I have followed your posts on the fathers' rights movement with interest. Initially, I was predisposed to think of most nonresidential fathers as the primary "bad guys" in these family dramas. But, for a range of reasons, I have spent a lot of time with working class nonresidential fathers in the last two years. And my views have changed a good deal. Many of the nonresidential fathers I speak with complain that their ex-wives divorced them involuntarily, separating them from the children and the home they had played a central role in establishing. (Bear in mind that about 66 percent of divorces involving children are initiated by mothers.) These fathers are then required to send a significant portion of their wages to the family that no longer includes them.

They also have to deal with courts that tend to treat them in a prejudicial fashion when allegations of domestic violence or abuse emerge (and they often do). Partly as a consequence, a number of them have or had restraining orders that limit their ability to contact their ex-wives or their children imposed unjustly. In one case, I observed a wife who had put a restraining order on her husband approach her husband on a job site (they were in the middle of a divorce). He tried to back off but she kept following him. The same day she filed a false report with the local sheriff that her husband had broken the restraining order. He was then thrown in jail and was not freed until a few days later when I testified in family court.

I am not suggesting these men are blameless. These fathers are not the sensitive souls that our society now values. And some of them may have been difficult or bad husbands. But our legal system no longer provides marriage, and the parties to marriage, any significant legal support. So these fathers -- especially the ones who were at least halfway decent -- have no recourse when their wives seek to break their wedding vows. They are left to find a small apartment, see their children occasionally, and send part oftheir comparatively small paycheck to the woman who abandoned them. No wonder that many of them are not the best fathers.

I am not sure exactly how we as a nation should respond to this situation. Clearly, we need to do a better job of making men better husbands and fathers. And we cannot tolerate documented cases of domestic abuse. But we also need to change public policies and social norms that allow for"easy divorces" that often hurt women, children, and -- truth be told -- men also. We also need to change family laws that treat fathers in a prejudicial fashion. Finally, we need to be much more careful about how we think and talk about nonresidential fathers.

...Sons and daughters are often inconsistent when they choose kinship terms to refer to their parents' partners. Without a universally understood name for that relationship, children will say "other mother," "stepmother," or simply call her by her first name. In reference to the couple, a child might say "my mom and her partner," "my moms," and "my parents" all in the same conversation...

Children of LGBT parents are challenged to find concise and inclusive ways to refer to themselves as a group. One way is to refer to someone as a "colager," which derives from COLAGE -- Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere. ...Another term, "queerspawn," was coined by Stefan Lynch, the first director of COLAGE. "Queerspawn" has been considered a more radical term, and while some children find it offensive, some people in this book use the term proudly.

I understand that the college wants kids to get off campus and explore the city... [but] this can get very expensive for kids to eat out every single weekend...

Luckily, my children aren't as mathematical in their dispensing of love and time as I am. Yes, they adore Diveka [the nanny], who is about as patient and caring as they come. But for Phoebe and Abby, love is not a finite quantity; that is, it's not as if the more they love her, the less they love their parents. For them, there is a seemingly unlimited well to tap; the greater the number of people to love and to love back, the better. You don't have to have 20 years of formal education to learn that math lesson.

Regarding your blog comments today about Baskerville's recent criticisms of you, as a writer I can certainly understand how words and phrases can be taken out of context. In this case, however, I am less than convinced. The controversy between you and fathers' rights advocates goes back many years, long before I was involved in the movement or even knew that there was a significant fathers' rights movement. By the time I read your book I was aware of this controversy, but I can assure you that I did not have (and still do not have) any personal ax to grind with you. As I wrote to you at the time, I found your book moving and compelling. However, in reading it I interpreted your beliefs about fathers and fatherlessness just as Baskerville did -- that you were placing the blame for fatherlessness squarely on fathers. Perhaps this is not what you meant, but it is a reasonable conclusion.

Your comment on your blog today that "Baskerville's main point -- and the main point of the fathers rights movement in general -- [is] that fathers are always the victims, and everyone else is always to blame" is not accurate. Many times I've read or heard Baskerville acknowledge the role of paternal abandonment in fatherlessness, though he does believe it to be a minor factor. I've acknowledged paternal abandonment and paternal misconduct as a factor countless times on the air and in my newspaper columns. What seems to be missing from this debate is not an admission from fathers' groups that fathers are sometimes to blame, but an admission from you and your cothinkers that fathers sometimes are not to blame.

...Pollster George Barna suggests one reason the divorce rate isn't higher among non-Christians is that many don't bother to marry their partners in the first place…

...Yes, I'm happy that she's heading out into the world to create her own set of experiences and establish her own identity. But what I'm really happy about is that those six hours a week that she spends in the classroom are now six hours that move out of my nanny's column on the Official Scorecard of Quality Time. Ask any full-time working mother and she'll know what I'm talking about. We sit at our desks, or on the train, or lie awake at night crunching the numbers. No matter how many times I add up the hours my nanny, Devika, spends with Phoebe and her 10-month-old sister, Abby, and compare them to the hours my husband and I spend with them, I am convinced that somehow, this time, we are going to come out on top.

If you look at the scorecard strictly by the numbers, it's depressing. I leave the house at 8:30 in the morning and return at 6:30 at night. That's 10 hours I'm away from my children every weekday. I have two hours with them in the morning and 1 1/2 hours at night. That means the average weekday score is 10 points for the nanny, 3 1/2 points for me. And that half-hour is not insignificant. A coworker used to wonder why I would get so upset if I missed the 5:39 train when there was another one rolling in a mere 20 minutes later. I explained it to him by the numbers: 20 minutes equals almost 10 percent of my entire day with my daughters...

At the outset of his otherwise admirable book, Blankenhorn makes a vitally important but unsubstantiated assertion that lies at the heart of his claim to be an authority on the fatherhood crisis. "Never before in this country have so many children been voluntarily abandoned by their fathers," he writes (p. 1). "Today, the principal cause of fatherlessness is paternal choice...the rising rate of paternal abandonment" (pp. 22-23).

Blankenhorn cites no source and evinces no evidence for these assertions. Aside from the question of how he can be privy to the volition of other people, this statement represents an odd abdication of the scholar's critical function. He seems to take it at face value that because children do not live with their fathers, therefore their fathers have abandoned them.

You pour Tequila Don Julio when:

A) Your best buddy is getting married.

B) Your best buddy is getting divorced.

And, yet, marriage is meant to be communal as well as couple-centered both in its means and its meanings. At the most practical level, it is our friends, our brothers and sisters in the church, our aunts and uncles and colleagues, who can remind us why we got married in the first place. It is this community that, when we lay our marriages bare before them, are able to hold us accountable, and also celebrate with us. This is what the Book of Common Prayer's Order of Marriage is getting at when it prompts the celebrant to ask the congregation if "all of you witnessing these promises [will] do all in your power to uphold these two persons in their marriage?" The congregation's response is a hearty "We will." If we Christians want to get our divorce rates down below the national average, rendering our marriages visible to our communities-opening ourselves up to our friends' support, prayers, questions, and rebuke-would be a good place to start.

It is, of course, a salutary thing to suggest, as Stark does, that our frantic jobs are less important than the fabric of our marriages. But is the "solution" to America's married sex "crisis" really simply to work harder at sex-an idiom that befits a society in thrall to advanced capitalism? Maybe roommate-like status is not what we ought to be aspiring to in marriage—but neither is the thrill and romance that one associates with one's fondly remembered dating days. (Why bother with marriage if the romance of dating is all you're after?) Surely what married people should aspire to is, well, living as husband and wife.

Enjoy the occasional weekend getaway at a B&B, sure, but create an eros situated squarely in the household. That means not just sex and candlelight, but much more often sex and domesticity, sex and routine, sex that is part of, rather than abstracted from, the day-to-day life that is marriage. Our task, then, may not be to "work harder" at romance and desire, but rather to reconceptualize eros. Our task may be to move away from the logic that tells us that erotic love is the thing that married couples try to approximate at the end of their date nights, and to adopt instead a robustly domestic and household sexuality. Our task may not be to cultivate moments when eros can whisk us away from our ordinary routines, but rather to love each other as eros becomes imbedded in, and transformed by, the daily warp and woof of married life.

THE high rate of divorce should be celebrated as the major sign of progress in the feminist movement, an ever-passionate Germaine Greer said at the start of a national speaking tour [in Australia].

...Greer said the main thing to have changed since her early feminist days was the mass exodus of women walking out on their marriages.

"The big change is the divorce rate," she said.

"Exactly the thing that people tear their hair out about is exactly the thing I am very proud of..."

It wouldn't be easy to define what makes a marriage work or fall apart. But one thing's for sure, married life is a long and complicated journey.

A new 23-episode TV series "Chinese Style Divorce," sets out to examine the state of the institution in China today. It features Chinese mainland film and TV big shot Chen Daoming and popular actress Jiang Wenli...

A survey carried out by Carole Burgoyne of the University of Exeter has revealed that while young couples commit their bodies to their marriage, the same is not necessarily true for their bank accounts.

Of the couples interviewed, 50 per cent kept their accounts separate...

"While the choice to marry suggested long-term commitment, there was a short-time horizon in terms of what they are doing with money," The Telegraph quoted Burgoyne as saying.

Women lined up Thursday at a Department of Home Affairs office in Johannesburg to verify their marital status. Thousands have been married without their knowledge in a fraud involving government officials.

In the midst of tragedy, with her husband dying, 30-year old Leisha Nebel-Taylor made a surprising phone call. She asked a urologist, would it be possible to retrieve and store some of her husband's sperm after his death?

It is common for kids to say that. At least, I said it when I was in elementary school (in the mid- to late-1980s in suburban Chicago). I always thought it was cute and nice, too. When our swings would get out of sync, however, we'd say "now we're getting divorced."

...Australia's apparently desperate drive to populate, on both sides of the political fence, risks undermining the positive and individual gains of modern life. I'm all for family-friendly, but isn't compensating people for choosing to have children taking friendly a step too far? More like family favouritism (some might say fascism)?...

...I started to compile a list of the ways in which parents make life difficult for their childless colleagues.

They bring wailing babies into the office, distracting us from our work. They talk, tediously and relentlessly, about school league tables and the expense of private schooling. They leave work parties early to get home for the babysitter. They call home from work to ask whether Nicki has eaten up his/her greens like a good little boy/girl.

They have priority when it comes to taking time off at Christmas or during August. They get maternity and paternity leave (and the rest of us have to cover for them). They take days off when their children get sick (and the rest of us have to cover for them).

It was a surprisingly long and bitter list, but also revealing. While we all walk a fine line between the demands of our domestic life and those of our job, it seems parents are offered help, perks and privileges by employers, whereas the childless are not. It is unclear why this should be...

Belgium is to introduce sweeping reforms of its divorce laws...

Federal Justice Minister Laurette Onkelinx wants to modernize the system to take amicable divorces out of the courts...

"Couples who want to divorce are currently almost forced to go to court. Whoever wins gets the financial assets and custody of the children," said the minister.

Onkelinx aims to introduce the concept of "divorce without fault" to avoid the current system that is based on "winners and losers."

Billed as "counter-cultural," a new reality TV show that promotes the virtues of traditional marriage is set to air this fall. Targeting networks such as FamilyNet, The Travel Channel, The Total Living Network, Good Life TV and PBS, "An American Wedding" "celebrates the beauty and romance of a wedding, while presenting the truth in a marriage based on a covenant," Baptist Press (BP) reported.

Over the past decade, fertility rates among all major American ethnic groups have either remained low or fallen dramatically. Between 1990 and 2002 fertility declined 14 percent among Mexican Americans and 24 percent among Puerto Ricans. African Americans, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, now have a lower average fertility rate than whites, and they are no longer producing enough children to replace their population. But one big difference in fertility rates remains: Conservative, religiously minded Americans are putting far more of their genes into the future than their liberal, secular counterparts.