I imagine that Purity Balls are very popular in my very conservative state, although I had never heard of one until the blogs brought attention to this topic. I am the mother of a 19 year old daughter, though, and I am very familiar with another issue, and that is girls getting married at very early ages in order to have sex. These girls have been brought up in the purity mode, and think that having sex before marrige will make them unpure sinners. That doesn't stop them from having boyfriends, though, and it certainly doesn't stop them from having sexual urges. Several of my daughters friends have gotten married in their late teens mainly to have sex. The mother of one of her friends that married at 18 told me that her daughter had quoted Paul to her: "It is better to marry than to burn with passion" and after all, what could she say to that? I think the fact that my state has one of the country's highest divore rates can be partly explaned by this phenomena. After all, getting married in order to have sex is a pretty poor reason and after the sex and is had and the passion starts to cool, real life sets in in a hurry.

I am a female scientist at an academic institution but I am not on the faculty. My husband, though, is a tenured full professor and I run his research lab. I have been in sciece for over 30 years and I have seen my share of bias against women, but I don't think that is the explanation for the lack of female tenured faculty. Being a scientist is extremely hard and getting a tenured faculty position is even harder. Less than 7% of students earning PhDs in the biological sciences (my field) will even obtain a tenured faculty positon at a research instituion. It involves a combination of brains, luck, and extreme dedication. Most women, especially those women who want a family, will not be willing or able to make the trade-offs necessary to succeed at that level. The women I know who have achieved the top scientific ranks either chose to remain childless, have a husband who will play the major child rearin role, or have only one child. It is much easier for a man to find a woman who is willing to sacrafice her career goals to allow him to follow his than it is to find a man who will do the same. I know many couples with the kind of arrange I have, the woman not only supports the man emotionally, she also supports his career in a direct way by participating in his research. It is much more rare to find a woman whose husband works for and with her, but I do know a few. In most cases these husband/wife teams are quite successful. In my opinion the lack of women it top positions has more to do with the expectations of society than with institutional bias.Most of the institutions I know care a whole lot more about how much grant money you bring in than what kind of genitals you have. Academic research science is a very tough field in which few people, male or female, will succeed. We have a very bright daughter who is currently in college with a full scholarship. Although she is also interested in biological science we have discourged an academic career. She is an engineering major who is also considering med school. As a side note, medical classes these days are over 50% women.

Mrs. Miller,

Please except my sympathies for the death of your son. My son is in the Army, currently serving in Ramadi and the fear for his safety is a constant with everyone who cares about him. He was married two months before he deployed. My husband and I visited his young wife this weekend and she said they want to freeze his sperm when he is home on leave. That way if he does not come back she can still have his baby. He is due home to come home in November for two weeks and we are going to have the freezing done then. If he should not come back there will at least be the home of some piece of him remaining on the earth. It calms my fears some to think of that, and it is something Aaron's mother does not have.