who already feel guilty about getting an abortion…

Totally true. Even by 9 weeks when I had my first ultrasound, there was a heartbeat but the image just looked like a cashew. Since I was delighted to be pregnant, it was the most beautiful cashew I had ever seen. If I had not wanted to be pregnant, though, I'm pretty sure I would have thought, "Eh, a cashew that…

I imagine that having a second kid is analogous to getting a second dog. You think, "Okay, it'll be twice the work, but that's okay, I can handle that." Somehow, though, it winds up being the amount of work squared.

A friend of mine grew up on a reservation and anytime she talks about what that was like, I want to go punch Andrew Jackson. But this has brought me to a whole new level of ragey.

Holy fucking hell! The company had to create a special area for the parents?! How can these parents possibly think that they're doing their kid any favors? I mean, if it's a fifteen year old, yeah, fine, someone's got to give them a ride. Go sit in the lobby with a magazine or something. But for someone who is…

When I was in seventh grade, there was a new social studies teacher that all the girls thought was a creep. If the class had to go outside for anything (like a fire drill) you never wanted to be the last one in the building, because he'd put his arm around you or put his hand on your waist. He would walk around the…

It's always time for a Joan Holloway gif.

I'm pretty sure that, if you look like Christina Hendricks, you can get away with telling a guy you'd like to start a family with him a couple of weeks after you start dating. Actually, I'm fairly certain that you could get away with telling your new boyfriend you'd like to murder his whole family. That woman is…

A friend of mine gave birth to her twelve pound baby without an epidural. In the months leading up to the birth, she had been going on about how she was going to do it all natural, etc. When I saw her after the birth, she said, "Yeah, okay, I've proved I'm tough. I'm not doing that again. Next time I take the…