Jennifer Margulis

Jennifer Margulis (born 1969 in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American writer, educator and photojournalist. She is the author of two books and the editor of two others, and has published hundreds of articles in major American magazines and newspapers on the topics of travel, culture, parenting, health, and international politics. She is the daughter of microbiologist Lynn Margulis and X-ray crystallographer Thomas N. Margulis, PhD. She is an advocate of the natural parenting movement espoused by William Sears, MD, anthropologist Meredith Small, PhD, and others, which promotes extended breastfeeding, responding quickly to a baby's cries, and infant carrying. Her article in Mothering magazine, "Mommy, I Want Nummies: The Benefits of Nursing Past Three", has become a widely quoted media resource on the topic of extended nursing. The birth of her fourth child, at home and without a midwife, doctor, or other attendant save her husband, was the subject of an AP article on the practice of unattended birth, and of an article on the same subject on MSNBC.com.

Education
Margulis graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University in 1990. She earned a Master's Degree in Comparative Literature in 1992 from the University of California at Berkeley. In 1999 she earned a PhD in English from Emory University, specializing in 19th century American literature and African-American literature.

Career
Margulis was awarded an International Foundation for Education and Self-Help Fellowship and worked for Africare/Niger overseeing small-scale development projects. She returned to the United States in 1993 and worked for the corporate philanthropic unit of Reebok to manage the Reebok Human Rights Award. Margulis was Fulbright professor at the University of Abdou Moumouni in Niger, West Africa during the 2006-2007 academic year, where she taught 19th century American literature. Her research followed the long-term effectiveness of development projects she had worked on in 1992. She also published articles on the wild giraffe and hippo populations in Niger.

Margulis was a contributing editor at Mothering magazine and wrote a blog on the Mothering.com website, "Mothering Outside the Lines", during 2009-2011, until the ceasing of the print publication.

Controversy
In April 2010 Margulis appeared in PBS Frontline episode, "The Vaccine War", initially described as a parent who "chose not to vaccinate her children." She then contacted the producers to challenge this characterization, to which they responded on the PBS website and changed the film's narration to reflect that she did vaccinate against some diseases, but not all those on the CDC schedule.