Marriage

Find articles here related to marriage law, including marriage equality, gendered roles in marriages, domestic violence, parenting and more.

Gloria Steinem in Her Own Words: On Trump, Roe v. Wade, and the Birth of the Modern Women’s Rights Movement

PUBLISHED 9/4/2026 by and

As we grieve the passing of Gloria Steinem, Ms. founder and feminist visionary, we’re looking back at some of our favorite quotes from Steinem’s 50+ years of speaking and activism across the U.S. and throughout the world. She was sharp, funny and infinitely quotable, and many of her interviews from over the years combine deep feminist insight with some snappy one-liners.

The two most famous quotes attributed to Steinem are possibly, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” and, “If men could get pregnant, then abortion would be a sacrament.” However, while Steinem said and popularized both, she made it clear that neither quote originated with her; the first is attributed to Australian writer and activist Irina Dunn, and the second, according to Steinem, was originally said by her speaking partner Florynce Kennedy.

Steinem still had no end of wise, funny, inspiring sayings of her own that other feminists will keep quoting for years after her death. Below are some of our favorites.

Never Surrender: Empowered Wives Were Never the Problem

PUBLISHED 7/31/2026 by

Over the past year, several women-focused articles in the New York Times declared feminism has gone too far, and put the onus on women to fix what is broken.

An article asking if liberal feminism “ruined the workplace” broke the internet late last year.

An article last month featured a conversation with influential, right-wing columnist Louise Perry, about how women need to change, in order to close the growing gap between men and women. Perry’s position justifies re‑inscribing patriarchal control over women’s bodies and sexuality in the name of “protecting” us.

I feel a familiar sense of disappointment in the recent feature, “Women Are Too Controlling, She Wrote. Her Message Still Resonates,” about Laura Doyle, author of The Surrendered Wife, a 2001 self‑help book and the basis for a relationship “movement” that teaches women to relinquish control in their marriages, defer to their husbands’ decisions (including finances), and focus on their own “self‑care” and gratitude to restore intimacy and harmony.

Each article asks a version of the same question: How should women change?

Doyle’s message and the broader “surrendered wife” ideology, is troubling.

What struck me even more was that one of the country’s most influential newspapers presented it as a growing cultural trend, without examining the cultural forces and gender expectations that have long reinforced this ideology.

Women and feminism don’t need to surrender. They were never the problem.    

Domestic Violence Is a Men’s Issue

PUBLISHED 7/28/2026 by

Nearly one in two women has experienced domestic violence (DV) in their lifetime, yet accountability remains limited, as nearly half of survivors never report their abuse to law enforcement. Out of fear of retribution, survivors often minimize harm and shield their perpetrator’s behavior, shifting responsibility away from them: “That’s just how men are,” or “He didn’t mean it.” DV affects almost everyone—directly or indirectly. Nearly half of people know someone who has experienced it, through personal experience, witnessing it in childhood, seeing loved ones endure it or encountering it in public spaces. 

DV has taught me about silence. The silence of victims who feared retaliation or shame. The silence of witnesses like me who did not know how to intervene. And the silence of communities that preferred to avoid conflict and not to disrupt the image of a functional family. Silence does not protect anyone; it allows the harm to continue. 

In America, toxic masculinity thrives in that silence. It discourages men from seeking help, discourages women from speaking out and discourages bystanders from stepping in. Over time, domestic violence becomes predictable as patterns emerge—slammed doors, raised voices, a tension that fills rooms before anyone speaks.

Over time, beneath their rage, I’ve come to understand that many male abusers are suffering too or have suffered. The problem is, intimate partner violence will not end by ignoring men. This raises essential questions beyond how did we get here, in a nation that champions violence and spends more on its military than on education and social services. For example, who is intervening to address husbands and boyfriends who batter? What tools are needed to support men in building lives free from violence? Let’s be clear, addressing these challenging concerns will not only benefit men, but also their families and society more broadly. Families deserve to heal from domestic violence, and men should be part of that equation.   

The Myth of the ‘Perfect Birth’: What America Gets Wrong About Pregnancy, Birth and Maternal Care

PUBLISHED 7/26/2026 by

Project 2026’s pronatalist vision insists that America needs more babies—but largely ignores the conditions that make pregnancy and childbirth unnecessarily dangerous in the first place. In this interview with Ms., The Perfect Birth Myth co-authors Avital Norman Nathman and Deborah Wage argue that improving maternal health requires more than rhetoric about “family values.” It demands investments in midwives, doulas, paid family leave, prenatal and postpartum care, and policies that address the racial and economic inequities driving the nation’s maternal mortality crisis.

Drawing on surveys of nearly 3,000 parents and healthcare providers, Nathman and Wage dismantle persistent myths about birth while exposing the structural failures of the U.S. maternity care system—from hospital closures and Medicaid cuts to the medical establishment’s resistance to alternative models of care. They explain why Black women continue to face disproportionately poor outcomes regardless of income or education, why conservative pronatalist policies fall short, and what it would take to build a maternal healthcare system that truly supports families.

Can You Believe They Put This in Writing? The Wildest Quotes From Heritage’s ‘Project 2026’

PUBLISHED 7/8/2026 by , , , and

The Heritage Foundation has once again taken it upon itself to craft a plan for how to supposedly save America. The report—”Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years”—focuses on marriage, family and the American Dream, and has become widely known as “Project 2026,” a follow-up to Heritage’s infamous Project 2025 blueprint.

Project 2025 clocked in at 900 pages; the sequel is around 150. We read the whole thing and pulled out the passages that gave us chills, made us laugh out loud, compelled us to suddenly need to take a long walk and hug our dogs, or inspired another donation to our local abortion fund.

This isn’t intended to be a fact-check or a line-by-line rebuttal. It’s intended to show you how some of the country’s most influential conservative thinkers are talking about feminism, contraception, abortion, LGBTQ+ people, higher education, marriage, motherhood and the role government should play in all of it—because you’re probably too busy to read hundreds of pages of anti-feminist slop.

And because, as former Vice President Kamala Harris famously said about Project 2025: “Can you believe they put that thing in writing?” They did—twice now!

This is the roadmap they’re offering. These documents tell us how their authors understand the country, the family and women’s place in both. We should know what it says.

Looking to Black and Indigenous Foremothers to Resist Erasure

PUBLISHED 7/2/2026 by

Free Black women and Indigenous women are the foremothers of generations of African Americans. Yet they remain largely absent from the official story of American freedom. Their lives, contributions and descendants have been systematically erased—from colonial records and legal classifications to public memory itself.

That erasure began in the earliest colonial records. The 1620 Virginia census recorded “four Indians in the service of several planters,” alongside 15 Negro men and 17 Negro women, reducing people to categories that obscured their identities, families and histories. Over the centuries, laws, court decisions and public institutions repeatedly reinforced that disappearance.

The best celebration of 250 years of American freedom—after the fireworks and celebrations by a newly blue-painted Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool are over—could be a visit to a cool, air-conditioned archive. In the quiet, anyone can search the records for the full story, of the enslaved and freeborn, Indian and African. Anyone can defy censorship and erasure with an open mind and a pencil, no fees required. 

How Punjabi Sikh Advocates Reimagined Domestic Violence Risk Assessment

PUBLISHED 5/29/2026 by and

As another domestic violence homicide-by-strangulation in the Punjabi Sikh community went largely unreported outside the community itself, we are reminded of how often opportunities for intervention are missed. Those misses stem not only from systemic biases, but also from a lack of community-specific knowledge and cultural humility among service providers. When domestic violence research and prevention efforts rely on broad assumptions or one-size-fits-all frameworks, they risk overlooking the complex realities of survivors whose experiences are shaped by family, community and systemic pressures.

At Sikh Family Center, we encountered these limitations firsthand while working with the widely used Danger Assessment tool and its later adaptation for immigrant women. Questions about who qualifies as an “immigrant,” differing scoring systems and the omission of key risk factors often created confusion rather than clarity. When a risk-assessment tool does not reflect survivors’ lived realities—or appears to make assumptions about their identities—it becomes less persuasive and less effective in helping them make life-changing decisions.

That experience led us to develop the Danger Assessment for Sikh Women, a tool created alongside Punjabi Sikh survivors and their families. By incorporating community-specific vulnerabilities, protective factors and culturally relevant questions, the assessment aims to improve safety planning while helping survivors recognize both the risks they face and the support systems available to them.

The lesson extends far beyond one community: Domestic violence prevention strategies must remain flexible, humble and responsive if they are to reach survivors whose experiences fall outside conventional assumptions.

Your Tax Dollars Are Funding the Trump Administration’s Patriarchal Family Agenda

PUBLISHED 5/28/2026 by

“One in three Americans are under-babied,” declared Trump’s Medicare and Medicaid chief Dr. Mehmet Oz last week, echoing JD Vance’s contempt for “childless cat ladies.”

Guided by evangelical supporters, the Trump administration is eroding longstanding civil rights protections, restricting access to contraception and abortion, and weakening support systems for single mothers and their children. The goal is clear: to pressure women into marriage and motherhood while making the patriarchal family the center of American life.

The administration’s policies closely track the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 agenda, which seeks to incentivize what it calls “natural marriage”—a heterosexual household with a breadwinner father, stay-at-home mother and biologically related children.

Meanwhile, the administration’s new Moms.Gov website directs pregnant women to antiabortion organizations that that have been widely criticized for their misleading information about options and for their collection of patients’ sensitive personal information.

Taxpayer dollars are increasingly being used to advance a vision of society rooted in patriarchal family structures and reproductive coercion.

States Already Enacting Harmful SAVE Act Policies, Requiring Proof of Citizenship to Vote

PUBLISHED 5/20/2026 by and

Congressional Republicans are once again prioritizing the SAVE Act, legislation that would force Americans to show documents like a passport or birth certificate to register to vote. The House has already passed yet another version of the bill, but so far it has stalled in the Senate.

If the SAVE Act becomes law, it would block millions of eligible American citizens from voting.

As the Senate considers the SAVE Act, state legislatures are advancing similar “show-your-papers” policies. Florida, South Dakota and Utah have enacted similar laws in recent weeks. Other states that already have similar laws have experienced the difficulties of implementing them.

Including Arizona, which has had a proof-of-citizenship requirement for over 20 years, five states will have a show-your-papers requirement for all voters for the 2026 midterms: Arizona, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming. A sixth state, Louisiana, has one on the books that it has not yet implemented.

That’s a lot of strain on the election system to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. The U.S. Senate would be wise not to inflict those obstacles on every election official nationwide.

They Blame Feminism for Falling Birth Rates—but Data Says It’s Saving Families

PUBLISHED 5/6/2026 by

Last month, the newest fertility data dropped—and the U.S. fertility rate has fallen again, hitting another record low.

Almost immediately, conservative influencers, media figures and elected officials pointed fingers at feminism, blaming women’s independence, career ambitions and access to contraception for the decline in births.

It’s a convenient narrative to push along their anti-birth control agenda. But it’s also wrong.

If you actually listen to women—and look at the data—the story becomes much clearer. The number one reason women are delaying or forgoing having children isn’t ideology, it’s affordability. Childcare costs, housing prices and healthcare access have made starting a family financially daunting for millions of Americans. Mix in student loan debt and political turmoil, and having a baby in 2026 is a scary venture. 

And yet, instead of addressing these barriers, policymakers—and organizations leading the way like the Heritage Foundation—are moving in the opposite direction. They are cutting or rolling back the very programs that make family life possible.