parenting

Prior to March 2011, parents in the United States were advised to keep their child’s car seat rear-facing at least until the child weighed 20 pounds and turned 1 year old, at which point the car seat might safely be turned around to face forward during travel. That prevailing guideline changed when the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a new recommendation that the position of car seats should be kept rear-facing until the child is 2 years old.

Over the past 50 years, American children have been growing up in increasingly diversified family structures. As divorce, remarriage, cohabitation and other such events have refashioned home life, studies have found that transitions for children can have negative educational consequences.

Migrants often have different reasons for coming to the United States. Two common motivations are their educational and employment aspirations for their children. The dutiful, hard-working child of immigrants has become a kind of cultural type in America, but research suggests the reality for such children is more complex.

Most countries have at least some length of maternity leave required by law. Part of the explanation for why maternity leave is necessary almost always references the assumed developmental benefits for children over the long term.

Levels of life satisfaction impact an individual’s physical and mental health, with unhappy individuals tending to be less energetic, creative, and depressed, and more likely to call into work sick and to require counseling. For decades, social science research suggested that parents in the United States were unhappier than their child-free peers. This “parental happiness gap” manifested itself in parents of all ages, experience levels, marital status and incomes.

The evolution of the contemporary human species is often portrayed as a slow process over many tens of thousands of years that culminated in our now-fixed modern state and form. But research from the University of Edinburgh (U.K.), Université du Québec à Montréal and Université de Sherbrooke in Canada suggests that the genetic mechanisms by which humans evolved continue to operate.

In 2009 the United State reported the lowest number of births in five years, after a steep and steady decline from the reported 2007 rates. What lies between these two data points? Recession. Graphing birth rates in the United States alongside per capita income tells a compelling story of two closely linked statistics.

Policy decisions concerning education programming and early interventions are increasingly driven by documented results from long-term academic studies. The Chicago Longitudinal Study (CLS) has now tracked the education and post-education experiences of 1,539 families, most of which participated in the Child-Parent Center (CPC) Education Program (the second-oldest federally funded preschool program, behind Head Start).