“If men could menstruate,” Gloria Steinem observed wryly in an iconic 1978 essay for Ms. magazine, “[s]anitary supplies would be...

One of my favorite books to recommend to new parents is The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind. In it,...

Last year I learned how to chop a carrot with my eyes closed. While being filmed. Sounds like one of those crazy reality cooking shows,...

The National Museum of Civil War Medicine asked me to write a blog post about how women handled menstruation in the nineteenth century,...

For three decades, my dad’s brothers framed houses. The three of them had a small construction business in rural Connecticut. The eldest...

In childbirth politics as in all politics, extreme viewpoints make the news, and sensible centrists are ignored. A couple of years ago,...

My friend’s father is in the hospital, and it’s been rough. His cancer treatment did not go as expected. “He’s suffering so much!” my...

I was born into 1970s feminism. I came into the world in 1972, the year Free to Be You and Me came out. It must have made a big...

“We are a divided nation,” Donald Trump repeats again and again. And then he makes plans to divide us still further: registration of...

“What makes a mother real?” asks writer and performer Alice Eve Cohen in her newly-published play, What I Thought I Knew. In 1999, Cohen...

“His BMI is on the high side of normal. See?” The pediatrician showed me a chart. “This is something we need to keep an eye on.” I had...

A year and a half ago, I gained a permanent dance partner. That’s what I’ve decided. That’s how I need to think about the damage to my...

“Sorry,” I say, “Sorry, but would you mind giving me the directions again a little slower? I have a visual impairment and I didn’t see...

The Indiana legislature claims it wants to protect unborn children and their parents. Last week Governor Mike Pence gave his blessing to...

This week I had the pleasure of interviewing historian Jessica Martucci at length about her new book, Back to the Breast: Natural...

Friday night I went to Joe’s Pub and saw B.A.N.G.S.: made in america, a wonderful dance performance full of sequins and fur, cutoffs and...

As a kid, I loved shooting a rifle with my uncle, out back at my grandmother’s farmhouse. My dad and I would go out with Uncle Bill, in...

The year my second son was born, I went to work, and my husband stayed home. It was the most luxurious year of my life. In the mornings,...

A friend of mine recently lamented that when he sat his teenage son down to have “The Talk,” he had to focus on the internet instead of...

This is my fantasy: I’m standing at the Main Street corner in my little New Jersey suburban downtown, waiting to cross the street. As...