The zeitgeist is wrong. Writers for the New York Times, Newsweek, others: all wrong. Anyone with the money, spiritual wherewithal, time, and vocation to adopt a child from Haiti should start now. There were 380,000 orphaned and abandoned children in Haiti even before the earthquake. Adopting from Haiti was a slow, arduous process—now, with buildings and records destroyed and adoption officials killed, it will be even more difficult. It might not, to be honest, be the best use of resources (time, money, your personal energy) to help the people of Haiti. And it certainly isn’t the most economical or even the most environmentally friendly way to add a child to your family. But there is value, and lots of it, in changing one life. One life, that is, plus yours.

The media-publicized concerns about adopting from Haiti are vastly overblown. Given the strenuous requirements of international adoption from any country, “adopting [Haitian] children in droves” simply isn't in the cards. There were all of 310 adoptions from Haiti last year. Families who brought their adopted children home from Haiti in the recent “humanitarian parole” (like this one) started their adoption processes in 2007. Among other things, an international adoption (or a domestic adoption, in many states) requires multiple visits from a social worker, interviews with family members, letters of recommendation, and dozens of affidavits attesting to everything from one's birth to marriage to lack of a police record from every place one has ever lived—each of which may need to be printed in one place, signed in another, notarized in a third, certified in a fourth, translated in a fifth, and then blessed by an Indonesian medicine man with a rabbinical degree. (Last part: exaggeration. But you will have to trust me that that is what if feels like.) It requires hours of education on cultural differences, bonding issues, abandonment, trauma, and the symptoms of fetal alcohol syndrome or memories of abuse.

It would be far, far easier to bring home a Birkin from Hermes—making Newsweek writer Allison Samuels' comments about “eager white Americans ... adopting minority kids because it’s trendy” or to “keep up with the Jolie-Pitts” a little offensive. And uninformed—actually, international adoptions are down in recent years (22,728 in 2005, 20,679 in 2006, and 17, 229 in 2008, compared to 55,000 domestic adoptions from foster care), and not because there’s no longer a need. Across Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Carribean, there were an estimated 109 million children living without any available caregivers in 2005. Very, very few of those will eventually find a home at all, in any country—but some of those who do will someday return, healthier and better educated, to help other children who find themselves alone. I am not arguing against adopting domestically, from foster care or privately—far from it. But children aren't carrots. There's nothing inherently better about going local. There are as many reason to adopt as there are adopting families, and almost any adoption is for the greater good.

I think we can all agree that airlifting children willy-nilly from Haiti and then handing them out like kittens to Americans who’ve expressed a casual interest would be a mistake. I think we can all also recognize that that isn't going to happen. There’s no reason to use it as a stick with which to discourage those few (and it will be very few) families who are moved to find a social worker, begin gathering papers, and wait for the inevitable need for adoptive families to return.

Tags: adoption, Haiti

Each week, we debate a question in conjunction with the Washington Post Magazine. This week: Which wedding tradition do you wish were abolished?

Hanna Rosin: I would definitely say the throwing of the bouquet. In the last few weddings I've been to—even the ones for more conservative friends—there is a strong ambivalence hanging over this moment. The ladies gather shame-faced in the corner and the bride gives a limp, embarrassed toss. In each case the flowers landed on the floor, as the women were too embarrassed to catch them. The age when women want to get married is not over. But the age when women proudly display a grasping eagerness to do so is long past.

Jenny Rogers: I'd abolish wedding favors. Pointless and expensive. No one needs a little box of chocolates with the couple's name on it.

Nina Rastogi: Extensive hors d'oeuvre spreads followed by massive, plated meals. Your guests just feel guilty about the wasted food, and then they're too bloated to dance.

Torie Bosch: I'm at the point in life where my refrigerator is cluttered with "save the date" magnets and I seem to attend a wedding every six weeks, so I've spent a lot of time recently considering which traditions are archaic but sweet and which are just wasteful. The one I hate most is a relatively new invention: the unity candle. It's meant to symbolize the joining of two families, but isn't that what the wedding itself is? Really, these elaborate, pricey candles just add to the cost of the event and make the ceremony longer.

Lauren Bans: First and foremost, I'd equalize the division of pre-wedding labor—no one should have to give up her life for a year to plan an entire wedding by herself. Then, of course, bad DJs.

June Thomas: The disposable cameras scattered around for spontaneous art shots. True, this is the least offensive and potentially most creative of the wedding "bits," but are the resulting photos ever more than drunken shots of guests' junk?

Anne Applebaum: Bridesmaids' dresses. I went along with them because I knew my mother couldn't imagine a wedding without them, but to this day I feel bad about making my high-school best friend wear an ill-fitting pink dress for an entire evening. Then I had to wear equally awful dresses for my sisters' weddings too.

Jessica Lambertson: AH! Me too! I was actually in a bridal party last year where the bride only stipulated we wear a black cocktail dress. That was the best idea any bride ever had. Finally, a bridesmaid dress that I can wear again and I know looks good on me. I have a decade's worth of ridiculous, unflattering, poofy, oddly colored and shaped dresses in the back of my closet.

KJ Dell'Antonia: I would be happy to never again watch a panicked couple be hoisted aloft on wobbly chairs and danced around while everyone beneath them pretends not to be secretly waiting for disaster. But generally, doesn't everyone just do whatever they want anymore? Does anybody still feel bound by "tradition"?

Ellen Tarlin: I am actually almost completely anti-wedding and not so keen on the "institution" of marriage either. I did get married, at City Hall no less, and I only got married because my then-boyfriend kept asking me and I thought it would be easier to get a mortgage if we were married, but I was perfectly happy and fully committed just living with him (I am still perfectly happy and fully committed). What I hate about weddings is the patriarchalism. I hate the surprise proposal. Why does the man get to decide when the couple marries? Shouldn't marriage be something that both adults discuss together? I hate the getting down on one knee. The idea that it is the woman who has to be wooed and it is the man's responsibility to do so. I hate the engagement ring. Aside from the fact that buying diamonds supports an evil, destructive "business," I hate the idea that the woman needs to be "bought" with a diamond and that putting a diamond on her finger suggests some sort of ownership on the man's part. I hate that the father walks the bride down the aisle and "gives her away." I find the whole thing to be sexist pageantry and a needless expense. I hate the conformity of the whole thing. I think the best reason to get married is if you are gay. Then it really means something valuable.

Dana Stevens: I feel almost exactly like Ellen, and have never really seen the point of getting married for myself. Though I did reluctantly allow myself to be frog-marched to City Hall after I got pregnant and my partner convinced me that it might be smart down the line for tax or insurance reasons. But I will say that I enjoy a lot of the pageantry at other people's weddings and seeing how their personal style gets expressed (or, more often, crushed beneath conformity and family pressure). But would never, never want to be in one myself.

As for KJ's assertion that people just do what they want and don't feel bound by tradition: How many weddings have you been to were you were shocked that your most unconventional feminist friend wore a long white dress and had Jordan almonds in little net bags?

If I had to go with one tradition to abolish, it would probably be self-written, cutesy vows that the couple write themselves and mumble inaudibly. One tradition I love: rehearsal-dinner toasts, especially when they get kind of roast-y. I think it's a great literary genre, and sometimes a hilarious and touching tribute comes from the last guest you'd expect it to.

Jessica Grose: This is so interesting to read as I am planning my own wedding. Luckily, I am including not a single thing that was mentioned here. First let's dispense with the actual question: I am not a fan of long, indulgent ceremonies. If you're following religious tradition, then it's wonderful and could be a learning experience for guests. If it's 45 minutes spent extolling the virtues of the couple at hand in a new-age love fest, it's just tedious.

As for Lauren's request, no bride who needs a year to plan a wedding WANTS her fiance's help. It doesn't take that long to plan a wedding, even a big one, unless you're a perfectionist control freak who wants everything just so. Trust me. It's actually not that fraught, time-consuming, or difficult if you're organized and share tasks.

Dana, do I have to hand in my unconventional feminist card because I am going to wear a white dress? I think you can like and want to be part of a tradition even if you know that the roots of that tradition are less than savory. Of course some people are forced into doing things they don't want because of family. But lots of people are not.

And June, I want to see your wedding photo collection.

Ellen Tarlin: I guess I should add that no, I don't condemn anyone for wanting to have/do all the things I hate. It's your life, your wedding, do what you want. (But I don't have to come, do I? And really, who would want me there?) If you want a big honking diamond, that's your decision—I wish you wouldn't, but I recognize that most people do want a diamond ring and it's none of my business. And I wear leather and eat meat, so I am certainly a single-issue political-correctness hypocrite. I should also add that I spent about four years working at Martha Stewart Weddings magazine in some sort of exercise in self-torture, so my general lack of interest in weddings really did flower into outright disdain there. However, I suppose I am glad I got married, simply so that I can provide my husband with health insurance and have all those other rights that gay couples don't get but also should.

Kerry Howley: Obvious, perhaps, but the father/husband hand-off kills me.

Rachael Larimore: The traditions are what you make of them, or can be. My boyfriend and I owned a home together, had decided where to have the wedding, and looked at rings long before he booked the weekend trip to the San Juan Islands, allegedly "out of the blue." (I knew—I even had an engagement present for him tucked away in my luggage.) But that didn't mean that I didn't enjoy the "surprise" proposal. It was touching and romantic and not at all patriarchal to see the lengths he went to to make it special—the hotel room with a view, the mad dash to get to just the right spot on the side of the mountain so he could propose at sunset, etc. And instead of having my father "give me away," I had both my parents walk down the aisle with me. It wasn't a "passing off," but symbolized, at least to us, the journey they had guided me on from my birth up to that point, and how they were there for me at the biggest moment of my life and always would be.

Dana Stevens: Jess, of course you can be a feminist and wear a white dress, and I'm sorry now that I said such a churlish and unintentionally mean-sounding thing! I'm one to talk, as I love fashion of all kinds, including a well-made wedding dress. The particular traditions of the Victorian-style, Western ceremony (diamond rings, white dresses, being given away) don't speak to me, and I've been to weddings where people who don't love them get steamrolled or guilted into enacting them (this is how my parents always describe their own wedding, which perhaps explains my aversion). But the idea of picking and choosing the cultural traditions that do speak to you is totally beautiful and moving. Also, for what it is worth, I often cry at good friends' weddings, and have already made some mental notes for a toast for my now 4-year-old daughter's rehearsal dinner.

Ellen Tarlin: I think Dana does make a good point, though, that sometimes perfectly reasonable people lose their minds when it comes to having a wedding. I worked with one woman who planned to wear a white dress but said there was no way it was going to be sleeveless, since she hated her upper arms, and she didn't want it to be poofy, because it would make her look like a marshmallow since she was short. Guess what the two distinguishing characteristics of her wedding dress were?

Tags: feminism, wedding traditions, weddings

Last week, a 19-year-old New Zealand student, known only as Unigirl, sold her virginity to a stranger for $32,000. Her online ad was viewed by 30,000 people and received over 1,200 offers. Thanks to the Internet, women like Unigirl are putting their sexual initiation up for sale in the very public marketplace. Though these auctions have a new global reach, the pricing of virginity is an ancient human practice—according to the book of Deuteronomy, a girl’s virginity is worth 50 shekels, paid to her father. In today’s economy, how much is a woman’s virginity worth?

At least $10,000 if the woman is reasonably attractive and under 25. The exact price ultimately depends on the “quality” of the virginity: how young and hot the virgin is. Models can fetch over $1 million. In 2005, Peruvian model Graciela Yataco was the first to break this threshold, although she eventually declined her top bid of $1.3 million. In January 2009, 20-year-old Italian model Raffaella Fico received an offer of nearly $1.5 million, but also allegedly retracted the auction. She is now dating a professional soccer player.

Branding is also crucial. According to Gawker, current co-eds have the priciest hymens, as “college girls are simultaneously Girls Gone Wild and nubile pillow-fighting naifs.” To maximize gains, a woman should also disclose her identity, preferably with revealing pictures and a detailed sexual history. The most successful for-sale virgins package themselves as pure and virtuous virgin/whores. Yataco was a devout Catholic who needed money to care for her sick mother. Fico was also religious and planned to use the profits from her sexual foray for acting classes once she bought a house in Rome.

Selling your virginity to pay school fees is also a good way to seduce buyers. The narrative of self-sacrifice is ready-made for the media, and this good publicity inflates demand. In 2007, 18-year-old Carys Copestake from Manchester managed to make $23,000 to finance her physics degree, even though the only physical information she provided was, “brunette, 34C, green eyes, all in proportion and good looking."

Natalie Dylan is the ultimate virginity-marketing mogul. A 22-year-old women’s studies graduate from Sacramento State, Dylan needed the money to pay for her master’s degree in family and marriage therapy. She announced the auction on Howard Stern’s radio show in September 2008 and justified her decision in the Daily Beast and on The Tyra Banks Show. After her media blitz, Dylan received over 10,000 bids, half of which were for over $1 million.

Dylan approached her virginity like a good capitalist. “The value of my chastity is one level on which men cannot compete with me,” she said to Tyra. “I decided to flip the equation, and turn my virginity into something that allows me to gain power and opportunity from men.”

Tags: prostitution, sex, virginity

It's hard to catalogue the amount of media—books, articles, movies, commercials—dedicated to scaring women about their biological clocks. We're told over and over again that if we wait "too long," then we won't have a man, much less a chance to have a baby. The age at which you're a dried-up hag incapable of performing basic reproductive functions like getting pregnant or attracting a mate varies on the whims of the alarmist—Lori Gottlieb seems to put it at 35, Kay Hymowitz and Charlotte Allen put it at 28, and in the era of Jamie Lynn Spears, I'm sure we'll be hearing that if you haven't locked down your marriage-and-or-baby path by 18, you're in grave danger of never getting to the finish line, which all women are presumed to want. Unfortunately, the endless drumbeat about how your ovaries dry up 20 or more years before menopause begins is beginning to affect women's decision-making, according to the Family Planning Association. Women hear, over and over again, that you can't get pregnant after 28 or 35, and they believe it enough to ditch the contraception, with predictable results.

In England and Wales, the abortion rate for women in their early 40s is as high as it is for teenagers. Part of the reason is women in their 40s are more likely to have medically indicated abortions, but a big portion of the abortions are old-fashioned "whoops" abortions. The FPA doesn't have the exact numbers on this, but they have a constant stream of calls from women in their 40s who are facing unintended pregnancy simply because they bought into the story that fortysomething is too old to get pregnant. In fact, the fertility rate for women over 40 has doubled in the U.K. since 1988. I'm sure some of it is because women are putting off child-bearing until later in life, but much of it has to do with the fact that they're constantly told not to.

Another interesting tidbit from that story: The highest fertility rate in England and Wales is in the 30-34 age range. According to our most hysterical hysterics screaming at women to settle down and start pushing out babies ASAP, you're already over the hill and probably can't conceive at that age. So how on earth did it become the highest bracket for fertility? Could it be that people telling women that unmarried at 28 is "too late" have some sort of anti-feminist agenda?

I don't want to make light of women who really do face declining fertility in their 30s due to very real conditions such as untreated STIs or PCOS. But the best approach to those problems is medical intervention for people who face them, not a generalized guilt trip to settle for someone you don't want and have babies you're not ready to have, regardless of your medical history.

Tags: fertility rates, marriage panic

—Is this Planned Parenthood ad more effective than the much-hyped Superbowl spots from Focus on the Family it responds to? Mid-tackle, Tebow and his mom never explicity mentioned abortion or "pro-life." Sean James and Al Joyner's message includes this line: "Only women can make the best decisions about their health and their future." [Washington Post]

—Meghan McCain (explicitly, on the View) and Cindy McCain (indirectly, by appearing in the NOH8 campaign) accuse the GOP of bigotry. Just one more reason John is "on the tea party's shit list." [Salon]

—Does it matter that the judge on the Prop. 8 case, Vaughn Walker, is gay? A Republican appointment, a record of fairness, and the defense's inevitable appeal if he doesn't rule in its favor, suggest no. [Gawker, San Francisco Chronicle, WSJ]

—A U.K. poll finds that many husbands are in the dark about the details of their wives' lives. Her clothing size? Natural hair color? Birthday?! Not a clue. And the guys readily admit that their wives probably know these things about them. [The Telegraph]

—Researchers are getting a better sense of when your kid begins to feel your pain. Recently scientists have linked the development of empathy to the acquisition of sophisticated language. [Babble]

Tags: child development, Cindy McCain and Prop 8, gender differences, marriage, Meghan McCain, parenting, planned parenthood, spouses, theory of the mind, tim tebow pro-life ad, vaughn walker

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Kerry, I watched the Super Bowl with my husband, 14-year-old daughter, and a friend of hers, and we were all discouraged by what you identify as the truly nasty tone toward women that ran through the ads (and let’s not mention the explicitly porn style of the Go Daddy ads which had the girls vowing they would never use Go Daddy.) And Jess, I agree with you that if this is the way companies want to advertise their products, let them. But I was struck that all the loathing of domesticity in the commercials was completely undercut after the game by the image of a tearful Drew Brees tenderly holding and kissing his baby. In his post-game interview Brees made clear that while he was thrilled for this win, the bigger deal was the birth of his son.

Photograph of Brees family by Timothy A. Clary/Getty Images.

Tags: Drew Brees, superbowl, superbowl commercials

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Well, we’ve seen the Tebow ad and I guess we can see how it slipped past CBS restrictions on advocacy ads, as there was nothing even mildly controversial about it. But I wanted to respond to KJ’s post from late last week about a reluctance to see “soft-focus” ads on either side of the abortion issue.

KJ, you wrote that my idea for an ad—showing people going through their daily routines and then telling viewers “my mom chose life”—was disingenuous because it shows only one side, and that a truthful ad would have to show coat hangers and neglected poor kids. Well, yes, ads usually do show only one side of a story. You don’t see many obese people in McDonald’s ads, and those Bud Light commercials never end up with someone taking a field sobriety test. An ad that showed the pros and cons of life without legal abortion might not be pretty. But a truthful “pro-choice” ad wouldn’t be all gossamer and rainbows, either. Sure, it could show women who have been able to do more with their lives and careers because they were better able to plan their families. But if it were truthful, wouldn’t it also have to show an ultrasound of an abortion (like the one Abby Johnson claimed to see but likely never did)? Or maybe it can include a description of a partial-birth abortion or a testimonial from a woman whose baby was born alive after an attempted abortion and the clinic failed to help her.

I don’t come by my pro-life views easily. It’s impossible to go through life—or even through Target some days—without thinking, “My god, who let them have a kid?” or “OK, some people clearly should have abortions!” when you see some of the less-than-stellar examples of parenting that abound. But there are no easy answers. Women die in childbirth, and women die having (legal) abortions. Children are brought into the world by parents who aren’t ready for them, and children who could and would lead normal and wonderful lives are aborted. The truth is ugly, but it’s ugly on all sides.

Photograph of woman by Stockbyte/Getty Images.

Tags: abortion, pro-choice, pro-life, Super Bowl ads, Tim Tebow ad

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Anthropologist Grant McCracken had a good post a while back about the mythic Beer Guy. Beer Guy is the guy you usually see during Super Bowl commercials. He is the likeably dumb, happy-go-lucky former frat boy. He showed up during this Bud Light commercial. McCracken didn’t get into this, but Beer Guy requires that the people around him—often, women—be his foils. They are humorless, dull, competent. They join book clubs and actually want to talk about the books.

I skipped the Super Bowl, but watching these commercials, I’m not seeing a lot of Beer Guy. I see his angrier counterpart. This guy maybe used to be Beer Guy until he started dating some horrible shrew who makes him carry her lip gloss. Now he’s just resentful. Beer Guy was hovering in between the joyful, beer-soaked depths of his animality and the banality of civilization. This new guy, he of the Flo TV and Dodge Charger ads, has tipped over into civilization and feels oppressed.

The Dodge ad is about escape, a solid if not particularly groundbreaking theme for a minutelong spot. This universal fantasy of deliverance from daily life is taken, for reasons unclear, to be exclusively male. Men like to drive fast cars. Women? Well, we adore recycling, cleaning the sink, going to work, walking the dog. And don’t get me started on sorting the laundry! Bliss. We couldn’t possibly ever dream of getting away from such chores; mostly we dream about our male partners learning to master them. The men in the ad are only truly themselves when they’re driving. Women are most fully realized while separating whites from darks.

So before I go share a very special moment with my vacuum, I'll just add that the the Dodge commercial brought to mind Fantastic Mr. Fox, a good movie with the same sad theme—likeable male fox struggles to choose between animal nature and the graces of civilized family life. Dull, humorless wife-fox pushes for civilization. We know life would be easier if Mr. Fox submitted. But we’re never really on the side of the shrew. We’re always pushing for revolt against the pressure of civilizing conformity. And so when the story inevitably casts the woman on the side of domesticity, the woman inevitably loses.

Photograph of couple by Stockbyte/Getty Images.

Tags: Super Bowl ads

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How seriously should we take Sarah Palin as she makes all the early exploratory moves of a presidential candidate? (See: the urgent speech to the base in Tea Party land, the dangling of herself as "willing" to challenge Obama on Fox, the appearances on behalf of other candidates like Gov. Rick Perry, the assembling of an experienced set of handlers, and of course the Facebook account and Twitter feed.) In mulling that question, it's worth spotlighting her mastery of the favored tactic of the 2008 race: taking umbrage. As John Dickerson wrote two years ago, when Obama and McCain were just getting started, "If done correctly, candidates can exploit flamboyant displays of public upset to gain attention, raise money, put their opponents on the defensive, and distract from an unfavorable story." Palin did this effectively when Obama made his quip about how he bowls as if he's in the Special Olympics, and she did it again last week when she called for Rahm Emanuel's resignation because he'd called liberals retarded. Insert your favorite third example here.

John wisely warned candidates that to win at taking offense, they have to keep their expression of outrage in proportion to the offense. But I don't think that rule applies to Palin. In fact, it's part of her genius that it doesn't. Her Rahm scolding is a perfect example. To be cold-hearted: She's the one with the Down syndrome kid, and that trumps the wing-nut aspect of saying that the president's advisor should resign over one word. She gets to be the mother bear. That could play well with her base, the main audience at this early point, and it probably won't alienate the independents she eventually needs to win over. It's another genius shot from her motherhood arsenal—an arsenal she's figured out how to deploy like no other woman in politics.

Photograph of Sarah Palin by Win McNamee/Getty Images.

Tags: rahm emanual, Sarah Palin, taking umbrage

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More from the experts on child rearing: "Children of moms who answered their children's requests for help quickly and accurately; talked about their children's preferences, thoughts and memories during play, and encouraged successful strategies to help solve difficult problems performed better ... on tasks that call for executive skills than children of moms who didn't use these techniques." That extra bonus load of guilt for all the times you didn't leap away from your desk to respond to a child who couldn't get Thomas back on the track (or helpful aid in interacting with your toddler, depending on how you look at it) comes courtesy of researchers at the Universities of Montreal and Minnesota and was extracted on ScienceDaily.

The researchers, like many researchers before them, looked at mother and baby pairs to draw their conclusions, conveniently letting fathers off the hook for any responsibility for their child's cognitive and executive functioning. I understand that in some studies—those involving breast feeding, say—the sex of the interacting parent will obviously affect the outcome. I'm not seeing the connection here. There's nothing uniquely maternal about helping a child get the bunny puzzle piece to fit into the rabbit-sized hole.

Photograph of family by Stockbyte/Getty Images.

Tags: cognitive studies