Democracy depends on the free exchange of ideas. Help sustain it with a tax-deductible donation today.
Mary Lyndon Shanley is Margaret Stiles Halleck Professor of Political Science at Vassar College. She is author of Making Babies, Making Families: What Matters Most in an Age of Reproductive Technologies, Surrogacy, Adoption, and Same-Sex and Unwed Parents’ Rights; and Feminism, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England 1850—1895.
More than 1.5 million children currently have a parent in prison; for 94 percent of these children, that parent is the father.
American conservatives pride themselves on moral clarity—and nowhere greater than on the topic of marriage and family.
A political and literary forum, independent and nonprofit since 1975. Registered 501(c)(3) organization. Learn more about our mission
For National Poetry Month, sign up for our newsletter and get a digital copy of our out-of-print chapbook Poems for Political Disaster—with work by Jorie Graham, Ilya Kaminsky, Solmaz Sharif, Juan Felipe Herrera, and much more.
Newsletter subscribers get our latest essays, reading lists, and exclusive editorial content (plus 10% off our entire store).
For National Poetry Month, sign up for our newsletter and get a digital copy of our out-of-print chapbook Poems for Political Disaster.