(Alternate, Twitter-sourced titles: “5 Ways to Prove Darwin Wasn’t Crazy,” “Shut the Eff Up and Science Already,” “5 Ways Psychology Needs to Evolve.”) Evolutionary psychology, the study of human psychological adaptations, does not have a popular or scientific reputation for being rigorous, even though there are rigorous, thoughtful scientists in the field. The field is [...]

I used to have a colleague who thought it was funny to yell “back to work!” whenever he saw me. He would regale me, a young, breastfeeding assistant professor with an infant in tow and a 750 student course, with tales of when he was an assistant professor and would work all day, come home [...]

I tend to go to bed freezing, especially so in the winter, so I pile our flannel sheet, blanket, and down comforter over me when I settle in to sleep. A few times each menstrual cycle, clustered together in the luteal phase between ovulation and menses, I wake up from sleep completely soaked in my [...]

Lady bones are delicate, selfless, dense connective tissue that hold lady bodies up to help the lady vessel carry babies. When we are pregnant, the thinking goes, lady bones give up their calcium in vast quantities, depleting themselves for the good of their darling fetuses. We ladies mostly replete this calcium between pregnancies. Then of [...]

You all must forgive me for this blog post. You see, I am in my premenstrual phase, and so with all my insane-o premenstrual symptoms I simply cannot access the part of my brain that makes political decisions. Perhaps when I get through the devastation and physical wreckage we ladies like to think of as [...]

Inside Higher Ed has an interesting interview with Professors Kelly Ward (Washington State University) and Lisa Wolf-Wendel (University of Kansas) the authors of the new book Academic Motherhood: How Faculty Manage Work and Family. The whole thing is worth a read, including important points about how liberal arts colleges tend to be less family-friendly than [...]

Once a week I get four allergy shots and then sit in a small waiting room for thirty minutes to make sure I don’t have any adverse reactions. Today, my husband came along to spend some time with me and make use of the free wi-fi. We chatted quietly while he did some service work [...]

In the U.S., 90 percent of us get married—and usually without a whole lot of thought. We may do it for love, which is fine, but arguably a dubious reason to tie the knot. You can love someone perfectly well without marrying him, after all. We get married because, that’s what people do. For women [...]

When my first child was born, I was very happy, as many moms are, but also a little on edge. I liked the idea of being a mom, and the idea of caring for my beautiful baby, but I also felt ill prepared for my new role. Yes, I had babysat other people’s kids, and [...]