It's been a big week for something near and dear to moms' hearts. Literally. Actress Angelina Jolie set off a firestorm of debate this week over testing for the BRCA gene, aka the "breast cancer gene," when she announced she'd not only been tested, but she'd undergone a double mastectomy too.

It's a move some are calling brave, others stupid, while still others have been empowered by the celebrity mom's announcement to come out and talk about their feelings about whether or not women really need to know what could happen to their bodies decades into the future.

So should moms be rushing to their doctors, begging to be tested so they know if they need to prepare their kids for the worst?

Angelina Jolie revealed in The New York Times this week that she had a pre-emptive double mastectomy, after discovering that she had the same mutant gene that caused her own mother to die of ovarian cancer at the age of 56.

Jolie's surgery, in the absence of cancer, was shocking on its own -- but what made it even more surprising was the fact that she chose to go public with the news.

Several writers from The Stir gathered in a Google Hangout to discuss Jolie's suprising announcement -- here's what they had to say.

I was as surprised as anyone when Jada Pinkett Smith's son, Jaden, asked to be an emancipated minor when he turns 15. You would think he would LOVE living with two of the coolest parents in the world! It's not like his parents are like Ariel Winter's mom. But it also got me wondering what the laws are about emancipation. How does this all work, anyway? Can a kid and his parents just ... you know, declare it and go from there?

Turns out it's a wee bit more complicated than that. Still, there are some 20 million emancipated minors in the U.S. Here's the 101 on becoming an emancipated minor and the most common reasons for it.

President Obama used the Mother's Day holiday to promote the Affordable Care Act and talk about the changes in healthcare law that affect moms in particular.

Whether or not you support the new healthcare plan, it affects you. Now is as good a time as any to go over a few major changes that could benefit you and your family.

Mother's Day is back, and it's bigger than ever. Americans are expected to spend between $17.1 billion and $20.7 billion on mom this year. It's pretty clear America loves mom and Mother's Day. Or do we?

This year there's been a backlash like never before against the decades-old holiday. Turning the second Sunday in May into a day for moms has been called out as everything from insensitive to non-parents to torture for folks with absent moms.

After yesterday's amazing report that three women, all missing for a decade, were found alive, reports are emerging about the women's histories before their abductions -- and in at least two cases, it seems like more should have been done to try and find them.

No Amber Alert was issued the day Gina DeJesus went missing in 2004, because no one saw her abduction. This angered her father, Felix DeJesus. He said Amber Alerts should be issued for any child, whether police believe they've run away or been kidnapped.

Meanwhile, Michelle Knight's disappearance in 2002 was treated with even less concern.

Oh man, a wave of standardized tests just hit our school kids the past few weeks. For some parents and kids, it's a nightmare. You may have read Lindsay Ferrier's post on her daughter's test stress and the Google Hangout conversation on school testing we had last week. It seems like every year, more and more parents are saying, "Let us off this crazy ride!" Well, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan admitted last week that he gets it. He said the criticism about testing "is merited."

Duncan says he and his department are "spending a huge amount of time listening to ideas" about how to transition to the Common Core Standards. But ditching assessments is not one of those ideas -- he says testing will still happen. He's open to support "much better assessment," though. So what are they? Here are a few better school assessment ideas different education experts are pushing.

Big news for moms this week. A new study says today's young people are "more materialistic" and less likely to work and study hard than any generation of kids before them. Moms! Could we be raising the lazy generation?

That's what a study published this week in the in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin says. The researchers claim "youth materialism" is at "historically high levels." And just wait till you hear what this could do to the job market.