The US child care system is a hot mess. Parents don’t have federally-protected time off to bond with their children, despite hoards of research showing how relationships formed in the earliest years of life shape babies’ brains—laying the foundations for children’s future emotional, educational and physical well-being.
Many parents believe their teens are too attached to their phones—maybe even addicted. In a surprise finding, a new report from the Pew Research Center shows that even teens think they have a problem.
For many parents, back-to-school season incites a mad scramble to organize kids’ activities—from music lessons to math club and after-school tutoring. But a new policy report from the American Academy of Pediatrics suggests we’d do better to pencil in big blocks of time devoted to nothing but free play.
For thousands of kids in the US, going back to school this year won’t be quite so painful. That’s because they will attend schools with four-day weeks.
Young adults are extremely stressed-out these days—and colleges across America are scrambling to support them.
In his 2015 book Raising Kids Who Read, University of Virginia psychology professor Daniel Willingham explains the concept of “virtuous cycle” of reading. Children who read well tend to enjoy reading; because they enjoy reading, they read more; because they read more, they become better readers.
Australian doctor Rachel Heap has seen people suffer from diseases that could have been prevented by vaccines throughout her career. She’s got a direct message for parents who refuse routine shots for their children—and it’s making waves across the internet.
The US Congress may not be able to agree on much, but a bipartisan group of senators and representatives have concurred that studying the impact of social media and technology on kids is worth $95 million.
It may come as a shock to parents of young children, but preschoolers are more cooperative than we realize.
Many parents live every day in a state of near-constant concern. Is my child eating enough? If she cries when I’m not there, will someone comfort her?
There is a saying in education that you treasure what you measure. Going by the standardized tests that dominate schools in many countries around the world, we’re teaching children that we value only a very narrow definition of intelligence—the ability to solve word problems about train times, or identify the purpose of a World War I treaty on a multiple-choice test.
Australian researchers have developed the world’s first blood test (pdf) to detect melanoma in its early stages, a potential breakthrough for a cancer that, when detected late, has dramatically lower survival rates.
Working at an office job typically involves giving up some measure of control—whether it involves abiding by a dress code, tracking billable hours, or arriving at 9AM sharp.
Dear very important person,
“The idea that some of us are ‘math people’ and some are not is a myth that pervades Western society,” Jo Boaler, a professor of math education at Stanford University, writes in a revealing new study. ”This damaging idea has been challenged in recent years by neuroscience showing that mathematics is a subject, like all others, that is learned through hard work and practice.”
“Breastmilk makes the world healthier, smarter, and more equal,” an editorial (pdf) published in the medical journal The Lancet declared in 2016. The statement was part of a whole section devoted to the benefits of breastfeeding as a crucial part of development in a child’s early years.
Osmar Terra is a tall man with a deep voice and an easy laugh—one that disguises the scale of his ambition to transform Brazilian society. A federal representative for nearly two decades, he is the driving force behind the world’s biggest experiment to prove that teaching poor parents how to love and nurture their infants will dramatically influence what kind of adults they become, and give Brazil its best shot at changing its current trajectory of violence, inequality, and poverty.
At Eton College, Britain’s most famous boarding school, boys wear tailcoats to class each day. An unusually high number of Britain’s prime ministers have graduated from there—19 so far. Now the most elite boarding school on the planet has designed a seven-week online course that aims to give teens around the world the same take-charge-of-a-room kind of confidence that its pupils seem to derive from attending.
Donald Trump on Wednesday (June 20) issued an executive order rescinding the policy of separating the children of immigrants and refugees from their parents at the US-Mexico border. But 2,342 children have already been forcibly separated from their parents—exposing them to the kind of stress experts say can have serious, negative long-term consequences for their development. And the order signed by Trump makes no move to reunite those children with their families.
There are many things that hold men back from taking paternity leave. A new survey (pdf) of more than 1,000 men and women in the US, conducted by Promundo and Dove Men+Care, finds that nearly three-quarters of men think there is no support at work for taking leave, many are worried their household income will suffer, and one in five are afraid of losing their jobs if they take time off when a child is born.
Very privileged parents often talk a big egalitarian game while exhibiting some pretty traditional roles, with dad working while mom stays home. New research shows that in the places where these families cluster—in wealthier, whiter school districts, where men earn more than women, have higher levels of education, and are more likely to work in business or science—boys outperform girls in math by a larger margin than in other communities.
Great teachers have a huge impact on kids. Research has shown that students with highly effective teachers (those in the 90th percentile) learn 1.5 years’ worth of material in a year, while students with teachers in the 10th percentile learn just half a years’ worth of material in the same period. “No other attribute of schools comes close to having this much influence on student achievement,” Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford University, told the Economist.
It is a well-documented and deeply sad fact that if you suffer from trauma as a child, you are more likely to suffer as an adult. People with a childhood history of trauma have a greater risk of being obese, getting cancer, suffering from heart disease and mental illness, and dying sooner. They’re also more likely to engage in risky behaviors—smoking, illicit drugs, and high-risk sex—which is also predictive of bad outcomes.
Among the many frustrations of being a parent are the moments when your child’s bad behavior inspires your own rage-induced response. Kids are small, you are big, and evolution has it that you’re the one meant to keep it together.
