>The most interesting thing here was the UofM study, IMO.

...until you recognize that we are either three, two, one or zero generations removed from arranged marriages (depending on where you live and the culture you grew up in) and that discovering a correlation between attitudes prior to pregnancy and impacts on children after pregnancy is hardly rocket science. Especially when reporting your results involves "developing a scale." My brother-in-law teaches psychology; I'm not sure he'd permit a thesis project on "do parents who don't want children neglect their children more than those who do?"

Valenti gets a case of the vapours over the fact that IUD use has gone up 161 percent since 2005 without acknowledging that the change is entirely due to a 99.5% effectiveness rate, increased coverage by insurance firms and a shift at Planned Parenthood from depo provera and Norplant to non-invasive, reversible birth control methods. As soon as your focus is more on preventing birth than preventing acne or preventing STDs, IUDs are a clear winner.

It's the kind of surface-level analysis that really grinds my gears. Valenti doesn't know what she's talking about and cherry picks unrelated factoids to build a conspiracy theory a la Dan Brown.

Elizabeth Warren (and her daughter!) did a much better analysis of the problems of feminism and motherhood in "The Two Income Trap." They did not, however, come up with any solutions that did not require a massive overhaul of the social contract. Neat bit of foreshadowing, that book.