I am a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the School of Social Work. I am a mother of two sons. My research centers on new immigrant families and people who work with them. I teach classes about social work practice in health care and supervise students doing therapy in a community psychology clinic. I maintain a personal blog entitled, Intersections, found at mimichapman.blog. There I write about many topics including my research, current events, and family.
Blog Post List
May 30, 2019
As Alabama was passing its total abortion ban, a friend posted a CNN clip that I didn’t watch in which a guest or the anchor seemed to imply that a fetus was akin to an organ in a woman’s body that she might choose do with as she pleases. My friend posed the following question with this post: “Will one of my SANE pro-abortion friends explain this to me?” When no one responded, she took this to mean that her “pro-abortion” friends could not answer something so ridiculous and therefore this meant that they knew deep in their hearts how evil their pro-choice position was. When I tried to go back...
![[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A photo of woods with deciduous trees in full leaf, with a path running down the middle in between a forest floor of tall grasses.]](https://www.momsrising.org/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/woods%20for%20Mimi%20Chapman%20post%20Atul.jpg?itok=lnv7OwTn)
May 7, 2019
If there is one book I have recommended over the last five years, it is Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal. Immersed as I am in caring for an older parent and surrounded as I am by friends and colleagues sorting out the same questions, this is no surprise. But what is surprising is that in spite of how much this book has helped me, I have to return to its lessons again and again. When my parents entered their nineties, I would return home to the house they shared since 1973. But instead of envying my mother’s ability to have everything sparkling clean and perfectly organized at every moment, I...