More and more women are turning to egg freezing as a strategy for managing conflicting timelines related to professional goals and family formation aspirations. Drawing on critical realism, this article argues that vicious aspects of the reproductive marketplace and the workplace along with cultural ideals of motherhood and the nuclear family incentivize agents to freeze their eggs. While individual egg freezers help contribute to the maintenance of structures and cultures that perpetuate inequalities related to class, race, and gender and hinder (...) the flourishing of all women, ethical analysis should critique the structural and cultural forces that make egg freezing an attractive option for women balancing procreation and professional pursuits. (shrink)

The failure to maintain a canonical Christian understanding of the family as a microcosm of the church oriented toward deification instead of a microcosm of society aimed at social ends has opened Christians up to an uncritical adoption of non-Christian approaches in medical decision making. This article begins by identifying the Christian family crisis not as a liberal versus conservative debate centered on the form and function of the family, but more fundamentally as an ecclesial versus sociological understanding of the (...) Christian family. The article presents a historical sketch of the circumstances that have led to this contemporary crisis in the Western Christian family, followed by an analysis that provides a canonical account of the Christian family as exemplified in the thought of Gregory the Theologian. This article concludes by looking at the specific issue of labor and delivery in the United States, and the implications for a canonical Christian understanding of labor and delivery in light of contemporary medical practices. (shrink)

In men’s ministries it is possible to distinguish between evangelical and Catholic masculinities: the former being more traditional, the latter somewhat ‘softer.’ This paper pursues these differing masculine performances within a discourse of fatherhood in two fatherhood ministries: Dad the Family Shepherd and Fathers for Good. On the whole, the fatherhood ministries repeat the evangelical and Catholic masculinities of regular men’s ministries via the treatment of male headship, the politics of gender and sexuality, and the use of sport as a (...) signifier for masculinity. (shrink)