On Tuesday, actor and known conservative Chuck Norris wrote an article for AmmoLand questioning Boy Scouts of America national board member James Turley and the Obama administration for efforts to overturn the BSA’s policy banning gay Scouts and leaders.

Turley is on record saying he “will work from within to seek a change” to the policy, and in a series of questions Norris implies that Turley is pushing the current administration’s “pro-gay” stance on the BSA to curry favor.

Is it a coincidence that Turley came out swinging against the BSA’s century-old policy to ban gays from leadership and that he has such close affiliations with the pro-gay Obama administration?

Is it a coincidence that Turley is in tight cahoots with the White House and that he is the only BSA national board member in 100 years to oppose its pro-traditional family stance?

Norris then attacks the administration for its odd priorities on youth groups . . .

Hasn’t America reached a new low in its history when its president (and the honorary president of the BSA!) distances himself and his administration from the Boy Scouts of America yet invites groups such as the Secular Student Alliance to participate in its faith and college missions? (italics original)

. . . and its overall treatment of the BSA:

Is it a coincidence, too, that on March 3, 2009, Obama became the honorary president of the BSA — a position proudly and publicly held and highlighted by all presidents since President William Howard Taft in 1910 — but that Obama’s induction was held behind closed doors in the Oval Office with seven or so Boy Scouts present and absolutely nothing noted in the White House daily briefing or any other official communication?

Norris might be on his own, though. He has received a great deal of criticism for his stance and, like President Obama, Mitt Romney stated in 1994 that he was in favor of allowing gays to participate in BSA:

I believe that the Boy Scouts of America does a wonderful service for this country. I support the right of the Boy Scouts of America to decide what it wants to do on that issue. I feel that all people should be able to participate in the Boy Scouts regardless of their sexual orientation.

David French writes, “Obamacare could only be constitutionally salvaged as a tax, an expensive and complex new burden on the middle class that will only escalate with time.”

How will it affect your family? Here’s a helpful – and depressing — chart.

Over on The Corner, the conversation continues on Anne-Marie Slaughter’s “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” article. David French writes:

To distract myself from the pervasive anxiety surrounding the looming health-care ruling, I finally read Anne-Marie Slaughter’s much-discussed article declaring that “women still can’t have it all.” I found it to be thoughtful, interesting, honest — but suffering from a philosophical flaw, one that has little to do with the politics of gender and everything to do with our view of the world and our place in it. To put it bluntly, how would Dean Slaughter’s analysis change if she knew that the job that she loved so very much was truly not that significant? 

Read it all here for a discussion of duty versus ambition, and a more proper way to look at one’s parenthood.

Here’s another great response to Anne-Marie Slaughter’s piece, this time in the Washington Post by Ruth Marcus:

The most unintentionally funny part of Anne-Marie Slaughter’s article in The Atlantic, the latest in the “mommies-can’t-have-it-all” genre, comes when she describes her supersonic version of the Mommy Track. “I have not exactly left the ranks of full-time career women,” writes Slaughter, who downsized from a top policymaking job at the State Department to resume her tenured professorship at Princeton.

“I teach a full course load; write regular print and online columns on foreign policy; give 40 to 50 speeches a year; appear regularly on TV and radio; and am working on a new academic book.”

Whew. Just reading about Slaughter’s pared-down, family-friendlier schedule left me exhausted. This hardly seems proof, as the headline claims, of “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.”

Actually, it seems like proof that Women Can Have Really, Really a Lot.

Read it all here.  What do you think of all of this talk about Anne-Marie’s article?

Do any of you feel like “you have it all”?

Nancy French is the editor of the Faith and Family Channel at Patheos and blogs with her husband David at the modestly titled blog, “The French Revolution.”

CNN:

Nice.

Suzanne, thanks for the discussion about the Atlantic cover story, “Why Women Can’t Have It All.” I enjoyed the points you made about “having it all,” as well as Lori Gottlieb’s gentle rebuke of the article’s author, Anne-Marie Slaughter:

I may get Slaughtered (pun intended) for this post, but somebody has to state two basic facts:

(1) Nobody, male or female, married or single, young or old, tall or short, educated or not, pretty or plain, wealthy or poor, with kids or without, can have it all — neither in the very narrow way Slaughter defines “it,” nor in the broader context of life.

(2) Recognizing this makes people happier! In fact, the people who accept this don’t lie awake at night wondering why they’ve been handed the keys to the palace but the gilded moldings just aren’t sparkly enough.

How does a smart woman like Slaughter still believe in the childlike notion that people (of either gender) can have whatever they want whenever they want it, regardless of life’s intrinsic constraints?

Imagine if this article had been written by a kindergartner: “But I want to go to my gymnastics class and I want to go Rosie’s birthday party and they’re both on Saturday morning!” rails the 5-year-old journalist. “Why can’t girls have it all? This is so unfair! Somebody has to make it possible for socially ambitious girls like me to be at gymnastics and Rosie’s party! The solution is to accommodate me by moving Rosie’s party or the time of my gymnastics class. I want justice, because no girl should ever have to feel trapped like this!”

Well, any reasonable adult would explain that the world does not revolve around one particular person; that the child can’t be two places at the same time; that she must choose one activity or the other; and that, in so choosing, she gains one opportunity but forfeits another. This isn’t because the child is a girl. This isn’t a feminist issue. This is Life 101, something all people learn as kids — until they grow up to be a high-level government official who has to choose between one six-figure job near her kids and one far away, and can’t accept life’s inherent limitations.

Read the whole thing here.

Nancy French is the editor of the Faith and Family Channel at Patheos and blogs with her husband David at the modestly titled blog, “The French Revolution.”

By now we’ve heard an earful about the Atlantic cover story that went viral last week — the one entitled “Why Women Can’t Have It All.” The online version of the story features a toddler plopped in a briefcase with a look on her face that seems to be saying, “So what’s it going to be, Mom? Me, or your job?”

The content is no less provocative. In her essay, former State Department official Anne-Marie Slaughter blows the whistle on the greatest lie ever perpetuated on the women of this nation: that it is possible to raise a family and pursue a demanding career (demanding being the operative word) simultaneously — and come out swinging on both fronts. “For the remainder of my stint in Washington,” writes Slaughter, “I was increasingly aware that the feminist beliefs in which I had built my entire career were shifting under my feet.”

That message was the theme of my first book, 7 Myths of Working Mothers: Why Children and (Most) Careers Just Don’t Mix, which I wrote more than ten years ago. The book was specifically designed for women like Slaughter who fell victim to feminist dogma and mapped out their lives accordingly. “Women of my generation have clung to the feminist credo we were raised with,” she writes.

Indeed they have. And just what is that feminist credo? That women should consider children as appendages to their main life’s purpose. To live what feminists insist is the only life worthy of respect, women must devote their lives to their careers. The kids will be fine.

But the kids are not fine, as Ms. Slaughter courageously admits.

Anne-Marie Slaughter did what she was told to do by her feminist sisters — and she took it to the max. She graduated from Princeton University in 1980, from Oxford University in 1982, from Harvard Law School in 1985, and from Oxford again in 1992. The bulk of her life has been spent in academia, and she is currently a professor at Princeton, though her titles and duties over the years have been varied.

Slaughter also delayed motherhood as long as possible. This decision culminated in a “nightmare,” as Slaughter spent valuable money and energy trying to conceive her two boys at the final hour.

Today, those boys are teenagers — and that’s where the Atlantic article begins. Eighteen months into a two-year stint in Washington, in which she worked for Hillary Clinton, Slaughter had an “epiphany.” She was sipping champagne with foreign dignitaries but “could not stop thinking about” her 14-year-old son who was “skipping homework, disrupting classes, failing math, and tuning out any adult who tried to reach him.”

That exact scenario — Mom is thriving at work, children are suffering at home — is one of millions that takes place throughout the country. The truth is that which none of us is allowed to say: Children are suffering — and desperately need their mommies. That’s why Slaughter’s article garnered so much attention. It hit us in the gut.

That children need their mothers is a hard pill to swallow for a nation of women who’ve been sold a script. This script has been clear since day one: A woman’s power lies outside the home, not inside. The more impressive the résumé, the more impressive the woman.

What Slaughter learned the hard way is that her résumé doesn’t mean beans. Sure, it opened doors. Yes, it allows her to mingle with the big wigs. It’s all very impressive.

Except to her children.

And that’s really what this conversation is about, isn’t it? The children — and whether or not we value them. Our actions, our choices, are the only way to prove what we value. The rest is just talk.

Raising helpless, dependent babies to become secure, competent adults is an awesome and invaluable task. Nothing in this world is more important. Nothing. No mother can successfully perform this task if her attention is constantly divided, or if she’s simply not around to do the job. That’s why two parents are so critical for childrearing. This is a perennial that we as a nation cannot seem to face.

Children’s needs conflict with adult desires. Period. End of story. Children do not flourish when their mothers are absent, and they are not happy as long as Mom is happy. That’s part of the feminist script. All children want, all they’ve ever wanted, is Mom. Not in spirit — in the flesh.

You’d think Slaughter’s epiphany would have taught her as much. But alas, no. After all that rumination, Slaughter’s “solution” to the work/family conflict is that America should “close the leadership gap” by electing a female president, along with 50 female senators. “Only when women wield power in sufficient numbers will we create a society that genuinely works for all women. That will be a society that works for everyone.”

Huh? This conclusion totally undermines her so-called epiphany.

We will never move forward as a nation until women start to listen to their gut and ignore those who pray at the feminist altar. Ms. Slaughter says she needed permission from Hillary Clinton to stop the madness and go home to be with her son. With all due respect, that’s pathetic.

The American family is disintegrating before our eyes. The ability to sacrifice one’s own desires for the needs of others is crucial to building healthy relationships. There are no shortcuts. The way to move forward with work and family has nothing to do with closing the leadership gap. That’s the goal that got us in this mess to begin with.

Until Americans start reevaluating their priorities, we will never be successful in raising strong families. The secret to making sense of career and motherhood is to see beyond the here and now, beyond what we want right now. Women today have fewer children than ever and live longer lives than ever. Slaughter is wrong: Sequencing is absolutely the answer. So is creating realistic expectations for one’s life. Stop aiming so damn high. Be satisfied.

To the women of America: Go, get an education. Find a career. But don’t let that goal keep you from knowing your children. Don’t let it rob you of what will ultimately be your greatest achievement. But the only way motherhood can be your greatest achievement is if you put children, not career, at the center of your life. As Woody Allen once said, “80 percent of success is showing up.”

Suzanne Venker is a former teacher of at-risk youth, a mother of two, and an author and columnist. Her new book, How to Choose a Husband (and Make Peace with Marriage), will be published February 2013. Her website is www.suzannevenker.com.

For the good and sensible readers of NRO, not much need be said about this utterly mindboggling story out of Washington State, where one outraged mom had to rush her two very fair-skinned daughters to the emergency room after they returned from school with scorching sunburns.

The reason? The girls weren’t allowed to put on the sunscreen that their mother sent with them to the school. That’s right, their mother had given them sunscreen to re-apply during the day, but the girls were not allowed to put it on. Instead, they baked on a day spent mostly outside in the hot sun.

So, why no sunscreen? According to an ABC report on the story, the state actually outlaws sunscreen because some kids might be allergic to the ingredients in the lotion. As one school spokesman explained, they “really have to monitor” the kids for these allergies.

Uh huh . . . or you could just trust that mom and dad are responsible enough to provide their children with sunscreen to which they are not allergic. The spokesman didn’t comment on whether the school planned to begin “monitoring” kids for sunburns so bad that they require medical attention.

Julie Gunlock is a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum.

The online fund initially set up to send Karen on a vacation is up to nearly $650,000:

The campaign, originally intended to send her off on “a vacation of a lifetime,” has long surpassed its goal of $5,000.

So how will she use her money? “What would anybody do with that much money?” she said.

She’ll invest some, she said, and donate to charity. The grandmother of eight has plenty of family, and “they need, they need, they need,” added Klein, who isn’t sure if she’ll return to her job come fall.

But for Klein, who has since received apologies from some of the students on the bus, the outpouring of support has spanned beyond dollar signs.

“What I am glad about is the fact that it has come out, and everyone knows what goes on,” she said. “I’ve gotten so many notes from people who have been bullied, who’ve been very hurt, and my heart goes out to these people.”

Nice.

Last weekend, my husband wanted to start his Father’s Day with IHOP pancakes. No doubt missing his own late father, he wanted to eat in a place he frequented as a child.

So, we hauled our three young boys down the road to the local IHOP. Shown to our seats, the waitress handed us three folded placemats containing crayons. My boys love these little giveaways — pictures of horses and racecars and cats and dogs to color; maybe a simple crossword puzzle or a maze to tackle. These fun distractions keep my boys somewhat calm until their food arrives. 

But the placemats we were handed weren’t your ordinary pieces of paper with puzzles and pictures on them. Oh no! This Father’s Day morning, my children received a little lecture on how to be a better — to use a nauseating Obama phrase — “citizen of the world” by being environmentally conscience and, of course, fit and trim. 

In the upper left hand corner of the placemat there was a picture of the earth over which the words “Clean Fun” were stamped. To the right, the first lesson: “Time to get busy learning what you can do today and every day to give back to the planet!” Just below the globe, a maze called “Recycle Road” instructs kids to “get recycling” by guiding the newspapers (located at the entrance) to the recycle bin (at the end of the maze).

Directly below the maze is a picture of the USDA’s nutrition plate (the plate replaced the equally useless and widely ignored food pyramid a few years ago) with the message that “It’s important to eat right and exercise every day,” with a link to the government website myplate.gov.  That’s right, children should check out a government website for nutrition information. It’s so old fashioned for children to simply be guided by their parents. Government knows best!

But the real fun was on the back of the placemat where my children found the “Tic-Tac-Toe Challenge,” which instructed them in a somewhat creepy Nazi-youth fashion to “encourage your family to walk or ride bikes instead of driving a car. Besides being better for the environment, it can be a lot of fun, too!” Surprisingly, it didn’t include a 1-800 number where children can report their pancake-eating, car-loving, slothful, and obese parents to the government. 

Oddly, the tic-tac-toe instructions include a shockingly insensitive instruction that the “loser” has to do 10 jumping jacks. Loser? No one’s a loser at IHOP! Someone call the public relations team at once. Imagine all the children running around with low self-esteem because IHOP thinks they’re losers. Wouldn’t “second-place winner” be the more appropriate term here? Thankfully, IHOP offers the loser an opportunity for redemption with the “Sustainable Sudoku” puzzle which instructs the child to “draw in the missing recyclable items so that everyone wins.” Just draw in the soda can, paper bag, newspaper and water bottle and you too can be a winner. Hooray, everyone wins!

The last item on the placemat instructs children to draw “one thing in your life to be powered by the sun,” with the reminder that after they draw it they should “be sure to add solar panels so the sun can power it.” My boy drew a solar-powered wrecking ball tearing down Solyndra’s headquarters. Good boy.

Finally, one finds the children’s menu which is also located on the placemat. It is truly a thing to behold. A shrine to Michelle Obama; a monument to the food nannies; a true reflection of how government pressure is changing the way restaurants are doing business.

Every single food item on the kids’ menu has the calories listed. The breakfast items ranged from 210 calories for scrambled eggs, a slice of bacon and five silver-dollar sized pancakes to 520 calories for a cheese omelet and a bowl of fruit (take note, nannies: the egg and fruit meal had more calories than the pancakes and bacon meal). The dinner options were similarly healthy, ranging from 150 calories for the (no doubt rarely ordered) Jr. Fish meal consisting of a baked filet of fish with a side of steamed broccoli (have mercy on these children and cover it with cheese!) to 490 calories for the cheeseburger and fruit meal. Fries do not come with these meals; those devilish things must be requested.   

One wonders about IHOP’s decision to pass out these placemats and the changes they’ve made to their menus.  Personally, while disgusted by the environmental nonsense, I was happy to see fruit on the menu only because my kids like fruit more than fries or hash browns. But it’s worth asking: Are these menu changes being driven by consumer demand or to satisfy the constant demands of the food nannies and fear-mongering public health officials? And while people may want healthier options, do people really go to IHOP for a healthy meal?

Most people probably just roll their eyes at this propaganda and dig into their syrup-smothered pancakes. My very young children were certainly oblivious to the messages being promoted. I doubt any of the environmental nonsense seeped in. But this type of political messaging (put on a child’s placemat!) certainly does make one ask, what purpose, exactly, do restaurants serve anymore? They used to simply be places to get some food. Today, it seems everything’s a vehicle to push a political agenda . . . even pancakes.

And IHOP should know that these environmental messages might just be leaving a bad taste in the mouths of their customers — a misstep for any restaurant. A recent Harris Interactive poll found that just a third of Americans say they are concerned about environmental issues — an almost ten-percentage-point decrease since 2009. That same poll found only 16 percent of Americans consider themselves environmentalists.

Clearly, IHOP is trying hard to satisfy the enviro-food nannies. After all, a pancake house specializing in fruit cocktail and green-living education is certainly a shift in purpose. Yet IHOP should know that the only way they will ever make these activists happy is when the pancakes are cooked over an open fire with the lights turned off, and when the pancakes, bacon, omelets, burgers and fries exit the menu. In other words: It simply won’t ever be good enough for these hard-to-make-happy activists.

Perhaps its best that IHOP stick to what it’s good at: pancakes. Hold the politics. 

Julie Gunlock directs IWF’s Women for Food Freedom project.

As I’ve mentioned, the “French Movie Club” consists of my husband, David, and my two older kids. Apparently, they don’t want to exclusively see movies my four-year-old would appreciate. So, relegated to babysitting duty, I’ve missed most of the summer’s big hits.

Tonight, however, we’re going to see the long awaited Brave. Anyone else going? I don’t want to read any reviews of the film, because I want to go in with no expectations. However, I did scan these paragraphs from Rebecca Cusey, which whetted my appetite:

Brave, the first release from Pixar to star a female lead, is a bit of a conundrum for the movie critic.

It’s one of those flicks in which a writer should not reveal the central surprise that comprises the bulk of the movie.

Is it a review if I say I liked it very much and just leave it at that? I suppose not. I will tell you, however, that the film is nothing like what you expect going in, having seen the trailer and ads.

The set-up is there, to be sure. Merida (voice of Kelly McDonald) looks at first glance to be your now-typical modern girl-power female warrior. A mess of raucous red hair and inappropriate table manners, she does not want to marry a leader of a local clan and settle into a feminine world of gentility. She’d rather shoot her arrows and ride her horse and let her hair flow untamed.

Girls are as good as boys. They can fight too. Blah blah blah. That seems to be about the only story we get nowadays. But Brave only begins there. That Merida is strong and capable is a given, a starting point. Her mother (Emma Thompson) desperately wants Merida to conform, and not entirely for selfish reasons. The two females talk but do not speak the same language, hear each other but do not listen.

And so Merida comes to her choice and a spell that sets the story on its path.

Intriguing, no? Read the rest of the review here, and let me know what you thought of the movie in the comments section below!

Horrible. This video of teens in Rochester mocking an elderly bus monitor is hard to watch, and the language is rough, but necessary. This is the next generation of America:

The New York Post has more, including the good news that those offended by the video have donated upwards of $400,000 to send this angel on vacation.

Exit question: If this were a black woman being mocked by white teens, the reaction of the MSM would be ___________?

Rebecca Walker is the daughter of Alice Walker, the feminist author of The Color Purple. Apparently, growing up as the daughter of a radical is not as fun as sounds. Her mom always taught her motherhood was a form of servitude and slavery, probably making Mother’s Day aw-kward!

The esteemed feminist considered her daughter a “sister,” frequently took long trips without her, and allowed her to start having sex when she was only 13 years old. (Her mom believed sex empowered women, um . . . girls, because they were finally “in control of their bodies.”)

Alice never allow her daughter to play with dolls, to make sure no maternal instincts accidentally seeped in through her carefully created feminist worldview.

Guess what? They did. 

Rebecca is now 38 years old, has rejected the feminist teachings of her mother, and is a mom herself. Read about her fascinating progression from the teachings of her childhood to the appreciation of motherhood here.

Claire Mahoney already wrote about how Elizabeth Wurtzel’s screed against stay-at-home moms overlooks the growing number of men who are opting out of the workforce to raise children. I’m more struck by how Wurtzel’s piece reflects a bizarre view of the lives of most stay-at-home moms.  She writes:

To be a stay-at-home mom is a privilege, and most of the housewives I have ever met — none of whom do anything around the house — live in New York City and Los Angeles, far from Peoria. Only in these major metropolises are there the kinds of jobs in finance and entertainment that allow for a family to live luxe on a single income.

Perhaps Wurtzel intends simply to describe her personal experience: She has a cloister existence and has only met upper-class stay-at-home moms living in major metropolitan areas. 

She seems, however, to be suggesting that these are the only places where stay-at-home moms exist at all; that only women with power-broker husbands pulling in six-figure salaries opt to forgo paid work when they have children, and then all those women promptly hire a staff to do the actual icky business of keeping house and caring for junior, while they lounge in salons and take yoga.

Wurtzel should be self-aware enough to recognize that she is an outlier. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the labor force participation rate of married women increases with education.  Women with infants whose husbands are in the highest earning quintile have a labor participation rate (48 percent) that just about matches the participation rate of women whose husbands are in the lowest earning quintile (47 percent). Gallup echoes this finding, titling their research into this demographic, “Stay-at-Home Moms Lean Independent, Lower Income.”

Certainly there are well-educated moms with rich husbands who end their careers when they have kids and hire help. And sure, if you have a full-time nanny and housekeeper, then your duties as mom aren’t the equivalent of a full-time job.

So what? That has nothing to do with the experience of the vast majority of stay-at-home moms who get up early each morning, pack kids’ lunches, cart older kids to school, and then come home to clean the house and mind the toddler until the kids come back in the afternoon wanting mom’s attention, help with homework, and another meal. 

I’ve written before criticizing attempts to assign a monetary value to the work of a stay-at-home mom, since they tend to be ridiculous and overlook the real motives and value of parenting.    

However, clearly there is monetary value in the work performed by a stay-at-home parent. Families often have to make calculations about how much it would cost to hire someone else to perform the work of the mom (or dad) when contemplating going back to work or buying life insurance. Wurtzel’s claim that something only becomes a “job” with value when someone pays for it seems arbitrary at best. A family saves money by doing things themselves — whether that’s fixing their own car or raising their own kids. It seems more accurate to assume that if you can call something a “job” when you hire an outsider to do it, one can safely call it a “job” when you do it too.   

Wurtzel is honest, at least, that it isn’t just the semantics that bothers her: She, like many feminists before her, is frustrated that all in the sisterhood — particularly her fellow ivy leaguers who she thinks should know better — make choices about how to spend their lives that she feels are a waste and detrimental to her cause. 

She can rage against it, but this problem for liberal feminists is not going to go away. The simple truth is that many women, including well-educated women, are going to make the calculation that they are happier raising children (or heaven forbid, enjoying life on their own terms) than in the working world. They are going to decide that they can contribute more to their families by focusing on raising their kids than working for someone else.   

Wurtzel says she’s happy with the choices she has made. I’m glad to hear it. Now can’t she leave the rest of us alone and appreciate that we may actually be happy with our choices too? 

Well, it depends on the candidate’s party affiliation. MSNBC, for example, painted Governor Romney as completely awestruck at ordering a sandwich at WaWa. Thankfully, a member of the crowd was filming the complete speech, which gave the full context of his remarks about the efficiency of the ordering process. The difference between the doctored footage and the actual footage is quite stark. (And, notably, it’s so fun to see Governor Romney really connecting with this crowd.)

I showed the kids this video over breakfast to demonstrate the liberal bias in news. (What better way to start the day than scrambled eggs and a little lesson in political manipulation?)

Watch this amazing side-by-side here. You might need some coffee to wash this down.

As Robert VerBruggen astutely pointed out yesterday, Elizabeth Wurtzel clearly needs to get out more. Last Friday, in an article published in The Atlantic, Wurtzel sought to knock some sense into the stay-at-home moms of America and revive the spirit and meaning of the feminist movement:

I am going to smack the next idiot who tells me that raising her children full time — by which she really means going to Jivamukti classes and pedicure appointments while the nanny babysits — is her feminist choice . . . Let’s please be serious grown-ups: real feminists don’t depend on men. Real feminists earn a living, have money and means of their own.

Wurtzel goes on to explain that being a mother is not a job, because every woman can have it.

But let’s face it: It is not a selective position. A job that anyone can have is not a job, it’s a part of life, no matter how important people insist it is (all the insisting is itself overcompensation).

She wonders why anyone would want to be dependent and not “earn their keep.”

When it’s come up, I have chosen not to get married. Over and over again, I have opted for my integrity and independence over what was easy or obvious. And I am happy. I don’t want everyone to live like me, but I do expect educated and able-bodied women to be holding their own in the world of work.

In addition to the numbers Robert points out, Wurtzel’s feminist stances on motherhood making one dependent to “the men who run the world” seem to be out of touch in another way: A recent study shows that more and more men are opting to stay at home as “Mr. Mom,” while their wives work full time as the family’s main source of income. These men cannot possibly consider stay-at-home moms dumb if they opt to become one. The study, “The New Dad: Right at Home,” conducted by the Boston College Center for Work & Family, has revealed that the number of stay-at-home dads has doubled in the past decade from 1.6 percent (81,000) to 3.4 percent (176,000):

Nationwide, the number of stay-at-home fathers — while still relatively small — has more than doubled in the past decade. There were only about 81,000 Mr. Moms in 2001, or about 1.6 percent of all stay-at-home parents. By last year, the number had climbed to 176,000, or 3.4 percent of stay-at-home fathers, according to U.S. Census data.

And the “Mr. Mom” trend can’t be attributed entirely to the recent recession, either. 

“Contrary to media reports about laid off fathers who re-invent themselves as full-time caregivers, most of the men we interviewed report that being a stay-at-home dad is a choice, not simply a reaction to an unanticipated job loss,” said study author Brad Harrington, executive director of the Center for Work & Family.

Mothers and fathers who decide to stay at home make a conscious decision to do so, and for many it is a decision to be active participants in their children’s lives. Comparatively few, it seems, opt to have their children raised by nannies so they can go to “Jivamukti classes and pedicure appointments.”

Sally Quinn’s latest over at the Washington Post’s On Faith blog.

Dahlia Lithwick conducts a very important study at Slate that might change the way you look at yourself forever:

Muppet Theory, a little-known, poorly understood philosophy that holds that every living human can be classified according to one simple metric: Every one of us is either a Chaos Muppet or an Order Muppet.

Chaos Muppets are out-of-control, emotional, volatile. They tend toward the blue and fuzzy. They make their way through life in a swirling maelstrom of food crumbs, small flaming objects, and the letter C. Cookie Monster, Ernie, Grover, Gonzo, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and—paradigmatically—Animal, are all Chaos Muppets. Zelda Fitzgerald was a Chaos Muppet. So, I must tell you, is Justice Stephen Breyer.

Order Muppets—and I’m thinking about Bert, Scooter, Sam the Eagle, Kermit the Frog, and the blue guy who is perennially harassed by Grover at restaurants (the Order Muppet Everyman)—tend to be neurotic, highly regimented, averse to surprises and may sport monstrously large eyebrows. They sometimes resent the responsibility of the world weighing on their felt shoulders, but they secretly revel in the knowledge that they keep the show running. Your first grade teacher was probably an Order Muppet. So is Chief Justice John Roberts.

Read more about it here.  As a “chaos muppet,” I was a little worried when I read the author’s warnings about marrying your own type.  I married another “chaos muppet” sixteen years before I learned of the Unified Theory of Muppet Types, yet our marriage has been good so far!

The author also warns against making this a Democrat/Republican thing.  However, I think we can all agree that Mitt Romney is an “order muppet.”  What about the President?

Please leave a comment to tell me your category! 

I saw a news report last night from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine on how unhealthy supposedly healthy fast-food is for kids. I went and looked up their report, and, not surprisingly, they’re fudging their numbers.

Here was the claim highlighted in the TV report:

Shocker! But how bad is this really?

A six-grilled-nugget meal, with fries and milk (chocolate and white have the same amount of cholesterol) from Chick-fil-A has 75 mg of cholesterol (65 mg from the chicken, 10 mg from the milk); a Big Mac has 85 mg.

But that’s not the whole story. One ounce of boneless chicken has 15 mg of cholesterol. Are we now being told that plain, bland, skinless chicken breasts are no longer healthy? Pfft. Cholesterol is a natural part of even our healthiest animal proteins. A “responsible” physician will tell us that.

The nutrition information suggests the six-count meal is about five oz. of chicken and the nuggets alone are only 110 calories with 25 grams of protein.

A Big Mac has 590 calories with 24 grams of protein. 590 vs. 110: you make the call.

And if you substitute the fries for the fruit cup, your six-count meal, with white milk, at Chick-fil-A drops from 500 calories to 250 calories. 590 calories vs. 250 calories and 34 g of fat for the Big Mac vs. four g for the Chick-fil-A meal. Again, you make the call.

Basically, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is acting irresponsibly. I’m all for healthy eating for kids, but scaring parents away from what is a healthy fast-food alternative is, and I’ll use this word on purpose, a fraud.