Pro-life people are used to euphemisms in the abortion debate. The term “pro-life” itself is often denigrated because some believe pro-lifers are only concerned about life in the womb, and not the fullness of life afterwards. In reality, “pro-life” is about as clear as any term used to discuss abortion. It’s those on the other side who mostly prefer to speak in euphemism and/or double speak. 

Infants born alive after abortion has come up recently. But why discuss this most electric of third rail issues? Babies born alive after an abortion in the second trimester is “common.”

“We know that we've stolen a year of childhood right around the Western world, the year of five, when our little ones are still supposed to be largely running around outside building sandcastles, and pretending they're unicorns or dragons.” Australian author Maggie Dent spoke these words on Janet Lansbury’s parenting podcast Unruffled. “We stole that year and when we did that, the pressure for you to get your kid ready for school has intensified and yet the capacity for our children to accelerate their development on any level hasn't changed at all.” 

“I am busy with other things, mainly running the household for me and my 90-year-old sister plus a young working man who came to stay three years ago and doesn't look like leaving any time soon,” a friend wrote me recently. I had asked about her retirement and she said she wanted to find time to write. Before retirement, she had been a journalist. 

How big a role do women’s fears about losing their identity play in low fertility rates? 

Louise Perry, author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution and host of the excellent Maiden, Mother, Matriarch podcast, raised the question on a recent episode. Hearing women on TikTok and other social media talk about the issue of identity as a barrier to motherhood, she said, “I don’t get it. I can’t interpret what it means.” 

Growing up, my Aunt Louise was at our house for every major holiday. My sister and I slept over at her house when my parents were moving. To this day I get nostalgic about Dr. Pepper for the simple reason that she let me drink it.

On International Women’s Day, The Globe and Mail published a lengthy article about the difficulties millennial mothers face. An article released later in March also discusses “the motherhood penalty and its impact on Canadian women in the workplace.” Both are effectively summarized by this quote: “The world isn’t set up to support young mothers at work.”

“Is Toronto finally shaking off the sexual stigma of polyamory?” reads the recent headline in the Toronto Star. News outlets have been peddling polyamory apologetics after a middle-aged woman released a book about her life-changing adventures pursuing polyamory in January 2024.

Saying the family is the basic building block of society was once a “motherhood and apple pie” sentiment. Motherhood and apple pie, being, of course, a cliché alluding to all that is both normal and good. We need a new cliché. Today motherhood itself is no longer “motherhood and apple pie.” 

Like the first baby born after midnight in the new year, the second day in 2024 marked the arrival of the first Globe and Mail editorial about child care.