I can see that Juno was a bit rosy from some respects. At the same time, my mother and my spouse and I thought it was a lot better than expected - and we thought it would be good.

And having just watched my younger brother and his wife handle caring for their month-old daughter, I agree those accidental mom movies are tiresome.

i too wouldn’t go to napping just yet. but if we do end up with huckabee as prez, i will move to a far off island and declare my own little country. you are all welcome to immigrate there, no worries about minute men.

speaking of men, minute or otherwise, i too think it’s unfair to chide them (us?) for having opinions on abortion. after all, a man is partly responsible for the pregnancy (whether he owns up to it or not) and based on the decisions of the woman in question, may be legally liable for financial & parental support. like kevin i find myself in that grey-area of “legal right but maybe less than ideal situation.” in the end, as i’ve learned from my far-right (!!) grandmother (who was an OBGYN nurse for nearly 50 years) the realities of any given unplanned pregnancy are too complex for any of us to make absolute pronouncements for others.

and pb you are right-on about valuing children; i know too many kids who are pawns in parental games and i can’t help but want to spank the parents and send them to bed. as far as i’m concerned, the minute you decide to create/adopt and care for another human life, that life is your #1 priority.

The fact that these women aren’t more choosy about the people with whom they create life is pretty disgusting. I’m not talking about sexual activity in a larger sense, but the fact that being a mother is important and time consuming long after the cute “bump” on the runway.

Poor, sad, Britney is just the canary in the mine. Those of us who are mothers or who value motherhood should be outraged at the sanguine way parenthood is depicted in hollywood.

[Your comment makes me think of something else, too, Madge. There are many who love and care about children who are not mothers or parents but who are dismissed from any conversations about “family values” because we’re not parenting children. We watch this commodification of bay-bees in the media (”baby bump watch!” — as you say, they’re accessories) and fall silent and angry, knowing that someday we’ll be picking up the pieces of these children’s neglected bodies and souls as ministers, teachers, social workers, therapists, mentors, trusted older friends (perhaps the only reliable adult the child has known), extended family members, etc. I don’t think this is about valuing motherhood as much as it is about valuing children. The glorification of pregnancy for its own sake tells me that we love mommies as biological entities but could care less about the human beings they give birth to. That’s why I called George Bush a “fetus worshiper” during a speech at a Planned Parenthood rally in 1999 in Washington, DC. I still can’t believe I wasn’t shot. - PB]

2. Mars Girl,

I, too, see where you’re coming from, however, my views on abortion come with no caveat attached that specifies I (or anyone else of my gender) ought to be the final authority on the matter. If anything, my views on abortion are deeply ambivalent, an uneasy truce between “legal right that should be granted to all women” and “necessary evil”.

The Ellen Goodman piece referenced here seems to me to be evidence that both the right and left are conceding truth to doctrine. It’s not particularly Christian to believe “hate the sin, love the sinner” and then to criticize a single mother. Nor is it particularly realistic on our part to believe that abortion is anything less than a heart-wrenching, painful decision any woman should have to make, albeit one which should always be legal and available.

I just hate seeing any instance of a young woman who made a decision likely based on ignorance, potentially based on a carelessness, be somehow glorified because she made the decision to keep her child. That “victory”, if you can call it that, is a pretty hollow one indeed. There aren’t any winners when another unwanted child is conceived.

I had no idea what percentage of American women had children - the article says 82% have children by the age of 44. That means almost one out of every five women doesn’t have children by the time she’s in her mid-40s. That surprises me; one out of five is really quite a significant number.