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• Katie Roiphe Doesn't Like You Or Your Kids

  If you use a photo of your child on your Facebook profile, Katie Roiphe thinks you are not a good woman. Read More... Posted May 31 2009, 11:00 PM by Brett Singer with | with 50 comment(s) Filed under: Facebook, college, academics, feminism, rants, judgmental, Brett Singer, arguments, annoying people, katie roiphe, people who think they are smarter than they are, hiding behind your kids

• Your Kid's Identity Is at Risk

  Identity theft may be the hot topic at many a dinner party, but it might be time to start talking social security numbers on the playground.  Because hackers have turned their eyes toward our kids, making them the number one target of identity theft. Read More... Posted May 19 2009, 12:01 PM by JeanneSager with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: money, college, finances, identity theft, economy, Jeanne Sager, family finance, economic crisis, ID, savings accounts

• Can Facebook Cut the Apron Strings?

  While we adults are caught up in catching up on our past on Facebook, there's a possibility our kids are going to miss out on one of the great joys of late teenagehood. Escaping.  An interesting piece by Peggy Orenstein in the New York Times this week ponders whether kids will be able "to get busy with the embarrassing, exciting, muddy, wonderful work of creating an adult identity" with four hundred of their old high school buddies watching over a T-1 line.  Read More... Posted Mar 19 2009, 12:28 PM by JeanneSager with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: education, teenagers, Facebook, MySpace, college, social networking, social media, friends, friendships, relationships, growing up, Jeanne Sager

• Affordable Birth Control: No Longer a Thing of the Past

  This week, Obama signed into law a new bill that has restored the old commonsense practice of allowing community clinics and college health centers to sell birth control at lower prices. After the passage of the 2005 Deficit Reduction Act—which made it all but impossible for pharmaceutical companies to sell birth control to clinics at a discount—the price of contraception shot up as much as 10 times a month. Read More... Posted Mar 13 2009, 04:30 PM by Hannah Tennant-Moore with | with no comments Filed under: contraception, college, family planning, obama, uninsured, affordable birth control

• Lock in Your Kid's College Price NOW

  If Republican lawmakers in New York have their way, parents of kids as young as, well, as young as possible, could lock in now the price they'll pay eighteen years down the road for college tuition.  The twist? Your kid will have to attend a state or city school. Read More... Posted Mar 06 2009, 03:01 PM by JeanneSager with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: education, money, college, tuition, Republican, New York, planning ahead, economy, Jeanne Sager, family finance, loans, state school

• Fun Stuff To Do When The Kids Get Older

  Pictured here are a mother and her son. What's happening in this photo? Have they just received horrible news about a family member? Are they watching Joaquin Phoenix's Letterman interview, or Hugh Jackman's opening number at the Oscars? Or is it something far more sinister? Let's find out. Read More... Posted Feb 24 2009, 06:30 PM by Brett Singer with | with no comments Filed under: school, new york times, money, college, NYTimes, Brett Singer, savings, 401k, financial aid

• Smackdown: I Don’t Care If My Daughter Has Sex as a Teen

  Progressive, feminist, supposedly sex-positive parents are, of course, pretty well united against the absurd excesses of abstinence-only education and the religious no-sex-until-marriage frenzy. What continues to amaze me though, is how little the positions they do take really vary from the underlying values of the abstinence worshippers. As a parent, I keep running into a nudge, nudge wink, wink understanding that even though we know it’s not good to base policy on it, of course really we all want to put off our daughters’ sexual awakenings as long as possible (or at least until they’re out of the house). There are jokes about chastity belts and not letting boyfriends come over until age 30. Every once and a while I feel the urge to get out a calendar and check the year. I confess that I don’t get it. Not a smidgen. And I don’t think this is just a matter of my having a defective freak-out gene. I really think that this attitude is not in our daughters’ best interests. Read More... Posted Jan 22 2009, 10:01 AM by Miriam Axel-Lute with | with 24 comment(s) Filed under: teenagers, gender, marriage, high school, college, sex education, daughters, self-esteem, sexism, abstinence, virginity, smackdown, hysteria, chastity belts, Shannon LC Cate, delaying sex, Axel-Lute, teen couples, heterosexism

• Forget Smarts: Will Your Toddler Have The Bucks For College?

  Start saving now (only, whoops!, maybe not in the stock market), because by the time your toddler is ready for college, it's quite likely to be far, far out of the average family's price range. According to a new report released this week, costs for college have increased 439% from 1982 to 2007 (family incomes rose 147% in the same period; neither figure is adjusted for inflation). The report, put out by National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, is titled “Measuring Up 2008,” and it calculates the average net college costs against the average net income of families. It reports that in 2007 the net cost of a four-year public university took up 28% of the median family income, while the same family could drop 76% of its income sending a kid to a private school -- and that's with financial aid factored in.  Read More... Posted Dec 04 2008, 03:02 PM by Kate Tuttle with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: money, college, tuition, income, university, grants, scholarships, loans, middle-class

• Health Scam: Crisis Pregnancy Centers

  They've been around for ages, but they've gotten slicker at marketing themselves, and now they have college health services pimping for them as well. Calling themselves "crisis pregnancy" or "pregnancy resource" centers, they are sham clinics that pretend to offer comprehensive reproductive health services, but really exist only to try to shame and scare women out of having abortions. And far from being protected from them, women in college are being sent to them by a source they ought to be able to trust: their university health services centers. Read More... Posted Nov 24 2008, 03:55 PM by Kate Tuttle with | with 7 comment(s) Filed under: pregnancy, abortion, college, universities

• A Third of Parents No Longer Saving for College

  One of the more alarming aspects of the financial crisis is its potential effect on the next generation of American workers. If young people can’t afford quality higher education, what will happen to the educated workforce? A new survey has found that more than a third of American parents have substantially decreased their college savings or have stopped saving for college altogether. Read More... Posted Oct 17 2008, 01:30 PM by Hannah Tennant-Moore with | with 7 comment(s) Filed under: children, parents, college, economy, youth, retirement, paying for college, economic crisis, college savings, stop saving for college, saving for college, 529 plans, retiring later, educated workforce, higher education, investment

• Social Networking, the Next Hurdle to Getting Them Into College?

  As if getting them into the right pre-school, making sure they tie their shoes on time, and packing their adolescent days with just the right balance of after-school activities and opportunities to "give back" wasn't enough to stress about for the next 18 years. If you want to get your kids into a good college, you might want to make sure they keep those Myspace pages private. Read More... Posted Sep 29 2008, 03:58 PM by JeanneSager with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: teens, Facebook, MySpace, college, social networking, Jeanne Sager, pre-school, Kaplan, admissions officers

• I can tell how much you orgasm because of how you walk

  Let's say a guy tells a group of female college students that he can tell how often they've had orgasms by watching them walk. That guy would likely get a smack for that, right? But if he's a SCIENTIST… well, that's different. "A new study found that trained sexologists could infer a woman's history of vaginal orgasm by observing the way she walks. The study is published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine." Read More... Posted Sep 09 2008, 02:30 PM by Brett Singer with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: college, science, studies, women, scientists, Brett Singer, they say, videotape, beavis and butthead, sleazy guys

• 5 Ways To Prevent Drunken Douchebaggery in Your Boy

  We all knew them in our younger days: the guys whose bodies were expertly crafted by Budweiser and yet who referred to any girl over 100 pounds as a "fat chick," who targeted dorky guys and quiet girls, who were always "that drunk asshole."  If you've got a boy and half a brain, you really, really don’t want your son to turn into That Guy. The fabulous ladies over at Jezebel have a great piece up, beautifully titled "5 Ways to Prevent your Son from Turning Into a Date-Rapey Alcoholic Douchebag." The biggest thing, of course, is teaching him... Read More... Posted Aug 12 2008, 01:02 PM by Amy Kuras with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: parenting, alcohol, college, boys, jezebel, respect, jerks, mothers and sons, douchebags, date rape, fraternity boys, influence, peer pressure

• Like father like son

  This is just funny. Andrew Giuliani, son of Rudy and ex-wife Donna Hanover, is suing Duke University because they kicked him off the golf team. Read More... Posted Aug 01 2008, 03:00 PM by Brett Singer with | with no comments Filed under: news, sports, college, Rudy Giuliani, golf, lawsuits, Giuliani, mayor, legal, Brett Singer, 9/11, schmucks, election 08, college sports, america's mayor, ncaa, Rudolph Giuliani, donna hanover, andrew giuliani

• They say: Drinking with your kids makes them less drunk

  Now we've all gotten drunk. Fall down, sloppy, mess-making drunk. My first bad drinking experience involved vodka, straight up, in a garage during a thunderstorm. It ended badly. I had a couple of others, but not too many that included me puking my guts out. But it happens. According to this article from Time magazine, it might happen less if you drink with your kids. Read More... Posted Jun 24 2008, 09:30 AM by Brett Singer with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: kids, drinking, alcohol, behavior, college, Time Magazine, babble talk, alcoholism, Bad Parent, Brett Singer, drunk, they say, binge drinking, permissive, essay

• Helicopter Parents -- Now With More Spying Capabilities

  Ugh! Please don't let me become one of these! The New York Times ran a story over the weekend about parents who, in short, need some hobbies. Because instead of macrame and collecting antique cookie tins, they're spending their time, energy and money on spying on their kids' every move -- you think I'm saying that metaphorically, I'm not -- at school. Schools are adopting one of the scads of software programs that allow parents to ...   Read More... Posted May 05 2008, 02:36 PM by Madeline Holler with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: attachment parenting, Baby Boomers, college, helicopter parenting, kids and school, monitoring software, spying on kids, kids grades

• Son, perhaps you should consider a trade

  Not only is it impossible to get junior into that elite Kindergarten, once you do, the little rat won't be able to get into college. At least that's what the numbers are telling us this week. According to the Wall Street Journal, Harvard admitted 7.1% of students who applied this year, down from 8.9%...   Read More... Posted Apr 04 2008, 02:15 PM by Brett Singer with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: education, news, Harvard, stress, wall street journal, college, Dr. Phil, kindergarten, university, yale, college admissions, university of north texas, university of texas

• Liquidate the College Fund

  How about we cash out that 529 right now and go ahead with a new sofa? Who needs tax-deferred college savings plan when so many universities -- really, really good, really, really expensive universities -- are now saying they'll waive college tuition for middle class kids. Read More... Posted Feb 26 2008, 03:43 PM by Madeline Holler with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: college, college savings fund, 529, tuition, free tuition, university

• To Afford Tuition, Quit Your Job

  You those letters you get that tell you to starting to save now for the kids' college?  Here's a better idea: just quit your job. Brown has joined Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and Stanford and will offer free tuition to students whose families earn less than $60,000 per year. One way they can afford this is to increase tuition by 3.9%, inching ever closer to the $50,000 mark for one year of tuition plus room and board (the New York Times says the amount is $47,740). As my lovely wife says, cool - we'll just quit our jobs when the kids graduate high school. Read More... Posted Feb 26 2008, 01:23 PM by Brett Singer with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: education, Harvard, college, brown, yale

• Weekly Check-Up: Good News/Bad News About Risky Business

  Okay, so good news first? Parents do actually have some influence over their kids' practice of risky behaviors like drinking and drugging and screwing, even when the kids are college-age. A new study found that if moms and dads are in the loop about what their offspring are doing, even when the kids are off at the dorms, the kids were less likely to do risky stuff like befriend a hooker and dance around in their underwear and consume tons of liquor. (Actually I think that Risky Business was about a teenager, not college kid, but you get the idea.) Specifically, when dads knew about their lives kids were less likely to have unsafe sex and use drugs; and when moms were in the know they were less likely to drink until they puked.  Bad news? Read More... Posted Feb 14 2008, 08:33 AM by Kelly Mills with | with no comments Filed under: health, research study, teens, alcohol, Tom Cruise, college, drugs, Risky Business, weekly check up, adulthood, dorms, leaving the nest

• When Do You Finally Become a Grownup?

  Those crazy kids today; what will they think of next? Apparently what was de rigeur back in the day of my parents, who married at 20 while still in college and began a family at the relatively late-for-the-time 28, is Old News. Passe. And when I was in college it was pretty well understood that when you graduated, you got a job and started living Real Life. But no longer. Because even when you can drive and vote and get killed in war and drink legally, you still may have yet to pass the real tests of adulthood: Read More... Posted Dec 14 2007, 10:04 AM by Karen Murphy with | with 6 comment(s) Filed under: kids, parents, college, grownups, adulthood

• Helicopter Parenting Might be Good for Kids After All

  Okay, all you hovering over-protective parents out there...relax. You don't have to change, at least not for me (you never have to change baby, I love you juuuust the way you are, can I sing you a little song now about that?  "Don't go changin'...to try to please me...."). But yeah, if you're still cutting up your kid's meat when he's going off to college, don't worry. He'll be totally okay. More than okay, in fact. Yep, now they say that kids of helicopter parents thrive. So tighten up those apron strings a bit and let's talk about why:   Read More... Posted Nov 06 2007, 01:09 PM by Karen Murphy with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: parenting, kids, helicopter parents, college, helicopter parenting

• Save Up Now for a College Coach So Your Kid Can Go Ivy

  It's not enough that you've got to be filling out preschool applications before your morning sickness ends. No, if you want your kid to not suck succeed in life, it's all about college. And parents are shelling out $40,000 or more to hire a coach to get their kid into the right college. The secret? It's all about branding. Read More... Posted Oct 13 2007, 01:03 PM by Karen Murphy with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: kids, middle school, high school, families, college, branding, college coaches

• Helicopter Parents Hover Over College "Kids"

  I am married to a college professor and while you might now be imagining smudged reading glasses, hot tea and sweaters with patched elbows, don’t. Life with an academic involves lots of swearing, boring parties and a glimpse at unbelievable new failures in American education. All that, and helicopter parenting. You get to see lots of helicopter parenting. At the end of each semester, minutes after cheaters are busted, grades filed, and GPAs recalculated, the whirling blades descend into our home ... Read More... Posted Oct 09 2007, 09:11 AM by Madeline Holler with | with 7 comment(s) Filed under: attachment parenting, Baby Boomers, college, helicopter parenting

• Candidate Likes Baby Bonds. The Money Kind!

  She’s bought …. wait, I mean … she’s GOT, my vote! Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has proposed giving every baby born in the U.S. $5,000. She was speaking at a forum of the Congressional Black Caucus Friday when she unveiled her plan of earmarking money for education for American kids. Ahhhh, but there’s a catch. Read More... Posted Sep 28 2007, 06:34 PM by Madeline Holler with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: hillary clinton, college, college savings fund, 2008 Campaign, childcare costs