posted 2012 Feb by Martha New
February 20, 2012, 12:47 pm By JANE E. BRODY
One
morning, a well-meaning swimming buddy called out for all in the Y
locker room to hear: “I can’t believe Jane Brody doesn’t do yoga!”Click HERE to read more from the New York Times.
posted 2012 Feb by Martha New
WASHINGTON — Education was historically considered a great equalizer in
American society, capable of lifting less advantaged children and
improving their chances for success as adults. But a body of recently
published scholarship suggests that the achievement gap between rich and
poor children is widening, a development that threatens to dilute
education’s leveling effects. Click HERE if you would like to read more from the New York Times.
posted 2012 Feb by Martha New
February 6, 2012, 2:24 pm By RANDYE HODER
Enough already.
A year ago, The Wall Street Journal published an excerpt from Amy Chua’s book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” under the provocative headline “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior.” Now, in an article adapted from Pamela Druckerman’s soon-to-be-published “Bringing Up Bébé,” the Journal sets out to tell us “Why French Parents Are Superior.”
Click HERE to read more at the New York Times
posted 2012 Feb by Martha New
February 10, 2012, 11:37 am By KJ DELL'ANTONIA How should pediatricians handle a parent who wants to refuse or delay a child’s vaccinations?
In November, the question of whether that pediatrician could ethically refuse to treat the child was debated on the Armchair Ethicist, and here as well. Putting the ethical question aside, Dr. Douglas Diekema has a simple answer for pediatricians who might want to turn away those patients (and in his experience, many routinely do so, some by screening them before an appointment is even made):
Click HERE to read more at the New York Times
posted 2012 Feb by Martha New
February 9, 2012, 3:22 pm By RONI CARYN RABIN
Very
small babies delivered prematurely by Caesarean section because they
were not growing properly in the womb developed more respiratory
problems than those who had induced vaginal deliveries, a new study
found. The study adds to growing concern over the high rate of Caesarean
section deliveries in the United States, which reached 32 percent, or
nearly one in three deliveries, in 2007. Click HERE to read more at the New York Times.
posted 2012 Feb by Martha New
February 8, 2012, 12:36 pm By KJ DELL'ANTONIA “It’s not baby-sitting when Daddy does it.”
It’s not baby-sitting when Daddy does it. Who wouldn’t agree with that? The U.S. Census Bureau, apparently. When both parents are present in the household, the Census Bureau assumes for the purposes of its “Who’s Minding the Kids?” report, that the mother is the “designated parent.” And when the designated parent is working or at school, the bureau would like to know who’s providing child care.
Click HERE to read more from the New York Times
posted 2012 Feb by Martha New
posted 2012 Feb by Martha New
If you would like to read more please CLICK here for the New York Times.
posted 2012 Jan by natalie sampila
By DINA BAKS Op-Ed Contributor Published: January 30, 2012
FEW people realize that getting pregnant can mean losing your job.
Imagine a woman who, seven months into her pregnancy, is fired from her
position as a cashier because she needed a few extra bathroom breaks. Or
imagine another pregnant employee who was fired from her retail job
after giving her supervisors a doctor’s note requesting she be allowed
to refrain from heavy lifting and climbing ladders during the month and a
half before her maternity leave: that’s what happened to Patricia
Leahy. In 2008 a federal judge in Brooklyn ruled that her firing was
fair because her employers were not obligated to accommodate her needs.If you would like to read more please click HERE to go to the New York Times.
posted 2012 Jan by natalie sampila
January 30, 2012, 11:38 am By KJ DELL’ANTONIA
Click HERE to read more at the New York Times.posted 2012 Jan by natalie sampila
By L. ALAN SROUFE Published: January 28, 2012
THREE million children in this country take drugs for problems in
focusing. Toward the end of last year, many of their parents were deeply
alarmed because there was a shortage of drugs like Ritalin and Adderall that they considered absolutely essential to their children’s functioning.Read more by clicking HERE to go to the New York Times.
posted 2012 Jan by natalie sampila
Updated January 20, 2012 7:40 PM The Gingrich Question: Cheating vs. Open Marriage
Debaters
According to one of his ex-wives, Newt Gingrich advocated open marriage as an alternative to monogamy or illicit sex. Of course, this was after he had strayed. Still, if her account is true, was he onto something? If more people considered such openness an option, would marriage become a stronger institution — less susceptible to cheating and divorce, and more attractive than unmarried cohabitation?
If you would like to read more please click HERE for the New York Times.
posted 2012 Jan by Martha New
January 18, 2012, 12:17 pm By KJ DELL’ANTONIA
Does the question of whether or not a woman should have an epidural during the birth of her child really need to be a polarizing one? On Slate, Melinda Wenner Moyer considers the claims of both sides of the issue — all of which were impressed upon her during her pregnancy last year.
On the one side are the natural birth opponents, armed with research supporting the idea that epidurals lengthen labor, make pushing difficult, increase the risk of a Caesarean section, and leave the newborn unable to properly latch on to the breast after birth.
On the other are physicians and anesthesiologists with reassuring, possibly self-interested words: epidurals, most say, are perfectly safe. Ms. Moyer dug into the research.
If you would like to read more click HERE for the New York Times.What I discovered is that there aren’t many clear answers — epidural research has been fraught with methodological problems — but in sum, the concerns voiced by natural birthers are exaggerated.
posted 2012 Jan by Martha New
January 13, 2012, 4:27 pm By KJ DELL’ANTONIA A study published in the British Medical Journal this week provides stronger evidence that taking some antidepressants during pregnancy doubles the risk of a baby developing pulmonary hypertension. Researchers have long suspected a link between the use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, and the condition, but previous studies have been small and inconclusive (with results ranging from there being no link to a six times greater risk). If you'd like to read more please click here for the New York Times.
posted 2012 Jan by natalie sampila
By NICHOLAS BAKALARPublished: January 9, 2012In two new studies, researchers have pinpointed the most common causes of stillbirths and have found that known risk factors explain just a small minority of cases. If you would like to read more please click HERE for the New York Times.
posted 2012 Jan by Martha New
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/magazine/how-yoga-can-wreck-your-body.html?pagewanted=1&src=recg
This was the situation I found myself in. In my 30s, I had somehow
managed to rupture a disk in my lower back and found I could prevent
bouts of pain with a selection of yoga postures and abdominal exercises.
Then, in 2007, while doing the extended-side-angle pose, a posture
hailed as a cure for many diseases, my back gave way. With it went my
belief, naïve in retrospect, that yoga was a source only of healing and
never harm. If you would like to read more please click here for the New York Times.
posted 2011 Nov by Martha New
By ERIK ECKHOLMPublished: November 6, 2011 The white-bearded preacher, Michael Pearl, who delivered his sermon in stained work pants, and his wife, Debi, mixed warmly with the families drawn to their evangelical ministry, including some of their own grandchildren.
The pastoral mood in the hills of Tennessee offered a stark contrast to
the storm raging around the country over the Pearls’ teachings on child
discipline, which advocate systematic use of “the rod” to teach toddlers
to submit to authority. The methods, seen as common sense by some
grateful parents and as horrific by others, are modeled, Mr. Pearl is
fond of saying, on “the same principles the Amish use to train their
stubborn mules.” If you would like to read more please click HERE to go to the New York Times.
posted 2011 Oct by Martha New
The advice is the same as that issued in 1999 by the group, the country’s largest association of pediatricians, but this time it also warns parents that their own screen-watching habits may delay their children’s ability to talk.
“This updated policy statement provides further evidence that media — both foreground and background — have potentially negative effects and no known positive effects for children younger than 2 years,” it said. “Thus the A.A.P. reaffirms its recommendation to discourage media use in this age group.”
The latest guidelines do not refer to interactive play like video games on smartphones or other devices, but to programs watched passively on phones, computers, televisions or any other kind of screen.
Dr. Ari Brown, a pediatrician in Austin, Tex., who is a member of the academy, said the update was needed because of the explosion of DVDs meant for the under-2 age group, and because as many as 90 percent of parents acknowledge that their infants watch some sort of electronic media.
“Clearly, no one is listening to this message,” she said. “In this ubiquitous screen world, I think we need to find a way to manage it and make it a healthy media diet.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics urges pediatricians to discuss media use with new parents, and says adults should be aware of how distracted they become when the television is on.
“I like to call it secondhand TV,” said Dr. Brown, who is the lead author of the guidelines.
Studies cited in the guidelines say that parents interact less with children when the television is on, and that a young child at play will glance at the TV — if it is on, even in the background — three times a minute.
“When the TV is on, the parent is talking less,” Dr. Brown said. “There is some scientific evidence that shows that the less talk time a child has, the poorer their language development is.”
Though about 50 studies have been done in the past decade on media viewing by young children, none have followed heavy television watchers into later childhood or adulthood, so any long-term effects are not known. Heavy media use in a household is defined as one in which the television is on all or most of the time.
The pediatrics group’s guidelines point out that research to date suggests a “correlation between television viewing and developmental problems, but they cannot show causality.”
Even so-called educational videos do not benefit children under 2 because they are too young to be able to understand the images on the screen, the doctors’ group said.
“The educational merit of media for children younger than 2 years remains unproven despite the fact that three-quarters of the top-selling infant videos make explicit or implicit educational claims,” it said.
Pediatricians are therefore discouraging any screen viewing for infants, and urging parents to limit media viewing to no more than two hours a day for children age 2 and older.
“Unstructured playtime is more valuable for the developing brain than any electronic media exposure,” the guidelines said.
posted 2011 Oct by Martha New
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR Published: October 10, 2011
Although it has never been definitively proven, many social scientists
believe that abused children are more likely to become abusers as
adults. Now for the first time, there is evidence of the phenomenon in
animals in the wild. If you would like to read more please click HERE to go to the New York Times.
posted 2011 Oct by Martha New
By PERRI KLASS, M.D. Published: October 10, 2011 Once, experts feared that young children exposed to more than one language would suffer “language confusion,” which might delay their speech development. Today, parents often are urged to capitalize on that early knack for acquiring language. If you would like to read more please click HERE to go to the New York Times.