Article here. Excerpt:

'Have you heard about the new organization, Leading Women for Shared Parenting or LW4SP? This is a group of prominent women who recognize that absent issues of abuse, neglect or abandonment, government policy and laws must be structured in such a way as to maximize the opportunity of all parents to contribute to the social, emotional, intellectual, physical, moral and spiritual development of their children.

According to Pew Research on the Huffington Post, there is yet another data point to add to the changing portrait of American parents: the number of single fathers has risen ninefold since demographers began measuring it more than 50 years ago.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'There are a growing number of Jews who are becoming increasingly vocal in questioning both the ethics and the legality of circumcision. Jews in the Reform Judaism movement have already been advocating for an end to ritual circumcision during the past 180 years. What follows is a collection of statements from Jews who question the ethics and legality of child circumcision.

Jewish Americans Support Outlawing Child Circumcision
"I am a Jewish mother against circumcision and in support of passing Bill 1777. For years I was a certified childbirth educator and now a journalist and filmmaker. I continue to educate people that childbirth is a natural event rather than one filled with unnecessary drugs and other medical intervention, and circumcision is an unnatural event. These are two clear-cut examples of interfering with nature."

- Katherine Mora, Jewish Mother
Testimony before the Massachusetts Joint Committee on the Judiciary.

Article here. Excerpt:

'My wife, Amari, was seven months pregnant and we were at our midwife appointment. At this point we knew we would be having a boy. Near the end of our visit, the midwife asked us what we were planning to do about circumcision.

Amari and I are both Jewish and we had discussed it a couple of times before. My take was: “We're Jewish. My grandparents are Holocaust survivors. Our boy is getting circumcised." However, Amari was against the procedure, although she was willing to do it if it meant that much to me.

I had never attended a bris. The thought of cutting off a baby's foreskin made me queasy. That’s when it hit me: How in the world was I going to witness my own son going through it? I put that thought aside, figuring I'd deal with it when it happened.

Article here. Excerpt:

'No one in government can use ignorance as an excuse for tolerating Canada’s dysfunctional legal system: Several recent reports have laid the problem bare.

Last April, the federal government released a special-committee report, “Meaningful Change for Family Justice: Beyond Wise Words,” which stated: “Canadians do not have adequate access to family justice.” In August, the Canadian Bar Association released its 50-page “Envisioning Equal Justice” report, describing access to justice as “abysmal.”

Now we have a new report, “Access to Justice: a Roadmap for Change,” the outcome of a project initiated in 2008 by Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin. The roadmap envisages better dispute-resolution options, more legal-aid funding, plus triage toward appropriate services and other tools for efficiency to help deliver speedier, more tailored service.

Essay here. Excerpt:

'The Chief Inspector of Schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw, has ranged widely in apportioning blame for the abuse or neglect of children in Britain. Those at the receiving end of his tongue-lashing included 20 local authorities, with the city of Birmingham in particular singled out as ‘one of the worst places to grow up in the developed world’.

But Sir Michael was clear about the root cause of children’s problems today: hollowed out and fragmented families, where the relationship between mother and father has broken down or never existed in the first place.

He said (£) the problems exposed in child abuse scandals were being deepened by an apparent national obsession with ‘pussyfooting around’ and ‘making excuses’ for bad parents. At the root of wider social problems lay the alienation of many children from their natural father.

A new petition exists on MoveOn.org, complaining of bias by ABC News. Statement:

'We are offended by 20/20's repeatedly offensive reporting of men as violent, as aggressors, as 'deadbeats' and as the oppressors of women. We are boycotting the television show until they start to present the facts as they are. Men want to be with their children. We suffer most of domestic violence. There are nearly no systems to support us. We are underrepresented in research, in mental health services, in education, and in families.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Based on an example Plog offered — a husband making $200,000 a year and his wife earning $50,000 — under the new formula, the husband's 40 percent per month would be $6,667, and 50 percent of the wife's income would be $2,083 per month, so the result under the formula would mean the wife receives about $4,583 per month.

Under the old system, he said, if the wife's expenses exceed her income by $1,500 a month, a court might order monthly maintenance of $1,500 to $2,000 to help meet her reasonable needs.

"If uniformly applied, the (new guidelines) will promote settlements," Plog said, "but the problem is that the payer will have a gun to the head."
...
The Women's Lobby made the bill a priority legislative issue, arguing that it would promote settlement and successful mediation, reduce litigation, and prevent women and families from falling into poverty. In 2011, single women with children had a median income of $26,705, the lowest of all family types in Colorado, compared with $42,075 for single men with children.

Article here. Excerpt:

'In January of 1996, Michael Jr. was hanging out with Anna and her then boyfriend, Paul Dejongh, when the teen was shot to death. The story was so sensational it ended up a reenactment on America's Most Wanted .

"Her words were, from all I've been told, 'get rid of him,' and that's no different than if you got these gangsters. When they use term, 'get rid of him,' we all know what it means," said Michael.

Anna was charged with murder but jumped bail and fled with her boyfriend. After a five month manhunt, she was apprehended in Oregon.

"I think Anna is as guilty as the person who pulled the trigger," said Romaine.

Paul Dejongh was also captured and pled guilty to second degree murder. All charges against Anna were dropped, for lack of evidence.

"If Anna was innocent, then why did she flee? Why did she stay away so long? She's guilty as sin, and yes, indeed, and she got away with murder," said Michael.

Article here. Excerpt:

'All the employees of school districts on a witch hunt to expel and otherwise permanently punish young boys for shooting toy guns or forming their fists into the shape of a gun need to read “Back to Normal.”

The purpose of psychologist Enrico Gnaulati’s 2013 book is to argue how ordinary childhood behavior is often misdiagnosed as ADD, ADHD, depression and autism — frequently with life-long, disturbing consequences.

But along the way he raises the taboo question of whether we “label boys as mentally unstable, behaviorally unmanageable, academically underachieving, in need of special-education services, or displaying behavior warranting school suspension just because their behavior deviates noticeably from that of the average girl?”
...
And it should give school administrators perspective on how best to handle unruly boys and channel their energy without condemning their nature.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Girls’ academic juggernaut isn’t losing steam.

Female students in Eugene-Springfield metro area schools continue to outperform their male peers in nearly every academic category, new state report cards show.

Girls in the Bethel, Eugene and Springfield school districts were more likely to graduate from high school, have lower dropout rates and outperform male students in state math, reading and writing tests.

Some national research has pointed to the way girls are socialized to explain their greater likelihood of academic success, while other research says school systems are structured in ways that end up favoring female students. For example, some studies suggest that girls tend to do better in cooperative environments where they are asked to sit still and listen, compared to boys who may feel pressured by their peers to be more outgoing and competitive.

A University of Michigan study found that the number of boys who said they don’t like school increased by 71 percent since 1980.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The assault on voting rights is a naked attempt to suppress the votes of minorities, students, the elderly, and the poor. But don’t be fooled. This War on Voting is an essential part of the War on Women.

Nowhere is that clearer than in the recent wave of efforts to disenfranchise voters through strict voter identification laws, limits on early voting, and elimination of same-day voter registration across the country. And since the Supreme Court’s vicious undercutting of the Voting Rights Act last June in Shelby County v. Holder, we are facing even more of an onslaught.
...
What is not commonly known, however, is that women are among those most affected by voter ID laws. In one survey, 66% of women voters had an ID that reflected their current name, according to the Brennan Center. The other 34% of women would have to present both a birth certificate and proof of marriage, divorce, or name change in order to vote, a task that is particularly onerous for elderly women and costly for poor women who may have to pay to access these records.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'But, according to recent reports from CNN, MSNBC and the New York Times, Congress could have gotten things up and running again sooner if women had been calling the shots.
...
As Ann Friedman noted recently, there is some data to support the idea that women in leadership positions are less impulsive, less corruptible and more willing to compromise than their male colleagues and counterparts. But researchers suggest that may be because, with so few represented in the seats of power, women in leadership positions feel they have to succeed because they have more to prove. And for all that Collins and Cantwell may have done to facilitate the deal that was eventually reached, there were other women, like Republican House members Michele Bachmann and Marsha Blackburn, working just as hard to maintain the deadlock.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Violence isn't always physical.

I've said this recently in a work context, though I can't remember the exact circumstances. My full-time job is in social justice research, and violence comes up frequently. It could be about hate crimes, homicides in under-resourced communities as a byproduct of the economic violence imposed on these communities, or a number of other things.

Article here. Excerpt:

'If women ruled the country, the government wouldn't be on the brink of shutting down or defaulting on its debt, according to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.).

Murray spoke to a largely female audience on Wednesday, at an event that was part of The Atlantic's Women of Washington series.

She decried Republican legislation that would shut down the government unless Obamacare is defunded. "The rational thing to do," Murray said, "if there were a group of women in charge, is that we would keep the government running for the next several weeks, and we would say [on] the debt ceiling [that] we're going to pay our bills, and now let's do what we need to do, and sit down and solve our budget problems."
...
Murray isn't the only female senator who believes Congress may be less dysfunctional if there were more women.

Story here. Excerpt:

'A 31-year-old Florida woman is accused of posing as a teenager in order to have sex with a 14-year-old boy.

Naomi Dixon is charged with two counts of lewd and lascivious battery involving a sex act with a child, according to the Daytona Beach News-Journal. The victim told Volusia County sheriff's investigators that he met Dixon at a party in early September. Dixon allegedly claimed she was 17 years old, and the victim said he was 14.

After the two met, they had sex at her Deltona home eight times and stayed together regularly, the victim said. According to a sheriff's report, the victim had a hard time leaving Dixon's home. On several occasions when he tried to go home, she became upset, locked the door and even choked him.

The victim claimed the woman carved his first initial onto her arm with a pocket knife. He told his parents about the relationship on Sept. 25 after growing tired of the woman trying to keep him at her house.'