Tag: parenting
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The Global Baby Trade
Foreign Policy looks at the international adoption trade and the corruption that has made it a lucrative industry. Westerners have been sold the myth of a world orphan crisis. We are told that millions of children are waiting for their “forever families” to rescue them from lives of abandonment and abuse. But many of the infants…
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Raising Smart Children: Concentrate on Effort, not Ability
An old Scientific American article looks at the findings from three decades of research into how to raise intelligent children. Our society worships talent, and many people assume that possessing superior intelligence or ability—along with confidence in that ability—is a recipe for success. In fact, however, more than 30 years of scientific investigation suggests that…
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Comparison of Maternity Leave Allowances
The Economist graphically compares OECD maternity leave allowances. Sweden is the most generous of the OECD countries, not only offering most time off but also paying 80% of a woman’s salary for 390 days. For fathers, Britain offers a measly two weeks of unpaid leave, whereas in Norway and Iceland, for example, more even division…
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Working With Children – Fear & False Accusations
This news report comes as no surprise. While in the past, adults would have helped children in distress or rebuked those misbehaving, there was now “a feeling that it is best not to become involved”, it said. Report author Prof Frank Furedi, of Kent University, said: “From Girl Guiders to football coaches, from Christmas-time Santas…
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My Ideal Parenting Model
When Mom and Dad Share It All is a New York Times cover story on gender and parenting. A great story with greater insights, this paragraph sums up how I hope my future would be: They would create their own model, one in which they were parenting partners. Equals and peers. They would work equal…
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Overestimating Threats Against Children
Bruce Schneier recently wrote about the MySpace ‘safeguards’ being put in place to protect minors. His very succinct closing comments are a must-read. …there isn’t really any problem with child predators — just a tiny handful of highly publicized stories — on MySpace. It’s just security theatre against a movie-plot threat. But we humans have…