Almost two years ago, pregnant with my daughter, I paid my first visit to the Cambridge Birth Center. Located inside an old Victorian house, the facility is hard to distinguish from a modestly appointed home, with blond wood floors and three spacious bedrooms, each attached to a bathroom with a large tub. If the interior is comforting, so is the […]

IN 2008, when Janis Kupferer moved to Denver for a job, she was 40 and single and knew no one in the area. When browsing Match.com, she recalled, she would sometimes click on other women’s profiles and think: “Some of these women sound really neat. Why isn’t there a Web site where I can meet female friends?” So Ms. Kupferer […]

When my parents married in 1977, women’s liberation was in full swing and my mother was a consciousness-raiser. She was about as likely to take my father’s name as she was to sport a veil at the wedding. She would remain Ms. Tuhus. Nine months later, the surname for their new baby (me) was self-evident. My parents yoked their names […]

In 2007, an organization called the Men of Reform Judaism published a Haggadah intended for men-only Passover Seders. It tweaked the familiar rituals. Instead of solemnly intoning the 10 plagues that struck ancient Egypt—frogs, boils, lice, and so on—participants are asked to recite the scourges of manhood: impotence, hair loss, prostate cancer. In the introduction, the authors explain their motives […]

Last week, new guidelines for diagnosing Alzheimer’s defined a “preclinical” stage of the dreaded disease. Evidently, the telltale pathology—in particular, the plaques that encroach on the brain—can be detected years, if not decades, before the patient ever forgets a familiar name or neglects to feed a pet. The announcement renewed a debate that has flared in recent months: Since there’s […]