According to data from Pew Research Center and the U.S. Census Bureau, there are 96.6 million single Americans. Just 51 percent of the adult population is married, compared with 72 percent in 1960. And a recent Pew/Time Magazine survey found that 39 percent of people think marriage is becoming obsolete.


Our survey was by no means scientific, but it helps to know from whom these responses are coming. The average age of our survey participants was 46.2 years old. Women made up 82 percent of the respondents; men, 18 percent. About 35 percent said their annual income was under $50,000; 41 percent were making between $50,000 and $100,000; and 23 percent bring in more than $100,000 a year.

The burdens of poverty affect most, if not all aspects, of social relations. Most prominently (and unsurprisingly), women carry the greatest burden of the social predicaments that arise from a dire lack of economic security.  Women in groups hit hardest by financial strain easily become seen as sources of further strain on their families. Education is often either inaccessible or seen as an unnecessary part of a young girl’s growth and life.

This is not always necessarily the case, as there is much evidence that shows support of girl-child education by, specifically, mothers who realize the role education can play in providing a better life for their children. Yet, despite this, in many instances across the world (primarily in developing countries, but not limited to them), young girls are forced to accept the strain upon their families that they are perceived to pose. This position can lead many young girls, either by coercion by family or by “choice,” onto the road towards prostitution, sex slavery, or even suicide.  Yet perhaps the most common result is marriage.

An article published earlier this month on EurasiaNet explores the impact of poverty on “early marriage” in Tajikistan. The article cites a recent study by the Eurasia Foundation that looks at the issue of “informal justice” in Tajikistan. While looking at a variety of issues, the article dedicates a good amount to gender relations, specifically the issue of non-state-administered justice for women in unregistered marriages, which come in a variety of flavors, one of which is early marriage. Marriage before the age of 18 is illegal under Tajik law and subject to harsh punishment.

However, it is commonly practiced and encouraged by many religious clerics who not only feel it is sanctioned within Islam but also believe it to be a solution to the problems of poverty faced by women in a country ravaged by years of war.

The increasing popularity of intermarriage. About 15% of all new marriages in the United States in 2010 were between spouses of a different race or ethnicity from one another, more than double the share in 1980 (6.7%). Among all newlyweds in 2010, 9% of whites, 17% of blacks, 26% of Hispanics and 28% of Asians married out. Looking at all married couples in 2010, regardless of when they married, the share of intermarriages reached an all-time high of 8.4%. In 1980, that share was just 3.2%.
Gender patterns in intermarriage vary widely. About 24% of all black male newlyweds in 2010 married outside their race, compared with just 9% of black female newlyweds. Among Asians, the gender pattern runs the other way. About 36% of Asian female newlyweds married outside their race in 2010, compared with just 17% of Asian male newlyweds. Intermarriage rates among white and Hispanic newlyweds do not vary by gender.
At first glance, recent newlyweds who “married out” and those who “married in” have similar characteristics. In 2008-2010, the median combined annual earnings of both groups are similar—$56,711 for newlyweds who married out versus $55,000 for those who married in. In about one-in-five marriages of each group, both the husband and wife are college graduates. Spouses in the two groups also marry at similar ages (with a two- to three-year age gap between husband and wife), and an equal share are marrying for the first time.
However, these overall similarities mask sharp differences that emerge when the analysis looks in more detail at pairings by race and ethnicity. Some of these differences appear to reflect the overall characteristics of different groups in society at large, and some may be a result of a selection process. For example, white/Asian newlyweds of 2008 through 2010 have significantly higher median combined annual earnings ($70,952) than do any other pairing, including both white/white ($60,000) and Asian/Asian ($62,000). When it comes to educational characteristics, more than half of white newlyweds who marry Asians have a college degree, compared with roughly a third of white newlyweds who married whites. Among Hispanics and blacks, newlyweds who married whites tend to have higher educational attainment than do those who married within their own racial or ethnic group.
Intermarriage and earnings. Couples formed between an Asian husband and a white wife topped the median earning list among all newlyweds in 2008-2010 ($71,800). During this period, white male newlyweds who married Asian, Hispanic or black spouses had higher combined earnings than did white male newlyweds who married a white spouse. As for white female newlyweds, those who married a Hispanic or black husband had somewhat lower combined earnings than those who “married in,” while those who married an Asian husband had significantly higher combined earnings.
Regional differences. Intermarriage in the United States tilts West. About one-in-five (22%) of all newlyweds in Western states married someone of a different race or ethnicity between 2008 and 2010, compared with 14% in the South, 13% in the Northeast and 11% in the Midwest. At the state level, more than four-in-ten (42%) newlyweds in Hawaii between 2008 and 2010 were intermarried; the other states with an intermarriage rate of 20% or more are all west of the Mississippi River. (For rates of intermarriage as well as intra-marriage in all 50 states, see Appendix 2.)
Is more intermarriage good for society? More than four-in-ten Americans (43%) say that more people of different races marrying each other has been a change for the better in our society, while 11% say it has been a change for the worse and 44% say it has made no difference. Minorities, younger adults, the college-educated, those who describe themselves as liberal and those who live in the Northeast or the West are more disposed than others to see intermarriage in a positive light.
Public’s acceptance of intermarriage. More than one-third of Americans (35%) say that a member of their immediate family or a close relative is currently married to someone of a different race. Also, nearly two-thirds of Americans (63%) say it “would be fine” with them if a member of their own family were to marry someone outside their own racial or ethnic group. In 1986, the public was divided about this. Nearly three-in-ten Americans (28%) said people of different races marrying each other was not acceptable for anyone, and an additional 37% said this may be acceptable for others, but not for themselves. Only one-third of the public (33%) viewed intermarriage as acceptable for everyone.
Divorce. Several studies using government data have found that overall divorce rates are higher for couples who married out than for those who married in – but here, too, the patterns vary by the racial and gender characteristics of the couples. These findings are based on scholarly analysis of government data on marriage and divorce collected over the past two decades.

From a Towleroad reader:

I am part of a LGBT bowling league (above) in Portland, Oregon that has been a fixture in the city since the '70's. For over a decade we have called Hollywood Bowl our home alley. However, within the last couple of weeks we have watched Hollywood Bowl become increasingly unfriendly to our league.

We received notice through our league administrator that bowling leagues do not fit Hollywoods new business model and thus we are being asked to find a different alley. We were sad at the news but accepted the scenario as we were assuming that all leagues were being asked to leave. Recently, we became aware that the only leagues that were being asked to leave were the two gay leagues and a league that is administrated by two lesbians. All other leagues are being allowed to stay as they fit into Hollywood's new family friendly business model.

This has not gone over very well in the league at all. We feel really alienated as we have families too and brought a lot of revenue to the alley both during and outside league meets once a week.

Hollywood Bowl's contact info can be found here, should you wish to tell them how you feel about this. HB's Facebook page is here.

While the official definition of marriage as a right shared only between one man and one woman still stands on the federal lawbooks, one federal department has made its official definition of family more queer-friendly.
Today, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that it has formally rewritten its official definition of "family" that's used to determine eligibility for public housing. The official "family" already specifically includes people without kids and single people, but under today's new rules this simple sentence is added onto the official family definition: “Family includes but is not limited to the following, regardless of actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, or marital status...”

HUD has been attacking housing discrimination against LGBT folks for the last few years, launching studies of discrimination and updating its policies to make it clear that it's against the rules to ban someone from public housing because of their gender identity or sexual orientation.

Oregon is one of 20 states with laws that already prohibit housing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Asked about the HUD change two weeks ago, Portland Housing Commissioner Nick Fish said, "For a federal government that's been unable to move on marriage equality, to say that discrimination based on orientation is unacceptable is a big deal. It's a big step forward for establishing the rights of a whole class of people."

Action and horror movies do tend to have a greater representation of sex workers as non-victim characters, but none of them have really resonated with me.  For example: I remember how excited I was when I read that George Romero's Land of the Dead would have a zombie-killing hooker as a main character.  But, of course, it is revealed that she was only a sex worker because the dictator of her post-apocalyptic society forced her to take that job, and she actually wanted to be in the militia protecting the city.  Thus, the character is redeemed to the audience for her whore-y sins, since they were not her choice.
I recently tweeted about how I'm not aware of a mainstream movie with a more positive and non-sensationalistic portral of a sex worker as the 1996 action hit Independence Day, and I wanted to expand on that.  Its director, Rolland Emmerich, is known for over-the-top absurdist visual spectacles of destruction with overbearing musical scores, such as in The Day After Tomorrow or 2012.  Yet, in Independence Day, he created the most normal sex worker character I've ever seen in a Hollywood film: Jasmine, played by Vivica A Fox.
Jasmine is a stripper who lives with her boyfriend Steve, a pilot in the US Marines who dreams of working for NASA.  She has a young son, and they live in a house in the suburbs of Los Angeles.  Her job as a stripper is treated as pretty much like any other job, and there's no dramatic scene where she's gang-raped and then made fun of, and her story is not one of being rescued from her work by a man.  She expresses zero desire to "escape" the sex industry, nor does her partner ever ask that of her.
Jasmine's job doesn't even really come into the plot, aside from a couple of of key moments: Steve's friend making a disparaging comment about the respectability of marrying a stripper, and Jasmine telling the First Lady (whose life she tries to save) that she's an exotic dancer, not a ballet dancer.

A woman and mother of two is suing the Disney Channel after she claims a handsy comedian spanked her and kissed her during the audience participation segment.
The woman Kellie Rodriguez filed a suit claiming that comedian Ron Pearson got fresh with her while she was at a live-taping of the show "Good Luck Charlie" last month, according to TMZ. She was there at the taping with her two kids, sister-in-law and nieces.
During the show, she noticed Pearson seemed to be checking her out. He picked her out to do a dance to the Village People's YMCA and that's when the trouble started. As she danced, Pearson came up to her and started spanking her. The lawsuit says, "The unwarranted and unconsented spanking was RELENTLESS and did not cease until [Kellie] physically turned around to stop it." Later on Pearson asked Rodriguez for a kiss, but when she went to give him a peck on the cheek he turned and kissed her on the lips. Rodriguez is claiming the experience was humiliating for her and confusing for her kids who were asking her why she was kissing another man.
Pearson markets himself as a squeaky clean entertainer on his website: "As a clean comedian he can take his act from comedy clubs to Christian comedy or family events."

studies like a recent one from the Williams Institute at UCLA from their U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS) shows some interesting stuff.

The study is "the longest-running study ever conducted on American lesbian families (now in its 24th year)." Huff Po reports, "In an article published today in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, the 17-year-old daughters and sons of lesbian mothers were asked about sexual abuse, sexual orientation, and sexual behavior."

Here's what they found: 

The paper found that none of the 78 NLLFS adolescents reports having ever been physically or sexually abused by a parent or other caregiver. This contrasts with 26 percent of American adolescents who report parent or caregiver physical abuse and 8.3 percent who report sexual abuse.

According to the authors, "the absence of child abuse in lesbian mother families is particularly noteworthy, because victimization of children is pervasive and its consequences can be devastating. To the extent that our findings are replicated by other researchers, these reports from adolescents with lesbian mothers have implications for healthcare professionals, policymakers, social service agencies, and child protection experts who seek family models in which violence does not occur."

The Domestic Violence Resource Center will hold an open house for its new Hillsboro Family Advocacy Center on Monday, Dec. 12 at 4:30 p.m..

The new center includes adult and children's bilingual counseling programs. The 35-year-old non-profit has moved its protective order advocacy program out of the county courthouse and into the new center, too. The new location, at 180 East Main Street, Suite 200, is within walking distance of the courthouse.

The Hillsboro nonprofit spends about $700,000 each year to run the 27-bed Monika's House Shelter, Washington County's only emergency shelter for those fleeing domestic violence; to operate a 24-hour crisis line that answers more than 2,000 calls a year; to help victims file for restraining orders and otherwise navigate the courts; and to run outreach and education programs in schools. Money from the federal office on violence against women allowed the non-profit to open the new location. All of the center's services are free.

Janus Youth Programs has been changing lives and building futures for children, youth and families in Oregon and Washington since 1972.

From residential treatment programs, the Northwest's largest array of runaway and homeless youth services, alternative education classrooms, a detention program, a teen parenting program, a college scholarship program, and a 85,000 square foot urban agriculture program addressing hunger and employment issues, Janus is committed to delivering innovative community-based programs.

Reaching nearly 36,000 children, youth and families yearly, Janus Youth Programs is one of the largest nonprofits in the Northwest committed to delivering programs that change lives and build futures.

U.S. births hit an all-time high in 2007, at more than 4.3 million. Over the next two years, the number dropped to about 4.2 million and then about 4.1 million.

Last year, it was down to just over 4 million, according to the new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For teens, birth rates dropped 9 percent from 2009. For women in their early 20s, they fell 6 percent. For unmarried mothers, the drop was 4 percent.

Experts believe the downward trend is tied to the economy, which officially was in a recession from December 2007 until June 2009 and remains weak. The theory is that women with money worries — especially younger women — feel they can’t afford to start a family or add to it.

Lax state oversight has resulted in sex offenders living, working or being present in at least 39 California homes where foster children are also authorized to live, including several in the Bay Area, a state audit released Thursday concluded.

And when it comes to the latest economic data on women, the news is even worse than most people seem to realize. But you couldn’t learn that by reading The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal, neither of which even mentioned women in their front-page stories about the rise in the poverty rate, which has soared to its highest level since 1993.

When it comes to discovering what that means for the majority of the American population, one had to look elsewhere. For the news the big guys didn’t see fit to print, we can thank the National Women’s Law Center, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that focuses on women’s economic security and legal rights.

When the NWLC crunched the latest numbers from the Census Bureau, the results showed that record numbers of women are living in poverty. And in news that should surprise no one, the findings reveal that millions of those women do not have health insurance.


Spencer Platt / Getty Images

The poverty rate among women rose to 14.5 percent last year, up from 13.9 percent in 2009—the highest rate in 17 years. The “extreme poverty rate” among women was the highest ever recorded, climbing to 6.3 percent in 2010 from 5.9 percent in 2009.

“Extreme poverty” means that your income is below half of the federal poverty line—and by 2010, more than 7.5 million women had fallen into that dire category.

What all those statistics add up to is that more than 17 million women were living in poverty last year, compared with 12.6 million men. As usual, things were worse for older women; twice as many women over 65 were living in poverty, compared with men.

And those numbers just represented the population-wide average. For Hispanic and black women, the poverty rate increased even faster and rose higher—to 25 percent for Hispanic women and to 25.6 percent for black women.

As usual, single mothers are having the hardest time of all. More than 40 percent of women who head families are now living in poverty. With more than half of poor children living in female-headed families in 2010, the child poverty rate jumped to 22 percent.

An Iowa girl who was born two years after her father died is not eligible to receive his Social Security Benefits, a federal appeals court has ruled.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision this week reversed a district court ruling that granted benefits to the girl, who is now 8 years old.

Her mother, Patti Beeler of West Branch, had filed for the benefits on behalf of her daughter in 2003 but was denied by the Social Security Administration because of a state law's definition of "natural child" and the inheritance rights of a child. Bruce Beeler died of leukemia in 2001, and Patti Beeler was later artificially inseminated with sperm the couple had decided to preserve.

Patti Beeler sued to challenge the agency's decision and won, but that was overturned by the St. Louis-based court, which ruled Monday that the girl did not satisfy requirements under Iowa's inheritance laws to be eligible for her father's benefits.

Telephone messages left Wednesday for Beeler and her attorney were not immediately returned. The Social Security Administration did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

At dispute in the case is an outdated Iowa law, which limited inheritance rights to a child who had a relationship with a person at the time of that person's death. Earlier this year, the Iowa Legislature passed a bill granting inheritance rights to children conceived posthumously, but did not make those rights retroactive. The measure was signed into law in May.

When the state intervenes in a family experiencing domestic violence, it's usually when violence -- or violent threats -- have gotten so bad that someone outside the family notices and complains.

Caseworkers often visit in the wake of a police call and present an ultimatum: leave your abuser, or lose your kids.

Nancy Jarrard is a domestic violence advocate with Volunteers of America.

"If they choose to remain together as a couple, and there is a new incident, then the kids are more likely to be removed. It happens. It's really common," she said.

Jarrard says families can try counseling and institute safety plans to improve things. But Jarrard says abusers seldom change completely.
Ayers is a child protective services program manager. His agency recently got six million dollars in state funding, and a federal grant, to help put domestic violence advocates, like Nanc Jarrard, into field offices. He says the stakes are high – because of where domestic violence can lead.

"We see time and again these cases where kids are severely injured, or killed, the murder-suicides and things like that. Just because at that particular time, they're focusing their attention on an adult, it doesn't mean that won't change," Ayers said.

Abuse-related deaths of kids rose from 13 to 22 between 2009 and 2010. State officials hope that by intensifying the focus on domestic violence, and bringing in experts, they can accomplish two goals: keeping mothers and kids safer, and keeping more of them together.

“We do need to have an inquiry, possibly inquiries, into what has happened,” the prime minister, David Cameron, told Parliament after days of disclosures that have horrified Britons. There were reports that hackers working for News of the World, owned by News Corporation, listened to the voice-mail messages left on the phones of murder and terrorism victims. One was a 13-year-old girl who was abducted and murdered in 2002. Additionally, Scotland Yard detectives are also investigating whether the voicemail accounts of relatives of victims of the bombings of three London subway trains and a double-decker bus on July 7, 2005, had also been hacked, according to some of the relatives.

“We are no longer talking here about politicians and celebrities, we are talking about murder victims, potentially terrorist victims, having their phones hacked into,” Mr. Cameron said. “It is absolutely disgusting, what has taken place, and I think everyone in this House and indeed this country will be revolted by what they have heard and what they have seen on their television screens.”

A furor has been building in England for months after disclosures that journalists from News of the World, a mass-circulation gossip-laden Sunday tabloid, hacked into the voice-mail messages of celebrities and other prominent people. But, this week, the extent of the alleged hacking has broadened dramatically with reports that the newspaper hacked the cellphone of the slain 13-year-old girl nine years ago, deleting some messages to make room for more in a move that added to vain hopes that she was still alive.

The disclosures have focused on two people in particular — Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of News International, which runs the British newspaper operations of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, and Andy Coulson, a former News International editor, who went on to become Mr. Cameron’s director of communications before he was forced to quit in January, months after the phone-hacking scandal erupted with new vigor.

Innovative Change$ is an emerging CDFI, founded by Innovative Housing to help struggling individuals and families manage short-term financial needs in order to achieve and maintain household stability. We do this by offering:

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Credit scores dictate the cost and accessibility of services, influence assumptions about an individual’s character, and determine many asset-building opportunities. While there is no quick fix for increasing credit scores, we offer a range of tools to help people begin to repair, build and protect their credit.

We first caught wind of the altered sculpture on Twitter, in a tweet from Jeanne: “Look what some guy welded onto a sculpture at Meridian Park. And no, it wasn’t the original artist.”



Yep, someone added to the sculptures that ring the playground at Meridian Park. (For some beautiful shots of the other sculptures, see Jeff Ng’s photostream on Flickr.)

This morning, we heard from the artist himself, who forwarded his note to the original artist:

Hi Pat,

Hope you are doing well, I really like the dragon knocker on your site.  (enough of me kissing yer ass)

I’ve re-armed your sailor boy sculpture that has was damaged and disintegrating at Meridian Playground by my house.  I thought my addition was great, a bit tongue in cheek but a nice addition.  Unfortunately while I was making my install tonight (surreptitiously of course) I was accosted by some crazy lady who was completely bent out of shape.  I thought nothing of it but she returned with her drunk husband and buddy to berate me.  Some choice quotes, “This is no longer whimsical.  I’m on the committee.  You’re an idiot! You ruined the park.  You’re an idiot! I worked hard on this park and you ruined it.   You brought a gun to the park.  You must have voted for Bush.  You’re an idiot! You don’t understand kids.  I’m sending this picture to the parks dept, the artist and the cops.  You’re an idiot!”  So feedback has been mixed so far.  I will say the bums bbg’ing in the background loved it.  And a bunch of other folks coming by, but I suspect you’ll hear first from this crazy lady.

Community Warehouse is a volunteer-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit agency that collects and redistributes donated furniture and household goods to low-income people in Oregon and southwest Washington. Working in partnership with more than 100 social services agencies, the Warehouse fulfills over 40 requests each week.

We value recycling, volunteerism, financial transparency in all aspects of the organization, preserving the dignity of clients, and providing services in a timely and cost-effective manner that honors the donors who keep our doors open.

Opal Whiteley (December 11, 1897—February 16, 1992) was an American nature writer and diarist whose childhood journal was first published in 1920 as The Story of Opal in serialized form in the Atlantic Monthly, then later that same year as a book with the title The Story of Opal: The Journal of an Understanding Heart.
Whiteley's true origins and the veracity of her diary were disputed during her lifetime, and continue to be questioned today.

Whiteley claimed to be the daughter of Henri, Prince of Orléans, who died unmarried in 1901. According to Whiteley, she was taken to Oregon in 1902 and brought to a lumber camp where she was adopted by Ed and Lizzie Whiteley. While Opal Whiteley used several names during her lifetime, the one she preferred and was later buried under was Françoise Marie de Bourbon-Orléans.

The Mentor Graphics Child Development Center (CDC) on the campus of our Wilsonville headquarters is a model program for early childhood and family support. Both full- and part-time enrollment are available to the children and grandchildren of Mentor Graphics employees and families in the greater Portland community.

The CDC offers an outstanding environment with attention to small groups and routines of care. It features an innovative project-based curriculum and low child-to-teacher ratios for children of birth through preschool age.

Open year-round, the CDC has been responsive to the unique needs of young children and working parents since 1992.

Keisling, who was speaking to students who attended the Midwest Bisexual Lesbian Gay Transgender Ally College Conference, shared many somber statistics from the NCTE's survey on transgender discrimination, which was released in February and was also created with the help of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. The survey is the largest ever conducted of transgender individuals, and it takes a frightening snapshot of the difficulties faced by nearly 6500 transgender people in the U.S. "We tried to find bigger studies," Keisling said. "This is the biggest study."

The survey results show that transgender individuals face serious barriers to meeting their basic needs, starting with employment. Ninety percent of survey respondents reported being harassed, mistreated or discriminated against on the job. Another 47 percent reported being fired, not hired or denied a promotion. These workplace struggles mean that transgender individuals are four times more likely to live in poverty (less than $10,000 a year) than the general population.

They're also twice as likely to be homeless as the general population. And of the survey respondents who had experienced homelessness, more than half had been turned away from a shelter.

US officials have said a son of Osama bin Laden, three other adult males and a woman used as a human shield by a male combatant were also killed in the helicopter raids by US forces that killed the world's most wanted terrorist on Monday.

The officials did not name the son of Osama that they had identified as killed. They said two other women were injured.  

A Pakistani official said other unidentified males were taken by helicopter away from the scene, while four children and two woman were arrested and left in an ambulance.

The early reports suggest that he was living with his “youngest wife.” Bin Laden, who was fifty-three years old when he died, had always lived surrounded by family and children, so it is not surprising that he had managed to do so even as a fugitive. He is known to have married at least four times. His first wife was a cousin from Syria. His second and third wives were highly educated Saudi women. His fourth wife was a kind of mail-order teen-age bride from Yemen, whom he married while living in Afghanistan during the nineteen-nineties, according to the account of bin Laden’s former Yemeni bodyguard. Bin Laden’s Syrian and Saudi wives were said to have gone home before or immediately after the September 11th attacks, and the Saudi wives were said to be living in the kingdom, without contact with Osama. When I visited Yemen in 2007, to conduct research on the bin Laden family, Yemeni journalists told me that his youngest wife had returned home and was living in the region either of Tai’zz or of Ibb, significant cities to the south of Sanaa, the capital. It seems that she may have found her way to Pakistan to live with her husband. My own guess had been that bin Laden would have accepted informal divorce from his older wives on the ground of involuntary separation, and would have remarried a local woman or two while in hiding in Pakistan, perhaps a daughter presented by one of his Pathan hosts. That is at least conceivable as well. Apparently, one of his adult sons was killed in the raid. Osama has more than a dozen sons. Some have returned to Saudi Arabia, but others have appeared in videos with their father, vowing to fight alongside him.

The research suggests "that there is little or no average effect of [family meal frequency] on child cognitive and behavioral outcomes during the period from kindergarten to eighth grade." Previous studies may not be wrong, but their results "should be interpreted with caution," according to Daniel P. Miller and Wen-Jui Han. The two acknowledge that their research did not look at older teenagers; earlier research has suggested that adolescents who often have family meals are less likely to abuse drugs or alcohol or to have behavior problems.

A recent Pew Research Center report on family issues includes some data on frequency of family meals, taken from a survey of adults last October. Among parents of children under age 18, half say they have dinner every day with some or all of their children, 34% say they have family meals a few times a week, 11% say they do so occasionally and 3% say they never do.

On Friday, February 18, the US House of Representatives passed a GOP-backed spending plan that cuts all of the $317 million the feds usually give to family-planning programs. On Monday night, February 21, more than 400 Portlanders took to the streets in front of Planned Parenthood's NE Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue clinic, waving signs at rush-hour traffic and chanting, "Women's health care is under attack! What do we do? Stand up, fight back!"

Oregon has the highest per capita rate of Planned Parenthood use of any state—in 2009, the local Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette distributed 333,000 units of birth control and did 23,000 STD tests. A whopping 92 percent of their clients qualified for free or subsidized birth control under the threatened federal program.

None of Oregon's representatives voted for the spending bill, and President Obama has said he will veto the plan if it passes the Senate.

The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) is a set of large-scale surveys of families and individuals, their medical providers, and employers across the United States. MEPS is the most complete source of data on the cost and use of health care and health insurance coverage.

Despite an effort to educate colleagues about bias in letters of recommendation for tenure, those for men tend to focus on intellect while those for women dwell on temperament.

An array of prizes and professional accolades among female professors has provided a powerful rebuttal to critics who suggested after the earlier report that women simply lacked the aptitude for science — most infamously, Lawrence H. Summers, whose remarks set off his downfall as the president of Harvard.

But with the emphasis on eliminating bias, women now say the assumption when they win important prizes or positions is that they did so because of their gender. Professors say that female undergraduates ask them how to answer male classmates who tell them they got into M.I.T. only because of affirmative action.

Because it has now become all but the rule that every committee must include a woman, and there are still relatively few women on the faculty, female professors say they are losing up to half of their research time, as well as the outside consultancies that earn their male colleagues a lot of money.

While women on the tenure track 12 years ago feared that having a child would derail their careers, today’s generous policies have made families the norm: the university provides a yearlong pause in the tenure clock, and everyone gets a term-long leave after the arrival of a child. There is day care on campus and subsidies for child care while traveling on business.

For more than a dozen years, the team at GalTime has been writing and producing dynamic text and video content for television and the Internet. We know what Gals want to see and read when it comes to health, beauty, fashion, family, career, money and a whole lot more.

Sex Offenses,54,58
Prostitution,44,42
Rape,26,30
Kidnap,2,1
Runaway,249,263
Offenses Against Family,7,4
Curfew,8,1
Liquor Laws,292,470

Effective immediately, U.S. residents can choose between “In a domestic partnership” and “In a civil union,” along with the usual roster of relationship options, which currently include Single, In a relationship, Engaged, Married, It’s complicated, In an open relationship, Widowed, Separated and Divorced.

These two new options should be rolled out to residents of other countries soon. In countries where same-sex marriages are already legal, these options will not appear.

The Center for Young Women’s Health (CYWH) is a collaboration between the Division of Adolescent & Young Adult Medicine and the Division of Gynecology at Children’s Hospital Boston.

Men who abuse women physically and emotionally may also sabotage their partners’ birth control, pressuring them to become pregnant against their will, new reports suggest.

Several small studies have described this kind of coercion among low-income teenagers and young adults with a history of violence by intimate partners. Now, a report being released Tuesday by the federally financed National Domestic Violence Hotline says 1 in 4 women who agreed to answer questions after calling the hot line said a partner had pressured them to become pregnant, told them not to use contraceptives, or forced them to have unprotected sex.

The report was based on answers from more than 3,000 women, but it was not a research study, those involved said.

The hot line’s report did not include a comparison group and did not gather information about the participants, who were questioned anonymously; nor was it published in a peer-reviewed journal. It was based on answers to four questions posed to 3,169 women around the country who contacted the domestic violence hot line between Aug. 16 and Sept. 26, 2010, who were not in immediate danger and who agreed to participate. About 6,800 callers refused to answer the questions.

Of those who did respond, about a quarter said yes to one or more of these three questions: “Has your partner or ex ever told you not to use any birth control?” “Has your partner or ex-partner ever tried to force or pressure you to become pregnant?” “Has your partner or ex ever made you have sex without a condom so that you would get pregnant?”

One in six answered yes to the question “Has your partner or ex-partner ever taken off the condom during sex so that you would get pregnant?”

Dr. Miller’s paper, published last year in the journal Contraception, reported that at five family planning clinics in Northern California, one-third of 683 female patients whose partners were physically abusive said the men had also pressured them to become pregnant or had sabotaged their birth control. Of 191 women who reported birth control sabotage, 79 percent also reported physical abuse, the study found.

I AM A DIRECT-ENTRY MIDWIFERY STUDENT INTERESTED IN THE INTERSECTIONS OF HEALTH AND RACE, CLASS, SEX, GENDER, SEXUALITY AND DISABILITY.

The Effects of Incarceration on Intimate Partner Relationships

Contents:
Decreased Likelihood of Marriage and Family Involvement
Impact of Imprisonment on Intimacy and Commitment
Barriers to Contact and Communication
Role Changes
Psychological Changes
Economic and Emotional Strains Associated with Single Parenting
Community-Level Effects
Positive Perceptions of Partner Incarceration from Women
Research Limitations

Second and third generation Asian American moms are embracing post-birth traditions that are common in Asian cultures, from Chinese to Mien to Korean. Some are even following the traditions more than in previous generations. These post-birth "sit-ins" last usually a month and is, in some ways, opposite of how new moms are seen in mainstream U.S. culture. In the U.S., it is common to have visitors right away and most advice focuses on taking care of the baby. In traditional Asian culture, the first month after giving birth is a sacred time for healing for a new mom, when pores are "extra open" -- thus no baths/showering, no cold food/water and no visitors nor going outside for at least a month. A special diet is, of course, in order.
Back in the motherland, a pregnant woman goes back to her mother's home to give birth and is taken care of by her mother, but what happens to some of these traditions in the U.S.?

states that allow gay marriage vs states that allow cousins to marry

I learned my first lesson about prison: There is no weather inside. It was always dank and musty, with little light and less air. Prison administrators had arranged for me to meet two lifers, Rob and John, which taught me lesson No. 2: Prisoners don't talk about their crimes. We talked about the food (passable), the guards (good and bad), the time (endless). They took me on a tour, showed me square cells the size of my bathroom, all concrete and steel, most of them double-bunked since the population had expanded beyond the building's capacity.

The prisons had become punch lines in our town, where much of the population earned their living as guards, administrators and contractors. It's amazing to me what I believed back then: that rapes and murders were daily and acceptable fare, that people in prison had little to nothing in common with me.

He did want me to get one thing straight, and fast -- that John, the prisoner assigned to be my "source," was NG. "No good," he translated. "He's a rat." It was the rats, he explained, who told The Man whatever The Man wanted to hear. Rats were allowed to start fights, take drugs, get drunk, all without risking bad reports or sudden transfers. All a prisoner had to do, Will said, was sell his soul.

Q: You’ve said that you came to writing fiction relatively late in life, after you’d already established your career in public health. How did writing emerge in your life? Was it something you’d always thought of doing, or did it take you by surprise? And how does writing fit into your life these days?

A: It took me totally by surprise. It was, quite literally, like falling in love. I was working at the Planned Parenthood in Raleigh, North Carolina and my schedule allowed me to take an extension course in writing. I couldn’t believe, as a voracious reader, that it had taken me so long to try it out. I was terribly busy with work, however, and lacked the confidence to take the time I needed to learn the craft until I was admitted to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Suddenly, I felt like a professional.

It’s still hard to find enough time (I spend about an hour writing each morning after the kids go to school and before I go to work as the Associate Director of the Master’s in Public Health Program at the University of Missouri) but I’m totally committed and so I plug away with whatever time I can steal.

Thankfully, there are places like Good Neighbor Center. Located in Tigard, on SW Greenburg Road, GNC is a 36 bed facility serving up to 9 families at a time. There is space so that each family has a private room where they can live for up to six weeks. Families are provided three meals a day.

We are open from 6am-10pm 365 days a year. We are supported by volunteers, donations, grants and various government funding programs. Individual donations make up 18% of our budget revenue.

Our facility was built in 1999 and has been "updated" several times. We have control of the facility that was built with grant dollars and Community Development Block Grant funds. In 2007, Washington County gave us the building for $1 a year with the stipulation that it must remain a homeless shelter for 20 years.

We have over 1400 volunteers that cook, babysit, do service projects and serve as overnight hosts. This volunteer model saves us over $80,000 a year and 3 staff positions.

For Families who obtain a stable income and can meet certain barriers, we have a Housing Stabilization Program in partnership with Washinton County Department of Housing. With this program the family's rent is subsidized and gradually increases until they reach full market rent after nine months. This program offers family advocacy and support services to help families become self sufficient. The economy has affected families being able to get into housing because of the decrease in job opportunities. Each year we look to find resources to help with rent and needs for these families.

Our Children's Program runs four days a week and serves all school-age children staying in shelter. After school there is a Homework Club followed by activities for the children. During the summer when school is out, we run a Summer School Program that consists of tutoring, physical activities and daily field trips. For families that move out of the shelter and are staying in the area, their children are encouraged to attend daily.

Family law attorneys say many of these "deadbeats" are right where they belong. They have been found in willful contempt of court for repeatedly refusing to pay their child support, failing to try to find work or hiding their income and assets.<br />
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But many parents are being jailed even though they have no ability to pay, creating modern-day debtor's prisons, according to motions being filed in Georgia courts. The state should provide lawyers to indigent parents for their civil-contempt hearings to ensure due process, the filings say.<br />
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Last year, the Southern Center filed Open Records Act requests with county sheriffs to find out how many parents were jailed statewide for failing to pay court-ordered child support. The center, which heard back from 135 of the state's 159 counties, found that 526 parents were incarcerated statewide.<br />
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"The people we see in jail are not wealthy ‘deadbeat' dads," Geraghty said. "They are often working people who have lost jobs and become totally indigent."

The law says insurers must cover “preventive health services” and cannot charge for them. The administration has asked a panel of outside experts to help identify the specific preventive services that must be covered for women.

Administration officials said they expected the list to include contraception and family planning because a large body of scientific evidence showed the effectiveness of those services. But the officials said they preferred to have the panel of independent experts make the initial recommendations so the public would see them as based on science, not politics.

Many obstetricians, gynecologists, pediatricians and public health experts have called for coverage of family planning services, including contraceptives, without co-payments, deductibles or other cost-sharing requirements.

Dr. Hal C. Lawrence III, vice president of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said contraceptives fit any reasonable definition of preventive health care because they averted unintended pregnancies and allowed women to control the timing, number and spacing of births. This, in turn, improves maternal and child health by reducing infant mortality, complications of pregnancy and even birth defects, said Dr. Lawrence, who is in charge of the group’s practice guidelines.

On the January 28, 2011 episode of ABC's 20/20 the news show followed four  homeless youth from Oregon and California. Chris Cuomo reports on this year-long investigation into the causes and conditions of youth homelessness. Here, Chris talks about why they did the story and what he's learned about kids on the street.

The Arlington billboard is part of a larger state of pre-Super Bowl hooker hysteria that the DFW area is in. One ridiculous article I saw claimed that 50,000 prostitutes would descend on the city before the game. I think it’s pretty horrible to put men’s photos up on a billboard like that, though I suppose it’s at least a little fairer than the series of stripper mugshots that show up on the Smoking Gun every time a club is raided in Florida.

Oregon's child support collection program brings in less than 60 cents of every dollar owed by parents, below the national average.
The Oregonian reports that state and county workers collected $264 million for families last year, but $181 million went uncollected.
The newspaper says antiquated computers, the recession and not enough collectors are part of the problem.
Compared to 2009, the Oregon Department of Justice slipped last year in three of the five measures used by federal authorities -- the percent of current child support collected, the percent of past-due support collected and the cost-effectiveness of the state's program.
The latest audit on Oregon child support by the Secretary of State's office shows that delinquent payments now exceed $1 billion.

Desire has cash value; the market has no rules, possesses no scruples. From Eastern Europe to the Himalayas, from Tokyo to Tegucigalpa, transaction by sordid transaction has created a multibillion-dollar sex trade. It is encouraged by massive socioeconomic movements: the collapse of the Soviet empire, the increase in global mobility, the wrenching disparity of worldwide incomes. But its effect is most devastating on an individual level. Poor women and children are commodities traded on the street, products bartered, haggled over, smuggled and sold as hedges against hunger or as cruel but quick routes to profit. Souls do not count, only bodies, debased over and over, unmindful of social cost or disease.

Gay dating site Bro Online was accessible, but sites offering support and advice for homosexual people were not.

Researchers used satellite images to compare tree cover around the houses of 5,696 women who gave birth in Portland in 2006 and 2007. Pregnant women living in houses graced by more trees were significantly less likely to deliver undersized babies. 

Tree cover made no difference in the rate of pre-term births, but researchers found a consistent link to the prevalence of infants who were small for their gestational age. For each 10 percent increase in tree coverage within about 50 yards of a home, the rate of undersized newborns decreased by 1.42 per 1000 births. As it stands, about 70 of every 1,000 newborns in Portland are small for gestational age. 

Studies in animals and people make clear that maternal stress is harmful to a developing fetus and can increase the probability of underweight birth. In a variety of human clinical trials, exposure to nature and greenery significantly reduced people's stress levels and helped them withstand high-stress situations.

Dr. Stephen Fortmann, a senior investigator at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland who was not involved in the study, finds the results intriguing. "It points out that some of the neighborhood level factors that effect health might work in ways we haven't thought about," Fortmann says.

Women located on leafier Portland streets were more likely to be younger, white and non-Hispanic, have fewer previous births, and live in newer and more expensive houses. To test for the impact of tree cover on birth outcomes, Donovan and co-authors used a statistical model to subtract the known effect of the mother's age, ethnic background, household income, education, use of prenatal care and many other variables that can influence fetal development.
For now, the study suggests that Portland could look forward to three fewer undersized newborns per 1,000 births if the city were to achieve its goal of boosting the area covered by trees to 33 percent.

Northwest Family Services
6200 SE King Rd.

Our vision and mission focus on core issues that support individual success, family stability, and child well-being.

According to the National Center on Family Homelessness, among homeless mothers and children:
92 percent have experienced severe physical or sexual assault in their lifetime.
36 percent have experienced post-traumatic stress disorder, a rate three times higher than other women.
62 percent of formerly homeless, extremely low-income children (ages 8 to 17) have been exposed to violence. For children over 12, the rate of exposure climbs to 83 percent.
63 percent of homeless mothers have been violently abused by an intimate male partner.

Some of the homeless women winding up in shelters these days are female veterans suffering from war-related trauma who find themselves unable to transition back to civilian life. Moreover, the actual number of homeless women remains unclear, since the official count doesn’t pick up people who are “doubled up” in precarious arrangements, such as staying on the couches of relatives and friends.

Commonly cited as the factors that pushed families over the edge were, in fact, problems that impact nearly all of us:
76 percent (19) of the cities cited unemployment, 72 percent (18) cited lack of affordable housing, 56 percent (14) cited poverty, 24 percent (6) cited domestic violence, and one-fifth (5) cited low-paying jobs.
Most of the surveyed cities reported a rise in family homelessness over the past year, which outpaced homelessness among single individuals. This coincided with a sharp jump in demand for emergency food assistance. On an average night in 26 cities, nearly 11,000 people in families stayed in emergency shelters and more than 15,000 were living in longer-term but not permanent transitional housing. Another several hundred are “unaccompanied youths,” perhaps survivors of traumatic experiences in foster care, or LGBT teens wrestling with stigma and rejection.

New estimates by the Census Bureau show that child poverty, already a problem in the eastern two-thirds of Multnomah County, worsened from 2008 to 2009.Based on tax returns & census surveys, the share of school-aged children living in poverty rose in nearly every MultCo school district east of PPS, including Reynolds, David Douglas, Centennial and Parkrose.Those four school districts together are home to 32,000 students; all saw their school-aged poverty rate rise at least 3 percentage points from 2008.In 2009, roughly 8,000 school-aged children living in those districts, 1 in 4 children that age, lived in families with incomes below the federal poverty level. In 2009, a family of 4 met the poverty threshold if less than $22,050 in income.<br />
Among large school districts in OR, the worst student poverty rates were found in Woodburn (31%), Ontario (also 31%) & Klamath Falls (30%).Among large Portland-area districts, poverty was most concentrated in David Douglas (28%) & Reynolds (26%).

in terms of personality, we are similar to siblings only about 20% of the time. We share genes, homes, routines and parents, so this makes no sense. What makes children in the same family so different?
Plomin and other researchers did study after study. When they began, they assumed, like everyone else, that being raised in the same environment would be one of the things that made children similar. This isn't what they found.
"The environment works in a very odd way," says Plomin. "It's making two children in the same family different from one another. Not similar to one another — different."
No one knows for sure, but there are three major theories.
Theory One: Divergence — competition pushes evolution.
Theory Two: Environment — the non-shared environment theory: the timing with which you go through your family's [major events] is different.
Theory Three: Exaggeration — families are essentially comparison machines that greatly exaggerate even minor differences between siblings.

Nearly all -- 94 percent -- of the 34 families moved into permanent housing during the 30 Families in 30 Days initiative launched in the beginning of the year were still in housing three months after the county no longer helped pay the bills.
The program was intended to remove the bureaucracy that keeps agencies from moving families quickly into housing by providing $200,000 that the agencies could use as they saw fit to help families pay rent, deposits and fees. The idea was to pick down-on-their-luck families who, with a little help, would soon be able to find jobs and start paying their own rent. Homeless advocacy agencies Human Solutions and JOIN worked to house the families.
Three months after the program's end, about 40 percent of families who are once homeless are able to pay their rent without any assistance.