The stigma around homeschooling is declining. A Gallup poll showed American disapproval of the practice has dropped from 73% in 1985 to 54% in 2001. But unschooling is still very taboo, and it's the topic of this article. An excerpt:

Our friends have no kids, but were curious about our decision not to send Benny to school. They're aware enough to know that homeschooling is no longer (and probably never was) just a bunch of Bible-thumping Seventh Day Adventists who teach their kids at home in order to avoid the heathens at public school. Our friends also understand that parents homeschool their kids in different ways and for different reasons.

Nonetheless, when I used the term "unschooling," they needed an explanation.

In the Babble article "Clothing Optional: I let my toddler run around naked," Ellen Friedrichs explains why she thinks it's healthy for her young daughter to be naked in public, and expresses shock that her daughter's nudity in seemingly appropriate places (in the park sprinklers, for example) has been met with such strong emotions.

Military.com blogger Anita Doberman interviewed Michelle Obama for Babble, and found out all about her wise take on work-home balance and her addiction to French fries. One of the most interesting tidbits: Hillary gave her parenting advice!

How are the children taking all the changes, and do you try to insulate them?
Barack and I are very proud of the way the girls have handled themselves during this campaign. Luckily, they're still at an age where they're not that concerned with what's happening with the campaign.

Author Rebecca Walker, daughter of Alice Walker (The Color Purple), has recently been quoted saying lots of awful things about her mother in an interview in The Daily Mail.

In what she's since called a tabloid-ization of her comments, she chronicled her mother's many failings and concluded that the fault for her childhood's dysfunction lay with anti-family feminism:

Yes, feminism has undoubtedly given women opportunities. It's helped open the doors for us at schools, universities and in the workplace. But what about the problems it's caused for my contemporaries?

Specifically, the piece suggests, Boomers' high divorce rate, their stress on career over family and their narcissism has led Generation Xers to be neurotic, and to wait too long to have babies.

Feministing quotes a Salary.com study that claims - based on the tasks and hours involved - a stay-at-home mom's work is worth $116,805 a year. (They don't talk about stay-at-home dads, of course, but I guess we can assume they'd make 25% more?)

Feministing's editor says: I used to think these studies (that usually come out around Mother's Day) were cool - they showed that women's work in the informal economy was worth something. But more recently, it almost seems insulting. As if women who contribute at home get a once-a-year chance to brag about how much they're worth - and then it's back to cleaning up socks with no compensation.

That's a good point. Also, doesn't such a study seem at once to put too low a price on a parent's role in a child's life (which is invaluable) and too high a price on full-time childcare (which even at a living wage wouldn't approach six figures)?

Jeanne Sager wrote an essay for Babble.com this week called "No Sex Please; We're Parents," about how since she had her daughter two years ago she feels so "touched out" from mothering all day that she no longer wants to be intimate with her husband.

She writes: "Not wanting sex isn't the problem. The problem is that, after a long day as a human jungle gym, I can hardly stomach the idea of going to first base."

William Saletan has an odd, fuddy-duddyish article on Slate today about how oral sex has become normalized. He seems rather horrified by this news, and couches the article as a wake-up call to parents who may be unaware that their teenage children know about such outlandish things. He repeatedly refers to oral sex as "advanced" and to intercourse as "basic." Here's an excerpt:

The raw numbers indicate that 50 percent of teenagers aged 15 to 19 have had vaginal sex. Fifty-five percent have had heterosexual oral sex. Are kids substituting oral for vaginal?

A German couple put their baby up for sale on eBay - and not one of those scary Reborn babies you usually see on the auction site, but a real seven-month-old boy. The starting price: one Euro (less than $2).

The ad read: "Offering my nearly new baby for sale, as it has gotten too loud. It is a male baby, nearly 28 inches (70 cm) long and can be used either in a baby carrier or a stroller."

This is a clip from a 2006 British documentary called Extraordinary Breastfeeding that we just spotted on Jezebel. Watch and be amazed: a woman decided to let her children wean when they were ready and they . . . just . . . never . . . . did. Or rather, they didn't until well into elementary school. And the nine-year-old says she misses it!

Here's marathon breastfeeder Veronika's defense of what she calls "full-term breastfeeding." An excerpt:

There's a list up on Babble called "45 Reasons to Have a Baby. Right. Now." Here are the first couple of the forty-five arguments in favor of immediate procreation:

1. Splitting It 50-50
Maybe your dad never changed a diaper, but when you become a parent, you'll be expected to share the load equally. Which, in the end, works out best for everyone.

The New York Times today has a story about father-daughter purity balls, parties at which fathers vow to protect their daughters' virginity and/or their daughters vow to stay pure until marriage. They are formal affairs, with dress clothes and dancing and ceremonies like the laying of white flowers at the foot of a cross or the forming of swords into a V.

Such events have been around for at least a decade, and they continue to inspire celebration within the evangelical world as well as cries of revulsion from those outside it. Opponents mistrust the concept of a father "owning" his daughter's sexuality and they wonder why boys' virginity isn't so prized. (They are also icked out by some of the ceremonies' clunky, graphic key-and-lock metaphors.)

But a nuanced critique from within the evangelical community appeared last year in the Chicago Sun-Times. (It doesn't seem to be available on the Sun-Times site, but is available, ironically, in full on Opie and Anthony's blog.) In the measured piece, Betsy Hart writes:

Look, I'm an evangelical Christian who firmly believes that sex should be reserved for marriage. But I just can't imagine going about it this way with any of my four kids, son or daughters.

This week on Babble: Melissa Rayworth's dispatch "The Sleepless Generation," about how today's parents are afraid of sleep-training (aka, Ferberizing, cry-it-outing) their children and how, as a result, a lot of kids aren't learning how to put themselves to sleep.

Her sidebar about why new parents are especially anxious about this time-honored method is kind of fascinating. Here are two of her five reasons why Gen-X parents are so reluctant to let their kids cry:

USA Today reports that an Ohio father, Brian Gegner, was sentenced to six months in jail after his daughter failed to get her GED. Two years ago, he was ordered by a judge to make sure his chronically truant daughter, Brittany, passed the exam. She still hasn't, so he's stuck in jail on grounds of contributing to the unruliness or delinquency of a minor.

You can watch a video of the teenager explaining why she should be punished, not her father, here on CBS.

Nan Mooney wrote a piece for Babble this week about moving back home with her parents when she got pregnant. Only she's not a member of the Spears family. She's in her late thirties and a published author.

But she didn't have a partner or a child-friendly job, so she decided to give herself time to not have to worry about rent and her parents time with their new grandson.

The only problem: she started to feel like a teenager again, and not in the good way.

New York magazine reports that Lindsay Lohan's train wreck of a mother, Dina Lohan, is being honored as one of the Top 20 Mothers of Long Island.

New York suggests this is because "it's not every mother who will give up her career to make you a star and hold your drugs for you when you're out at da clubs."

But we have another hypothesis: It's Opposite Day! So, be sure to say no when you mean yes and yes when you mean no.

Well, either that, or it's the end of the world. We're not really sure.