Liz Cheney — daughter of Dick and current U.S. senate candidate — has recently lost the support of her own sister Mary after publicly denouncing Mary's gay lifestyle on Fox News Sunday. In a desperate bid to win over Wyoming's Tea Party and far right voters, Liz Cheney (who, as of this month, is trailing 52-points…
Sometimes, as a woman, I find myself adrift on a rudderless sea of indecision bereft of the opinions of others weighing in on my conduct. How should I dress? Should I be thin or what? Should I do anything to my face to make it look different? How should I conduct myself sexually? How should I age? When should I talk?…
David Sedaris penned a fantastic piece in The New Yorker about the suicide death of his youngest sister, Tiffany. In it, he talks about Tiffany's slow descent into depression by way of horrific living conditions and mental illness. This is framed, interestingly, by a family vacation he paid for shortly after her…
Hey, guess what? Everything you love is gonna die someday, including your parents. Now, thanks to a new app, you can guesstimate exactly how many more times you'll be able to look into the eyes of your most immediate ancestors before they are committed to dust. Cool. Great job, internet.
Couples therapy, relationship counseling, marriage counseling; whatever name you decide to call it, is never an experience you're likely excited about. It might not be as bad as it sounds though, and if you're a little worried about what might happen, here are a few things you can expect.
Divorce is never easy, but it's one of those life events that deserves a serious postmortem examination to figure out what really happened. I went through a divorce last year, and from that failure I've learned a lot about what it takes to make a relationship work.
Whuddya know! Women actually appreciate the opportunity to have a career, make money and support their families. In fact, they like it so much that, for the most part, they're not too willing to go back to a time when pretty much their only option was to become an unpaid house-cleaning, child-rearing, blowjob machine.…
Today in "Yes, I Guess That Makes Sense," new research shows that kids with happy and supportive families generally grow up to have more successful marriages than kids who don't. "The overall family climate seems to matter," says Robert Ackerman, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Dallas who authored the study. "A …
Jessica and Monica are mother and daughter. They are both adult film actresses. They have teamed up, professionally. They engage in nude embraces. They shoot sex scenes together. They do two-on-one. They take turns sucking the same dick. They watch each other orgasm (or pretend to orgasm). But they swear that what…
Today, China's national legislature passed a new law that, once enacted, will require citizens to visit their elderly parents "often," or go to court. This law is so, so ripe for 1980's style stand up jokes about mothers in law, or a very special episode of Married... With Chidren where someone gets bumped on the head…
Congratulations to family units with enough time, money, and skill to eat dinner at the table, you are officially raising kids who will learn to love mother nature's bounty. Now, the rest of you —the family units who don't? Congratulations for raising kids who will learn to love Mars Incorporated's Bounty chocolate…
I remember when my mother came out to me.
During the second Presidential debate last month, Mitt Romney suggested that one way to reduce Aurora, Colorado-style mass assault weapon shootings would be to encourage everyone to just get married before they have babies. Blaming single parents for violence has long been a dog whistle talking point of the family…
It's a classic tale: Son demands vodka, mother yells at son, son acquires feces, son smears feces in mother's face, son goes to jail. (Or, the short version: Florida.)
It's so hard to know whether becoming a parent will ruin your life or be the only thing that makes it worth living. We may not get a grand verdict anytime soon, but new research has at least figured out one thing: moms who believe they are the most important person in their baby's life and that they should always put…
Oprah Winfrey, Doyenne of Daytime, Queen Of Everything, is entangled in a bitter feud with her stepmother Barbara over her dad Vernon Winfrey's Nashville barber shop, which Oprah purchased after it went into foreclosure last week. Barbara accuses her stepdaughter of using her power to take over the barber shop (because …
My Aunt Sandra has Down Syndrome, and she can sometimes be kind of a jerk. That's a legitimate thing to say, I think. There is little that makes me more uncomfortable than when people sanctify those who are intellectually disabled. Sure, the majority of Sandra's friends with Down Syndrome have been genuinely…
With reality shows about unplanned pregnancies dominating
The habit of gathering for nightly family dinners sounds delightful—perfectly behaved children answering nicely as their parents ask them about their day, the passing of gorgeous green vegetables, a complete absence of fast food wrappers—but it's not very common in practice. And this, it turns out, is a problem. Why?…
When you think of the horrific murders Charles Manson and his "family" carried out in 1969, friendship certainly isn't the first topic that comes to mind. And yet two girls, who were teenagers at the time of the murder, have formed an unusual, decades-long friendship that has its basis in the murders. The women are Debra …
Sometimes you need a little space, even from the people you love. But these people — family, partners, close friends — can be the hardest to set boundaries with, because you don't want to push them away. Below, some tips for establishing those boundaries without being a jerk.
Have you felt a hole in your heart lately? Is it, by any chance, in the shape of Michele Bachmann? Her particular brand of crazy has been sadly absent from our lives since she abandoned her campaign for president. And, frankly, we've all gotten a little lost without her. Don't get me wrong, we've still got plenty of…
An Israeli court has ruled that a pair of lesbian parents — one donated her eggs and the other carried the fetus to term — can both be their son's legal mom. But unfortunately, this ruling might not have much broader impact.
There are plenty of nice reasons to get married, but increasingly the basic experience of being married doesn't seem all that different from simply living together without ever making it legal—or living in sin, as our grandmothers like to call it. Now there's some new research that proves that the line between marriage …
Yesterday at a campaign stop in South Carolina, a woman who's the mother of a gay son asked Rick Santorum to help her resolve the guilt she feels about supporting him. Her guilt, of course, stems from the fact that Rick Santorum has not been a friend to the gay community, to put it mildly. And the gays haven't…
Here's a very sad story with an even sadder ending. Earlier this week, Darlene Gilkey, a 59-year-old woman with terminal cancer, watched as her husband, Paul Gilkey, fatally shot her son and her two sisters in front of her while she lay in a hospital bed in her living room. Apparently, there had been a dispute over…
Viktor and Aneta Urich have just welcomed their 100th grandchild into the world. Their newest grandson, Henry, was born two weeks ago, and the couple, who live in Grande Prairie, Alberta, are thrilled to add yet another grandkid to the list: "We were happy and we were waiting for it. We want to have a party in the…
For me, a big part of the pleasure of giving a loved one a gift is in the wrapping. I'm not planning to give or receive many gifts this year — I have enough stuff, for real
