(DETROIT FREE PRESS) 22 June 2008:

Well, that’s the headline, although that’s not quite what they mean: the ratio of marriage ceremonies to married couples is still pretty much one to one for both lesbians and gays. What they mean is that women in a committed relationship are more likely to marry than gay men in committed relationships.

Which shouldn’t come as all that much of a surprise: we see in heterosexual relationhips that women are more eager to marry than men.

It’s compounded here by the way that lesbian couples are much more likely to have and raise children than gays are (there’s the comparable ease and difficulty of the basic mechanics to consider along with desires), so much so that in states where there is a mechanism to register same sex partnerships (marriages, civil partnerships, whatever) the ration is usually 2:1, lesbian to gay.

An old English euphemism for “gay” was “not the marrying kind”: interesting how that seems still to be true, long past the time that the eupehimism is still in use.

(NEW YORK TIMES) 15 June 2008:

There’s a slightly surprising result from looking at the figures about who does all the work around the house. Yes, the number of hours that both men and women work to keep the home running have been falling as a result of technology. And yes, men have also been doing more than their previous share of what work remains.

However, the huge imbalance in child care hours still remains: women do more than men in a ratio of five to one, very much the same number of hours as their grandmothers.

It’s almost enough to make you think there might be something immutable, biological, about this, isn’t it?

(REUTERS) 29 May 2008:

According to a recent study, the more children a woman has, the more teeth she will lose during her lifetime. The knee-jerk reaction is to say that women in the lower socioeconomic groups tend to have more children and also can’t afford to go to the dentist.  The surprising thing about the study, however, is that the tooth loss occured at all socioeconomic levels.  Why? Well scientists say it could be because women are more prone to gingivitis during pregnancy. Women may also be less likely to see a dentist while pregnant. It’s also hard to go sit in a dentist’s chair for an hour when you are primary caregiver for several children.

(NEWS.COM.AU) 19 March 2008:

Maybe mom really did have eyes in the back of her head.

A recent study has shown that women with children are more responsive and visually aware than women without children. Lab tests in rats have shown “The flow of estrogen promotes neuron growth and enhances the plasticity of the brain,” according to Professor Craig Kinsley, a neuroscientist at the University of Richmond. The professor said, “As a result, mothers in our animal models have better vision, coordination and memory, stronger survival instincts, and go about their tasks more efficiently than non-mothers.”

These benefits make sense when considered it’s a mother’s main job and biological imperative to protect their children until they are old enough to reproduce, thus perpetuating the human race.

(FOXCENTRALOREGON.COM) 3 March 2008:

Statistics show that 80 percent of preteen girls are dieting, and those that diet are eight times more likely to develop an eating disorder. What’s more, 81 percent of 10 year olds are afraid of becoming fat and more that 50 percent of 9 and 10 year olds report feeling better when dieting.

Fox News reports:

“‘We have seen a 300 percent increase in the number of calls from preteen patients,’ said Amy Gerberry, program director and therapist at Remuda Ranch’s children’s program. ‘Eating disorders are increasing rapidly in preteen girls. It’s because of our culture’s obsession with dieting and thinness.’

‘Children are being targeted with messages and products promoting diets and body image dissatisfaction,’ adds Gerberry. ‘There are more and more sexualized and objectified images of children in the media today than in the past.’”

(CANBERRA TIMES) 24 February 2008:

A recent study has shown that it is childless single women who work the most overtime…well, just behind women with teenage children actually. Both groups put in more than men and all of those more than women with young children.

One thought is that young women know that taking time out to bear children will harm their career: so they work extra-hard to get it established on the right track before they do: and those with teenage children are making up for the damage done.

The end result though, over the entire working life, seems to be that men and women put in about the same hours, once you account for the child-rearing cycle.

The study didn’t address the fact that some teenagers need more supervision than toddlers.

(THE SUN) 10 December 2007:

While he has four acknowledged children by three babymamas, JACK NICHOLSON claims he could have fathered as many as 9,000 kids.  “There could be 9,000 for all I know – I used to live so freely.”   Jack, 70 – whose exes include actress ANJELICA HOUSTON – admits calming down with age.   He said: “You can’t get too wild these days but I’m as wild as you can get.”   A source said: “He loves women – it’s as simple as that.”

(MSNBC.COM) 12 November 2007:

Deciding when to have children is a decision fraught with emotion for many young career women. A new mathematical model could actually take into account many individual factors and determine the optimal time to have children on a case-by-case basis.

According to Live Science, “Ralph Keeney and doctoral student Dinah Vernik of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business developed the model with the goal of balancing a woman’s professional, social and family objectives and their relative importance to a woman. The model also included age-related concerns such as diminished fertility and the likelihood of having a child with genetic ailments.”

(MSNBC.COM) The Male Biological Clock

Unlike women, who have a marked decline in fertility in their 30s, men’s biological clocks appear to wind down gradually and progressively over the course of their lives. One study, for instance, found that sperm motility — their ability to be strong swimmers capable of reaching and fertilizing an egg — decreased by a steady 0.7 percent per year for men between the ages of 22 and 80.

Sperm from older men also may be more likely to contribute to health problems in children. Recent studies have linked older fatherhood with increased risks of schizophrenia, autism, Down syndrome and other disorders in children. And in this case, “older” means as young as 40

(AUSTIN STATESMAN) 10 June 2007:

Recent surveys of wants and desires are showing that men and women are becoming more alike. Sure, Mars and Venus still feature, but it’s as if the orbits are getting closer.

In centuries gone by, when work was mostly about gross physical labor, it was natural that men would be those who went to do it while women ran the house. Now that work is mostly about brain power and mental skills there’s little to stop women working and earning as men do.

What this in turn means is that men are freed from the burden of being the only provider. The interesting result of that is that what each sex wants turns out to be pretty similar: yes, interesting work, but also a decent home life, time with the children and so on.

It might be that, hundreds of years after the Industrial Revolution, we’re finally all able to be human again, instead of just worker bees.