The study confirms what largely seems like common sense: Financial insecurity is stressful, and anxiety associated with unemployment and low household income can affect how well parents parent. It's easy enough to understand how more time worrying about keeping the lights on could mean less time to focus on helping with homework and strengthening family bonds.

Led by Dr. Seethalakshmi Ramanathan of the State University of New York’s Upstate Medical University, researchers used information about 8,984 youth born between Jan. 1, 1980, and Dec. 31, 1984, as a sample group. As Time magazine reports:

Continue Reading...

Advertisers obviously know all of this. They not only know that kids will go full-on terrible in annoying their parents into buying stuff they realize they want, but also that two-year-olds are already starting to develop their own future preferences. Hence, when my son hears the discrete piano tune and Ed Harris' soothing voice on the radio and then cheerily shouts "Home Depot," it is a sign that he is already equating home projects with the local-business-crushing orange Godzilla -- just as that Godzilla's marketing team hopes. Same thing for the Happy Meal, whose child-focused marketing equates junk food with emotive joy and cheap toys -- a terrible-yet-irresistible combination for a two-year-old.

Continue Reading...

Mattel is the maker of Barbie and Hot Wheels, but this year its top selling toy is a plastic cell phone case, according to the Financial Times (subscription required):

 Whether a new Kindle Fire, or a hand-me-down iPad, analysts predict 2012 will be the year children as young as three-years-old will unwrap tablets at trendsetting rates. And that has the traditional toy companies scrambling to stay relevant.

“The top two guys, Mattel and Hasbro, they are terrified,” said Sean McGowan, managing director of equity research at Needham & Company, an investment banking firm. “They should be terrified, but the official party line is they’re not terrified.”

Continue Reading...

"Andrew Kirby said that he doesn't have to do homework tonight," she tells me on Dec. 11.

"Why?" I ask. Kirby's a middle-school classmate, a chunky wild man.

"Because he said to the teacher: 'Why bother? The world is going to end on 12-12-12 at midnight.'" She rifles through a Samsung Galaxy tab before she even gets her little ballerina arms through her NorthFace sleeves.

"The world doesn't end on December 12, 2012," I tell her, opening the front door to let her sister out into the cold. “The world ends on December 21, 2012. We have approximately 10 days left."

She lets out an exacerbated argh and climbs into the backseat of her mother's Prius with her younger sister in dance leotards. Ah, yes, the world may be coming to an end soon, but we are still trying to save her while sticking it to Exxon one mile at a time.

Continue Reading...

According to a report from the Pew Research Center, more than half of all parents polled have begun to restrict their children's news access in the wake of Friday's mass shooting.

Fully 71 percent of parents with children in elementary school are trying to restrict how much coverage of the events their children watch, compared with only 36 percent of parents with older children. Six in ten parents (60 percent) with both elementary-school-age and older children are restricting how much coverage their children watch.

Parents have long grappled with age-appropriate ways to talk with their children about grown-up tragedy, with a number of instructional guides offering suggestions. But the question remains: How much is too much information to share with your kids?

Continue Reading...

Inspired by other "millions" marches of the past, a movement to hold a One Million Child march on Washington in February to lobby for "sane" gun laws has sprouted up on Facebook. It's already garnered thousands of likes and RSVPs, because as the organizer, a father of two, asks, "Who could say no to a million kids? Not even Congress." Aside from the fact that Congress has a long and storied history of flipping the bird at kids, minorities, the elderly, the disabled — you get the point – the march has the potential to become a galvanizing moment not just in the debate over guns, but in the lives of thousands of families. It's an opportunity to teach kids the power of their voices, of their hope, of their love — and to show that power to the world.

Continue Reading...

Some parents turned their shock and grief into arguments for stricter gun laws, but others say it’s time to think seriously about protecting Second Amendment rights, and maybe even arm teachers so that adults can defend students against attacks like this.

“I do feel that those kids would have been better protected, more lives would have been saved, if someone had had some type of weapon at the school,” says Jillian Mae Hagle, of Tahlequah, Okla., the mother of a 1-year-old.

Continue Reading...

“I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me," wrote Liza Long.

Long described a number of frightening incidents involving her 13-year-old son, "Michael" (a pseudonym) -- a child with a soaring IQ who has threatened his mother with knives so many times that she carries around a Tupperware container for the days she has to collect and hide all the sharp objects in the house. Long's other two children, she wrote, know to follow a safety drill to lock themselves in the car during Michael's fits of rage.

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

A lot of crazy shit has happened since then. Samuel L. Jackson, Werner Herzog, Thandie Newton and an adorable Filipina grandma all did readings that went viral. Corporate publishers tried to buy the book away from tiny, independent Akashic Books for a lot of money, and we said no. Jenna Elfman randomly made a music video, and in return for our not suing her, met up with us in Miami with a plastic baby doll to speak to fans of literature. Time magazine named "Go the Fuck to Sleep" its “Thing of the Year,” presumably in a squeaker win over that bacon-flavored mayonnaise. Sam Jackson and I teamed back up for “Wake the Fuck Up,” a pro-Obama video that reminded America of the importance of voting and vulgarity.

Continue Reading...

Gottlieb's storied career as editor in chief of Simon & Schuster and Alfred A. Knopf, as well as a five-year stint as editor in chief of the New Yorker, has provided him with plenty of firsthand experience in the foibles of literary greats. (He discovered and edited Joseph Heller's "Catch-22" and has edited the work of such authors as John Cheever, Toni Morrison, John le Carré, Ray Bradbury, Robert A. Caro, Barbara Tuchman and Bill Clinton.) Late in life, he launched a second career as a writer, contributing long critical essays to the New York Review of Books and the New Yorker, as well as penning biographies of Sarah Bernhardt and George Balanchine. Deciding that the lives of the Dickens children merited further investigation, he followed his usual method of absorbing all available writings on the topic. An irresistibly readable new book, "Great Expectations: The Sons and Daughters of Charles Dickens," is the result.

Continue Reading...

(This prescriptive advice wasn’t as random as it sounds. The pediatrician and I tend to talk books, while my children roll their eyes, especially since my first novel came out a few months ago.)

I didn’t know Faulkner had written a children’s book. The doctor looked pleased to have stumped me. He pulled out his prescription pad and wrote "The Wishing Tree" plus WILLIAM FAULKNER, in large letters, in case I forgot.

What, I wondered, would Faulkner have to say to kids? That when you mimic the help, it’s important to get the dialect right? That you shouldn’t drink while doing your homework, only after you’re done?

In academic journals, "The Wishing Tree" is described as Alice in Wonderland–esque, aimed at kids ages 8 to 11. It was originally written in 1927 but not published by Random House until 1964, when one of the children for whom it had been handmade offered it for publication (more later on the awkwardness of this). It had been out of print for years, but there were used copies online in middling condition for $30 to $50.

Continue Reading...

This popular conception of young men is the subject of Smiler's new book, "Challenging Casanova: Beyond the Stereotype of the Promiscuous Young Male." This stereotype "tells us that guys are primarily interested in sex, not relationships," he writes. "This contributes to the notion that guys are emotional clods who are incapable of connecting with their partners because, hey, they're just guys, and guys are only interested in sex. " The result is the belief that "guys shouldn't be expected to achieve any type of 'real' emotional intimacy with their partners."

Continue Reading...

Almost six months ago I received a piece of troubling news that I have been unable to come to terms with: I am 100 percent sterile, due to what my doctor calls a "random genetic abnormality."

This revelation has sent me spiraling downward into a dark mood that I have been unable to lift since. I have always envisioned my future with a family of my own taking center stage, and now that vision has been shattered. It doesn't help that each of the three women I cared about began to shun me shortly after I told them, and as of this writing, still are. It's as if infertility has thrown some invisible barrier up between myself and the world of dating, leaving me to find solace in large amounts of alcohol and far too many pints of ice cream.

Upon receiving the news that my best friend's wife was going to have a baby, I congratulated him, only to feel hatred and jealousy bubble up inside me. He'll soon have a son or daughter that is his own flesh and blood, a precious blessing I will never receive, and as much as I'm trying not to, I hate him for it. I'll never hear the words "He looks just like his dad!" or "She has her father's eyes!" like he will, and I fear constantly that the growing animosity I feel toward him might tear our decade-long friendship to tatters.

Continue Reading...

I have always been a loser. Wallets, cellphones, gift certificates, the “good” scissors. They all swim in and out of my life like migrating cod. One of the unshakable images from my childhood is of my mother, silent but vengeful, hurling a giant Hefty bag down the stairs to our basement. It contained all the GI Joe parts and Lego pieces I had ever misplaced or let slide between couch cushions. A few days later, she asked why I hadn’t complained about her trashing my stuff. “I finally know where everything is,” I told her.

Continue Reading...

I spent hours studying my baby’s development on a website called Babycenter.com, which explained that he resembled a sesame seed at week 5, a kumquat at week 10 and a bell pepper at week 18. Perhaps subconsciously inspired by their comparisons, I consumed so many raw vegetables and legumes that I walked around most days enveloped by a noxious cloud of gas.

I attended prenatal yoga, where the instructor encouraged us to gripe for a full half-hour about our blown-out backs and throbbing feet and constipation, and where the other women all pretended not to notice that I was the stinkiest among them, though they all sat at a respectable distance, having realized that downward dog tended to stir things up down there.

The power pregnancy exerted over my body and my brain freaked me out.

Continue Reading...

Yoselyn Ortega had recovered from her wounds enough by Saturday to be interviewed by police in her hospital bed at New York Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center. After the interview, she was formally charged with two counts each of first- and second-degree murder.

Police didn't know if Ortega had a lawyer.

Police say that on the evening of Oct. 25, while the children's mother was out with a third child, Ortega repeatedly stabbed 6-year-old Lucia Krim and her 2-year-old brother, Leo.

When their mother, Marina Krim, returned with her 3-year-old daughter, she found their bodies in the bathtub, with Ortega lying on the bathroom floor with stab wounds to her neck. A kitchen knife was nearby.

The children's father, CNBC digital media executive Kevin Krim, had been away on a business trip when the killings occurred.

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

As I grew older, however, his silence became an invisible barrier between us. By 10, I was convinced he didn’t love me. Sitting in the back seat of our station wagon on a family trip, I made a bet with myself: If he said anything to me -- directly to me -- within the following 24 hours, it meant he loved me.

He went 41 hours.

I grew up, went to college far from home, worked hard at finding a career, finally returned to Los Angeles and settled down with a family of my own. My father and I spoke every so often, but usually just as a prelude to my longer conversations with my mother. We never called the other directly just to talk. There was a wall of silence between us -- but by now it seemed normal.

Then one day, 15 years ago, a call came from my mother. My father had fallen down and was at UCLA Hospital. I was used to the idea that he would die young of heart disease. His mother had died at 55, and he’d had two bypass operations, the first when I was 16. So I was unprepared for his diagnosis: He had a variant of Alzheimer’s disease.

Continue Reading...

The family at the kitchen table is an indelible image, classic Americana. It sells pancakes and life insurance, and every four years, it peddles politicians. Each election cycle, the steely female narrators of campaign ads ask us to consider which candidate is best for American families, families that might’ve looked like mine until my father’s hand left me deaf and reeling for days.

Continue Reading...