Babble

Monday (1 June) was a day that many thousands of people in Ontario will remember for the rest of their lives.  It was the first day people adopted in Ontario (since 1921) could apply to the government for their original birth records. A new law, similar to one already in place in other Canadian provinces, one in the UK and a handful of U.S. ...

Five-year old Riley Braden has been swimming since she was two.  A few weeks ago, her skills paid off in a big way.  When Riley was swimming with some friends in a hotel pool, she noticed an 18-month old child in distress.  As Riley describes it: "She didn't have her floaties on and her parents weren't watching.  ...

In her controversial Dispatch this week, Katie Allison Granju wonders if it may be time to re-stigmatize certain parenting behavior.  She wonders, "if everyone is a "Bad Parent," then where is the line between reasonable and unreasonable maternal imperfection?" Most interestingly, she challenges the bad parent ...

Today's online edition of The New York Times features a touching slideshow portrait of a family of six in California who are struggling to get by after a seemingly small--ten percent--paycut.  Mom says friends told her it was be easy if she "trimmed the fat" from her budget.  But as I'm sure many readers can relate, ...

The Consumer Products Safety Commission has recalled 4,300 backyard play sets and 60,000 trampolines.  The play sets were sold at Toys R Us and the trampolines were sold in various specialty stores as well as online. The play set, the Step2 Play Up Gym, has faulty hangers attaching the swings to the bar.  The hangers have broken, ...

Since the new statistics arrived suggesting that the numbers of unmarried women having children are rising--and that these women are sometimes having children alone by choice--the tsk-tskers have been having a field day. Latest among them is unmarried, not-mother, Cathy Young of the Boston Globe, who decries the lack of social opprobrium against ...

Taphatna Duncan is a normal sixth-grader with a paper route.  But she does something extraordinary with her $100/month in earnings.  She supports her family. Taphatna was adopted at age seven from the "orphanage" where her biological father had taken her when he and his family could no longer afford to care for her.  Her ...

In case we needed yet another reason not to smoke--and to harass people who do--here's a new study that shows a four-fold increase in the likelihood of being a smoker at age 22 if your mother smoked during pregnancy and/or your early childhood. Researchers are suggesting that exposure to cigarettes in utero may lead to changes in the brain ...

A recent investigation of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has shown that school children--most often children with special needs--are being subjected to extreme "discipline" techniques that have hurt and even caused the deaths of some.  According to NPR: "In some cases...children have died or been injured when they ...

Adoption agencies around the country are reporting a rise of between 10 and 30% in pregnant women and new mothers inquiring about placing their infants with new families, since the recession began. The story of one such woman, a single mother to three teens who found herself unexpectedly pregnant again with no support from her baby's father, ...