Senator Mitt Romney’s recent proposal, the Family Security Act, aims to provide a dual benefit to families: a child allowance and a reformed Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). With the goals of incentivizing marriage and family, it has received praise across the political spectrum for its promise to alleviate poverty while “swapping out some programs that benefited these families in the past, and also by discontinuing the federal subsidy for high taxes in New York and California.”
According to a staff writer for the Yale Daily News, it is now a “necessity” that students experience, at one point or another, “a quarter life crisis.” Recent college graduates, and even recent admits, would be familiar with the symptoms of what The Muse calls an “intense period of soul-searching and stress”: insecurity, loneliness, and aimlessness. While the phenomenon may sound overblown and dramatic, it does disclose some of the anxieties of a generation faced with an increasingly uncertain world, both socially and economically.
In June of 2020, the Supreme Court wrote for its majority opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County that Title IX’s prohibition against “discrimination on the basis of sex” covers “sexual orientation and gender identity.” On January 20, 2021, President Biden signed an executive order promising to combat discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation, leaving agencies a mere 100 days to ensure that their policies prevent such. While Democratic politicians and transgender activists are celebrating, it is likely that young women and girls, especially those participating in competitive sports, will become guinea pigs for the new administration’s social experiment.
In his Inauguration Day speech, President Joe Biden preached the need for unity moving forward, saying without it, “there is no peace, only bitterness and fury; no progress, only exhausting outrage; no nation, only a state of chaos.” While most people desire and strive for unity, many of us continue to live along the lines of our national divisions. How did we get here? And how should we proceed in the years to come?
The onset of the coronavirus pandemic last year brought a number of major shifts to our daily lives. No more could we enter the grocery store without a mask, gather with family and friends, or even go to school. Plentiful changes made over the past year have left many to question casual sex – and to seriously wonder if or how they will meet, date, and marry. Life pre-pandemic presented its own difficulties when it came to finding the one. The decline of marriage and high rate of divorce, a myriad online dating options, the reality of casual sex, ghosting and other confusing practices, all offered temptations to give in to the no-strings attached mentality or abandon finding a mate altogether. However, as loneliness and polarization have afflicted our society over the past year, the pull toward deeper human relationships in the forms of companionship and community has grown ever stronger.
Mama. Mère. Ina. Mum.
Across every language, culture, and faith the world over, “mother” is a primal utterance. For many, it connotes a comforting presence, recalling the intimacy we experience in the loving in the arms of one who has given us life. We are connected with our mothers inside the womb and outside of it, so much so that most of us will call out for “mama” on our deathbed. This relationship between mother and child seems even miraculous; it transcends both time and generation – each child has a mother, and every mother was once a child herself. Thus, the word “mother” captures a beautiful truth about human beings – we are, by our very nature, always related to someone else. The transcendent relations of family are so important that we use words which not only connect us in intimacy, but recall us in fact. While the family we are born into does not ultimately define us, our relationships within it help orient us in the world beyond. Without words that ground us into the truth of our being, we can find ourselves unmoored, undefined, and unhappy.