The case of Adriana Iliescu made headlines around the world when the 66-year-old woman gave birth to a baby girl. Doctors at Romania’s Giulesti Maternity Hospital announced the birth on January 16, 2005, declaring Ms. Iliescu to be the world’s oldest mother.

In today’s age of postmodern minimalism, book covers rarely tell you much about the book itself. That is hardly the case with Home-Alone America, however. The cover of Mary Eberstadt’s new book features a photograph of a briefcase-carrying mom trying to get out the door while her preschool son hangs onto her leg. That image is worth a thousand words, but Eberstadt adds a few thousand more in this excellent, important, and absolutely fascinating look at the realities of childhood in America today.

Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, sparked a genuine controversy this week, describing First Lady Laura Bush as less qualified to be a president’s wife because she had never held a “real job” as an adult. The ensuing controversy raised a host of issues, ranging from Teresa Heinz Kerry’s worldview to the role of mothers and the value of motherhood.

The Vatican has launched a major salvo in the culture war by releasing an important statement which opposes ideological feminism and affirms the integrity of marriage and the natural family. Hitting the scene just as the U.S. presidential campaign goes into high gear, the statement is certain to have an impact. Some feminists are already hitting the panic button.

The fault lines of controversy in contemporary Christianity range across a vast terrain of issues, but none seems quite so volatile as the question of gender. As Christians have been thinking and rethinking these issues in recent years, a clear pattern of divergence has appeared. At stake in this debate is something more important than the question of gender, for this controversy reaches the deepest questions of Christian identity and biblical authority.

In a week already infamous for sexual confusion, events seem to be moving from bad to worse. The latest signs of sexual insanity relate to the issue of transsexualism. Once again, truth is stranger than fiction.

The Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal continues to dominate the world’s headlines, even as the incriminating photographs have become some of the most discussed–and infamous–images in history. Nevertheless, missing from most of this conversation is any reference to the obvious–the fact that the smiling face of the tormentor in so many of these photographs is an American woman in uniform.

Sunday’s “March for Women’s Lives” brought hundreds of thousands of protesters to the nation’s capital, and anyone yet unconvinced that the nation is divided by a culture war needed only to look at the crowd and listen to the voices to understand the depth of America’s moral conflict.

The cover of TIME is one of the most coveted showpieces in journalism–indeed it is one of the most potent indicators of the culture. Therefore, when TIME puts stay-at-home mothers on its front cover, you know something significant is being signaled.

The fault lines of controversy in contemporary Christianity range across a vast terrain of issues, but none seems quite so volatile as the question of gender. As Christians have been thinking and rethinking these issues in recent years, a clear pattern of divergence has appeared. At stake in this debate is something more important than the question of gender, for this controversy reaches the deepest questions of Christian identity and biblical authority.

Russian philosopher Nicolai A. Berdyaev once explained the fixed categories of gender as “cosmic categories, not merely anthropological categories.” But in these days of moral rebellion and cultural confusion, even the categories of male and female are now up for grabs.