Dr. Peggy Drexler

Melanie's husband died suddenly at 35, leaving her to care for their three sons, ages 8, 4, and 10 months. She had no family nearby. Turns out, she had something just as valuable: A network of friends. Friends who really stepped up to the plate in the wake of Melanie's...

These days, gay parents are no novelty: We see them strolling through our neighborhoods, participating in our PTA meetings, and, perhaps most notably, appearing on our TV screens: Mitchell and Cam, fathers to Lily, on the ratings smash Modern Family; Glee's Sue Sylvester, expectant mom to a baby conceived with...

My father died of a heart attack when I was three years old. I went to sleep with a father, and by the time I woke, I no longer had one. My mother, in her grief, subsequently removed all traces of him. There were no photos on bookshelves; no fond...

Ok. Let me get this straight. Vice President Joe Biden happens to mention that he has no problem with same-sex marriage. Then President Obama says that he supports it. Then some schoolmates of Mitt Romney say he and his buddies held down a shy, quiet student they thought to be...

In my work studying the sons of single and two-mother families, I found deep concern about the lack of male role models for these boys. But shift genders, and girls and female role models is a conversation we seldom seem to have.

Part of that is the fact that...

What's so hard about mothering? Aside from being everything to everyone -- including the eternal fountain of love, connectedness, support, and protection -- moms function as personal shoppers, cooks, janitors, bankers, and repairmen. We're responsible for scheduling appointments, social events, and homework. What's more, we're supposed to love every second...

At my final meeting with 10-year-old Quentin, a boy I'd been observing for many years, I gave him a gift. It was a video called Yankee Sluggers, and told the stories of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. For me, the gift symbolized my journey with Quentin and spoke directly to...

More than just about anything, Fiona's boys hated having their nails trimmed. They were rough-and-tumble types, with a penchant for superheroes and playing with sticks. So Fiona came up with a diversionary tactic: nail polish. "At one point, both boys had toenails in every color I own--purple, gold, fire engine...

Quentin, three-and-a-half, was happily darting around the playground, like usual, when out of nowhere another little boy ran right up and kicked him in the shins. Quentin looked stunned, like he couldn't believe what had just happened. But he didn't kick back. First, he cried for a few minutes --...

My son was nearly two years old and had yet to utter a word. It was driving me nuts.
He was my first child. Like many new moms, I felt a special pressure for him to succeed. That's our burden as mothers. For decades, women have been told...

"Who will be my role model, now that my role model is gone?" -- Paul Simon

These are tough times for role models.

I'm not a football fan, and I haven't spent a lot of time in Arkansas. A week ago, you could have told me that Bobby Petrino...

Contrary to Pope Benedict XVI's denunciations about what he called the "powerful" gay marriage lobby in America and the religious right's warning that gay marriage is a slippery slope to bestiality, there have been no confirmed reports of anyone applying for a license to marry their dog.

More and more...

Every day, it seems I read about some wonderful thing our dogs do for us.

They cure our stress, they lower our blood pressure, they help our cholesterol. They find us when we're lost, they sniff out our diseases, they wake us up in the middle of the night when...

A while ago, I was rushing up the street, carrying groceries and my briefcase, barely closed from all I had stuffed inside it, trying not to be late to pick up my daughter from basketball practice. One of her classmates, 13-year-old Damien, was walking from school toward me. I'd known...

There's an increasingly sensitive tripwire between faith and policy these days. To question the latter is to incite charges you're denigrating the former.

It's especially difficult when you're talking about the Catholic Church -- which, yes, has failed miserably in its handling of abuse, but has done so much...

We're more than 30 years into "the quiet revolution." So you'd think we'd have a little better handle on it by now.

It began in the late '70s, when women started to surge into colleges and graduate schools, and take their place in medicine, law, business, and other professions once...

The more the economy improves, the more upset the Republican right seems to be about contraception.

Republicans love a good moral issue the way Democrats love a good class issue -- especially this election, when voter anger does not seem to be breaking the GOP's way.

With mounting...

The Susan G. Komen skirmish gave us a week of high drama -- the stunning denial of Planned Parenthood funding, the furious backlash, the capitulation and apology, the scramble to assign blame.

It was an eye-opening example of how expediently women's health can be held hostage to conservative ideology....

The world has seen the terror and confusion on the porcelain face of eight-year-old Naama Margolese, who was insulted and spat on by ultra-Orthodox men as she walked to school in the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh. The Haredi, to use Israeli term, found her bare arms so immodest that...

As the United States begins to tidy up its affairs in Afghanistan, I have a bad feeling about the women we'll leave behind.

We're already confronted with reports -- and horrific images -- of attacks on women and girls: noses and ears sliced off, acid-ravaged faces, beatings, whippings, honor killings....