A UN human rights committee took the Vatican to task last month for forcing thousands of unmarried Irish mothers to put their children up for adoption, a story told in the Oscar-nominated film Philomena.

But the real woman behind the film, Philomena Lee, said she holds no anger toward the church for her experience.

Legislators in California and New York City are trying to protect employees balancing work with caring for young, disabled, or elderly family members. Supporters of the bills outlawing caregiver discrimination argue employers often cut their hours, shift their schedules, or even fire them because of their family responsibilities. 

But businesses say the laws would be“job-killers” and insist studies show laws passed to protect certain classes of employees may actually discourage employment and increase discrimination because businesses fear frivolous lawsuits.

Confusing messages and enrollment delays under Obamacare are leaving some children uninsured as the federal exchange separates children who qualify for Medicaid from parents who don’t.

The minimum eligibility threshold for safety-net programs like Medicaid is higher for children, so in some cases a child may qualify when his parents do not. Under Obamacare, children who qualify for a low-income insurance program are not allowed to be on their family’s subsidized health insurance plan purchased through the federal marketplace.

Unwed couples who get pregnant are more likely to move in together than to get married, according to government data collected over the past decade. Cohabitation has surpassed “shotgun weddings” as the most common reaction to an unplanned pregnancy by an unmarried couple, a growing trend that creates an unstable environment for children.

Justin Carroll left his home in Tennessee and his job as a carpenter in mid-November for what he thought would be a two-week journey to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to bring his two adopted sons home to his wife, Alana. Eight weeks later, Justin and the couple’s toddler boys, Neema and Canaan, are still waiting to come home. 

Carroll is one of five families with newly adopted children stuck in the DRC because the government has suspended exit permits for the children. 

Unmarried friends can legally adopt and co-parent, according to an unprecedented ruling by a New York judge last month.

Judge Rita Mella of New York County’s Surrogate Court named “two loving adults” in a “solid, decade-plus friendship” the legal parents of a toddler adopted from Ethiopia.

Starting New Year’s Day, anyone 21 or older with a valid photo ID can buy marijuana in Colorado. At 8 a.m. a handful of businesses licensed to sell recreational marijuana will open their doors, making Colorado the first state in the nation to legalize the cultivation, possession, sale, and use of a substance still considered illegal by the federal government.