Rather than promote marriage, perhaps we should have policies that hold parents accountable to their children — Melissa S. Kearney, an economics professor at the University of Maryland, whose just-published book, The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind, is already creating controversy. I appreciate that Kearney clearly does not want to shame or blame single mothers who, she writes in an opinion…

The gray divorcee is proof that we can’t really know if we’re marrying the person who will be ‘right’ for us ‘until death’ — New York Times columnist David Brooks wants people to get married. Addressing some surveys that indicate that parents overwhelmingly believe it’s much more important for their children to be financially independent than putting a ring on it, he writes in a recent column: “My strong advice is to obsess less…

The women will likely have to pay a bigger price for love — When Gerry Turner, a 71-year-old widower and retired grandfather who lives on a lake in Indiana, was revealed as The Golden Bachelor, the latest spinoff of the Bachelor franchise that premieres later this month, I thought to myself, While I’d love to find a life partner, there’s no way in…

Menopause is about to get a lot worse for a lot more women — This summer saw the hottest July on record — perhaps the hottest-ever month in 174 years of record-keeping, according to scientists. We know what that means as far as drought, wildfires, power-grid outages, rising seas, and other heat-related disasters. And we know that an increasingly hotter world impacts the most…

Grandmothers who do intensive child care can have a crisis when it ends — Many students are heading to college in the next few weeks, meaning many parents are about to become empty-nesters. It’s also when a lot of long-married couples decide to divorce — the so-called gray divorce. But for many mothers, who generally do the heavy lifting when it comes to child…

There’s a reason why the actor waited until she was middle-aged herself to question those narratives in an upcoming book — Among the reader reviews I got when Not Too Old for That: How Women are Changing the Story of Aging came out last year was one from a woman, let’s call her Alicia, who was disappointed that I didn’t write about being older when I was younger. As she writes: …

You can follow Kylie Jenner’s lead or follow those who are curious — When Greta Gerwig was filming her Barbie movie and included a small but poignant scene in which Barbie tells a woman much older than she is that she’s beautiful, Gerwig could not have known about the new wildly popular TikTok filter that ages users so they can see what they…

A small scene with 91-year-old Ann Roth that almost got cut from Greta Gerwig’s movie sends its most important message — Barbie-mania has taken over with the release of Greta Gerwig’s movie, Barbie, and among the conversations is a small but poignant scene that almost got axed. …

They don’t always want to put — or keep — a ring on it — Although the character she played in Sex and the City desperately wanted to be married, and put a ring on it twice, actor Kristin Davis has no desire to do so in real life. As she shared recently, “I’m not married, I have never been married, it’s not my thing…