Laura Stepp

Why do so many people these days insist on seeing complicated issues only in the simplest of terms?

An example is last week's column about teen mothers on slate.com. Business reporter Matthew Yglesias argued that low-income teen moms aren't poor because they have babies to take care...

Glee is losing me.

Once upon a time, Fox Network's musical take on a high school show choir was funny and poignant. Now, as its third season winds up, it has evolved into a string of Sunday sermons accompanied by the voices of Barbra Streisand, Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga and...

To those who roll their eyes at the movie War Horse being nominated this week for a Best Picture Academy Award, let me say this: The movie is not, as some of those who haven't seen it suggest, just another sentimental story about a boy and his horse. It is...

If you're about to become a grandparent, there are all kinds of things you need to know about grandbabysitting.

Babies should sleep on their backs, not their stomachs, grandparents-to-be learned recently in a class just for them at a northern Virginia hospital. Drop-side cribs are a no-no. When bathing the...

Once again, teenage girls are pawns in a political battle that is only partly about them.

I'm talking about the unfortunate decision of the Obama administration to continue to require emergency contraception be sold only behind the pharmacy counter and, for girls 16 and younger, only with a doctor's...

When the good news surfaced last week that the birth rate of teenage girls had fallen substantially -- for the third year in a row -- to its lowest level ever, three reasons came immediately to mind.

One, fewer girls are having sex and those who are,...

Teenagers and their families recently lost a good friend to cancer. His name was Peter Benson. He was 65 and an energetic psychologist who helped change the way Americans think about 12- to 18-year-olds and their communities.

For much of the 20th century, scientists spoke of adolescence as a...

Sometimes I despair over women's opinions about women. How can females move upward if they're always tearing each other down?

I say this in reaction to comments I've received from readers of The Washington Post who read a story I wrote for this past Sunday's magazine entitled "What...

It's a scene hard to forget: a 16-year-old girl early in an unplanned pregnancy, alone and leaning up against a junky trailer somewhere in west Texas. Has anyone sadder looking been on television recently than Becky Sproles in last week's episode of Friday Night Lights?

It was Becky's loneliness...

This is a valentine to all you guys who aren't afraid to hug each other. Because so many of you still are -- except, of course, when you've just completed a 50-yard pass.

One would think men would feel free to give each other a squeeze in places other...

Do not be fooled by student codes of conduct. They're more about decorum than desire, or cheating on tests rather than cheating on your girlfriend.

Which means the age-old assumption, "Boys will be boys" is alive and well, and girls are still, as Maureen Dowd put it, prey.

We...

Dear God. Single men (and a few women) are now paying strangers to find suitable dates for them online. According to a recent article in the Washington Post, they don't have the time -- or the will -- to do it themselves.

So add relationships to the list...

The title of the facebook post doesn't tell the whole story. But it says a lot:

"Standing Up To Idiots Who Think They Can Get Away With This"

The idiots in question are men who sabotage a woman's efforts to keep from getting pregnant or catching a sexually...

News this week that the birth rate is declining among teens was welcome indeed. But the explanation that it may have something to do with the ailing U.S. economy?

Puleeze.

How many 16-, 17- or 18-year-olds do you know who, as the t-shirts and jeans are coming off would...

When I read the lead paragraph of this week's news story on the success of an experimental, abstinence-only sex ed curriculum, my first thought was: "Yes, but..."

The Washington Post story, written by Rob Stein, said that the "landmark study" showed that encouraging children to remain sexually abstinent...

When I first saw Ben Stone, the 23-year-old slacker in the movie "Knocked Up," get mushy over his prospective woops-baby, I thought, what a bunch of malarkey. Guys in their 20s don't want to be papas.

I may have been wrong. In a new, nationally representative survey of 18-29-year-olds, men...