There's been a lot of discussion about the book Sex at Dawn across the internet. It's written by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá who are described as "renegade researchers" in the press release for the book. And what's the book about? It's evolutionary psychology at its finest, trying to explain modern behaviors with "just so" stories about what our ancestors did. It's largely concerned with polyamory and explaining how we're evolved for it and therefore it's a natural state.

They make frequent references to bonobos (AKA "sex chimps") as examples of how they think humans should behave, or at least how they think early hominids did behave. Many of the problems we suffer from today, they claim, are the result of moving away from this natural state.

I think it's pure, unadulterated bullshit.

In these difficult economic times, we're all looking to get a little extra money coming in. Those of us who are lucky enough to have a job still want to be making the most of it. We want to be sure our bosses know that we are good, valuable employees. Sometimes we need to do a little work to ensure that they're paying attention and recognize that fact and reward us with raises appropriately.

But how do you do that? It can be awkward going in and demanding extra money, after all. We don't want to feel like lumbering, smelly oafs stomping around and complaining. We want our bosses to want to give us raises!

Luckily, Women's Day and Summer's Eve are here to help.

This op-ed piece is an interesting way of interpreting the statistics about single parent households and how they influence children.

Apparently, by allowing gays to marry we are encouraging poor black women to be single parents and this is leading directly to young black men failing to graduate high school. The fact that you can't compare the household of two parents of the same gender to a household involving one parent never occurs to the author.

While I have known many a single parent, the causes behind such a situation are very, very, very different from what leads to two men deciding they want to raise a child together. Single parenthood can be the result of losing your partner to death or divorce, or it can be an accident, or it can be someone wanting a child and not caring about having a partner. Single parenthood is a complex issue and one that is very separate from SSM. That's without even touching the influence of poverty, which I imagine has a lot more to do with the high school dropout problem than the mother's marital status.

Should children ideally be raised by one man and one woman? I don't think so; not because there is anything wrong with the nuclear family, but because families are such an incredibly diverse concept that there is no "ideal."