Washington Post's New Venture Walks Back Headline Telling Women To Marry Their “Baby Daddies”

Washington Post

The Washington Post's new venture, PostEverything, featured a controversial author who published a piece urging women to “get hitched to their baby daddies” in order to prevent violence against themselves -- language that was removed from the post after editing. PostEverything aims to “expand the conversation,” but changes to its latest piece post-publication indicate this effort must also include extensive editorial oversight.

PostEverything describes itself as a place for “freelance contributions, essays, news analyses and opinions” aimed to “expand the conversation” out from the Post's normal range of topics and authors." A June 10 article by W. Bradford Wilcox and Robin Fretwell Wilson claimed that the best way to end violence against women was for women to “stop taking lovers and get married,” a headline that was subsequently changed. The post originally declared that women “would be safer hitched to their baby daddies.” Later, it was changed to say that women “would be safer with fewer boyfriends around their kids.”

According to a later report from Poltico, PostEverything editor Adam Kushner walked back his previous decision to run the controversial headline:

The headline we originally put on the piece distracted people from taking seriously a raft of social science that the authors discuss. That was my bad." Kushner tweeted. “Regarding the substance of the piece, we've said from the beginning that (Post Everything) is dedicated to publishing a wide range of perspectives about issues in politics and culture.”

One of the post's authors is no stranger to controversy. W. Bradford Wilcox also played a role in putting together the controversial and deeply flawed 2012 study that claimed to uncover the dangers of same-sex marriage.