I recently went to a playgroup with some other stay-at-home moms, and the subject of having household help came up. One mom admitted that she had a housekeeper come do a deep clean once a month. Two other moms said they had babysitters come a few hours per week. All of them seemed kind of sheepish about their confessions, admitting to having help the way one might admit to smoking a little crack to get through a long day.

There’s this idea out there that it’s self-indulgent for a woman who stays home to have help. After all, the thinking goes, isn’t one of the big benefits of staying home that you don’t have to spend money on childcare? It’s also seen as yet another luxury of the modern...READ MORE

I’m starting to think that it’s required by law that people read Khalil Gibran’s poem On Marriage at their weddings. I recently saw a wedding message board in which almost all of the women planned to include it in their nuptials, and I’ve heard it recited at most of the out-of-church weddings I’ve attended. You can read the whole thing here, but here’s an excerpt:

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are...READ MORE

When people hear that my husband and I began exploring Catholicism in 2005, one of the first questions they often ask is, “What about the sexual abuse scandals? Didn’t that scare you away from the Church?”

They’re usually surprised when I report that the answer is no; in fact, the scandals and the negative media coverage actually increased my faith in the Church. Here’s why:

Getting the Facts Straight

One of the first things I did was to look into the numbers behind the sexual abuse cases. Was I heading into an institution that was filled with sexual predators, as the media would have me believe? I was shocked to find that, by even the most anti-Catholic organizations’ estimates, only...READ MORE

One of the things I’ve found most refreshing about Catholic culture is the understanding of the importance of modesty. Though each woman may have different ideas about exactly what it means to be modest, there is a general agreement that putting forth some level of conscious effort to avoid looking like a backup dancer in a Snoop Dogg video is a good thing. And it’s fascinating to see the effect that it has on women’s interactions with one another.

When I was in my 20s, I worked at a startup company where there were no standards for appropriate dress. Over time, an unspoken tension developed among the females of the office. Sally from marketing showed up to a board meeting in a startlingly...READ MORE