Consensual Living is an experiment in family democracy, where all family members are equally worthy of respect and participate equally in every decision. "When your child is unwilling to share her toy, instead of forcing, choose to listen and understand her point of view. Facilitate her need for playing with that toy, while helping the other child find something just as interesting. When your child skips dinner but is hungry before bed, instead of being frustrated, you can choose to share a quiet bowl of cereal and chat about the day. In each situation and the other unlimited examples out there, you always have the ability to choose joy and connection." Some are not impressed.
posted by Xurando on May 13, 2009 - 161 comments

The Case Against Homework. Does assigning fifty math problems accomplish any more than assigning five? Is memorizing word lists the best way to increase vocabulary—especially when it takes away from reading time? And what is the real purpose behind those devilish dioramas? Sara Bennett wants to stop homework. Here she explains why (pdf).
posted by lunit on Apr 9, 2009 - 180 comments

The novlist Julie Myerson has written a book, The Lost Child, about her son's addiction to cannabis, the violent behaviour she says this caused and her tough love policy. Extract. Her son is angry that she's published it, and says his parents over-reacted: "I wasn't doing anything that most other teenagers do, but such was their naive terror of drugs they were acting like six-year-olds". It comes out through MumsNet that Julie Myerson was the anonymous author of a Guardian column, "Living with Teenagers," which described her children's behaviour candidly without their knowledge. Extract. Myerson first denied this. The Guardian discusses whether it was right to publish the columns. Myerson is interviewed about whether she was right to publish The Lost Child. Her partner, and son's father, Jonathan Myerson supports her: This is an emergency. Her son says she's addicted to writing. [more inside]
posted by paduasoy on Mar 15, 2009 - 160 comments

Army reports highest rate of soldier suicides for three decades in 2008. [more inside]
posted by batmonkey on Jan 29, 2009 - 20 comments

Labor of Love : when a married couple wanted to start a family and the wife was unable to conceive or carry because of previous surgeries, her husband, who is transgendered and legally male, stopped taking his testosterone and was inseminated.
posted by FunkyHelix on Mar 20, 2008 - 118 comments

Washington Initiative Requires Proof of Procreation From Married Couples -- in response to a ruling made by the Washington Supreme Court last year stating gay and lesbian couples could be prevented from marrying by the state because Washington has a legitimate interest in preserving marriage for couples who can procreate. It's been accepted by their Secy of State, and only needs signatures now to get on the ballot. Press release here, which adds: The time has come for these conservatives to be dosed with their own medicine. If same-sex couples should be barred from marriage because they can not have children together, it follows that all couples who can not or will not have children together should equally be barred from marriage.
posted by amberglow on Feb 4, 2007 - 152 comments

family at war an excellent documentary of a family who lost their son in iraq - particularly moving is the soldiers determined, soft-spoken mother who is examining the reasons for her loss.
posted by specialk420 on Nov 14, 2005 - 8 comments

Won't somebody please think of the children? Oh, don't fool yourselves! Americans under the age of 12 now spend or influence the spending of $565 billion a year - up from $2.2 billion in 1968, and kid-spending has roughly doubled every ten years for the past three decades, tripling in the 1990s. Which means someone is always thinking of the children. The American Association of Pediatrics (pdf) cites this bludgeoning of kidvertising as creating in children "a fever for shopping and spending, swollen expectations about material needs, decreasing immunity to the assaults of advertisers, self-concepts defined by brands of clothing, and a rash of of debt by the time they leave college". [more...]
posted by taz on Sep 19, 2005 - 55 comments

Serious Breeders. The Duggars' slogan: "Always pregnant"
posted by growabrain on Jul 2, 2005 - 146 comments

Britney's Smear. Staff at Hot 89.9 Morning Hot Tub team spent two weeks touting what they claim is the First Response home pregnancy test Britney Spears used to determine she was carrying husband Kevin Federline's baby. GoldenPalace.com, an online casino known for its aggressive marketing, beat out 800 other hopefuls with a bid of $5,001.
posted by fandango_matt on May 4, 2005 - 15 comments

Close to Home: An American Album. 'This exhibition is devoted to American family photographs that were separated from their owners and then rediscovered by artists, writers, collectors, and museum curators. ' Highlights and site visitors' submissions.
Site of related interest :- BBC Family History; and Third Generation: Family Photographs and Memories of Nazi Germany.
posted by plep on Feb 26, 2005 - 2 comments

Blowing Up Gotti. A weekly series from The Smoking Gun featuring prison videotapes of John Gotti behind plexiglass talking to his kids and grandkids. Check out Episode One: Grandpa Blows a Gasket (Quicktime required). Makes you think twice about your baseball career. (Via Gawker).
posted by adrober on Aug 18, 2004 - 19 comments

California bill to ease "move aways" by custodial parents pulled. Until a recent CA Supreme Court decision, it was easy for custodial parents to move themselves and their children far from their ex-spouse. The Court reversed the old rule and held that the move could be blocked if the non-custodial parent could show that it would interfere with his/her relationship with the kids. Legislation to reimpose the old permissive standard passed through the State Senate, but has now been pulled off the legislative calendar after an outcry by father's rights groups.
posted by MattD on Aug 18, 2004 - 17 comments

The Drama Triangle Here's an example. Dad comes home from work to find mom coming down hard on Junior with, "Clean up your room or else" threats. He immediately comes to the rescue,"Mom" he might say,"give the boy a break". Any one of several possibilities might occur next. Perhaps Mom, feeling victimized by dad, turns on him, automatically moving him into a victim position. They might do a few quick trips around the triangle with Junior on the sidelines. Or maybe Junior joins dad in a persecutory "Let's gang up on mom" approach, and they could play it from that angle. Or Junior could turn-coat on dad, rescuing mom, with; "Mind your own business, dad . . . I don't need your help!" So it goes, with endless variations perhaps, but nonetheless, round and round the triangle. For many families, it's the only way they know how to communicate.
posted by SpaceCadet on Apr 4, 2004 - 11 comments

A real Gucci bag out of your reach? Don´t worry, just compensate by naming your kid Gucci! Or Lexus, Evian, Enternity.... more brand baby names here.
posted by jennak on Dec 27, 2003 - 30 comments

More children now than ever are being born from cesarean sections. It's known that giving birth this way can leave psychological damage to the mother, but what effect is it having on the children?
posted by atom128 on Nov 24, 2003 - 39 comments

We already knew that frequent masturbation might cut prostate cancer risk. But it turns out that this is not a message fit for American families. The details of the Lewinsky episode splattered across front pages of the US and abroad come to mind, but also Nancy Reagan pleading for stem research.
posted by magullo on Sep 8, 2003 - 90 comments

There's One In Every Family: You know that uncle whose name can't be mentioned at table, without loud swallowing, dark looks and deathly silence ensuing? The shady New Orleans grandmother whose photographs have been hastily removed from the family album, though the red stain from one of her garters remains? Call them black sheep or family skeletons, the Internet keeps making it easier and easier to dig them up and out. Outing your forebears and close family members has become an up and coming thing. In other words: I'll show you my black sheep if you show me yours.
posted by MiguelCardoso on Feb 23, 2003 - 31 comments

"The Story About The Baby" - this consistently funny and entertaining website is well suited to anyone who has ever thought about having kids, has kids or anyone else. An endearing yet fantastically cynical take on the first year of raising a child has just wrapped up and in its completion is a great antidote to the overbearing cutesy-wootsy baby web pages that proliferate the internet. With entry titles such as: The Unbearable Grossness of Being, Dawn of the Neglectomatic and The Use Of Skinnerian Conditioning To Mold My Child's Brain, well how could you go wrong?
posted by BrodieShadeTree on Feb 21, 2003 - 34 comments

The peace movement that marches this day includes the extraordinary people of Peaceful Tomorrows, "an advocacy organization founded by family members of September Eleventh victims. Its mission is to seek effective nonviolent responses to terrorism, and identify a commonality with all people similarly affected by violence throughout the world. By conscientiously exploring peaceful options in our search for justice, we choose to spare additional innocent families the suffering that we have already experienced—as well as to break the endless cycle of violence and retaliation engendered by war."
posted by fold_and_mutilate on Feb 15, 2003 - 26 comments

Abigail and Brittany Hensel are in the 6th grade and continue to defy the odds. After the initial struggle with the personal pronoun (her? their?), one is left with both curiosity and sympathy. The greater issue is how to assimilate the truly miraculous.
posted by kablam on Nov 11, 2002 - 22 comments

Facing Time: A family's yearly self-portrait from 1976 to 2002 is both uplifting and unsettling; a bit like human life itself. How does one separate the morbid fascination with aging from the spiritual joy of growth? Not to mention the element of voyeurism... [From ZoneZero, via Eclectica.]
posted by MiguelCardoso on Oct 14, 2002 - 30 comments

"It's up to us, and I think we can do it," she said. "It's up to us to bankrupt the terrorists and those who finance them so they will never again have the resources to commit such atrocities against the American people as we experienced on September 11."
posted by jcterminal on Aug 15, 2002 - 45 comments

White couple gets black twins, sue IVF clinic. Experts say a mistake could have occurred in one of three ways.The wrong sperm could have been used to fertilise the right egg, the right sperm could have been used to fertilise the wrong egg, or the embryo implanted in the woman may have been another couple's altogether. Although it is not clear whether another couple has laid claim to the children, legal experts say the judge will be expected to make a modern-day judgment of Solomon on who should be considered the babies' legal parents. This is unploughed legal ground. Is there a fair way to sort this out?
posted by Mack Twain on Jul 17, 2002 - 34 comments

Billy Jean's not my lover. Should non-fathers pay child support to someone else's children? More states are saying "no."
posted by kablam on Jun 18, 2002 - 29 comments

Mother jailed for girls' truancy A question for our British gang, is truancy such a problem in the UK now that this is really necessary? When I went to school in England, lo those mumblemumble years ago, I don't remember it being this bad. For the rest of the world, do you think truancy in your country would justify locking up the primary caregiver or is this punishing the wrong person? Can parents be held responsible for everything a child does? And better said, should they? When should we grant children the priviledges and penalties of their own autonomous actions?
posted by dejah420 on May 13, 2002 - 27 comments

Was MIT or her parents to blame for a suicide?
Challenging NYTimes article on the suicide of Elizabeth Shin, an over-acheiving college student. With the increasing focus on student achievement from earlier and earlier ages, it's clear that children can be deeply affected. How do we, as a society, raise children to standards that we expect without pressure-cooking them to damage or worse?
posted by gen on Apr 27, 2002 - 54 comments

Damned if you do, damned if you're dead. If families don't purchase an expensive urn for cremated remains, require them to purchase a $45 temporary container. But be sure to stamp it "Temporary Container" on all four sides, advises one industry newsletter. The funeral industry may not be making any friends, but they're making a boatload of money. The Funeral Consumers Alliance would like to help them make a little less.
posted by headspace on Mar 19, 2002 - 14 comments

Widow of Sept. 11 Hero Gives Birth. "Lisa Beamer, the widow of the man who cried, 'Let's roll!' as passengers aboard one of the doomed Sept. 11 flights prepared to confront their hijackers, has given birth to a healthy girl." How bittersweet; a part of him lives on, but I'm sure there is sadness because the husband couldn't be there for the birth.

Also, the Beamers have started a memorial foundation for children who lost parents in the 9/11 attacks.
posted by jennak on Jan 11, 2002 - 9 comments

WTC Victims say the government isn't giving them enough money. Some say the government is giving them too much, and any honest libertarian will tell you that the government shouldn't be giving them anything. What do you think?
posted by insomnyuk on Jan 7, 2002 - 48 comments

FBI Declines to Release Hijack Flight Cockpit Tape "While we empathize with the grieving families, we do not believe that the horror captured on the cockpit voice recording will console them in any way,'' [an FBI spokesman] said. While the FBI claims they need to keep the information secret due to a criminal investigation, partial transcripts of the tape have shown up in Newsweek. If the FBI can leak to Newsweek, surely they could get the family members to sign a confidentiality agreement and let them in on the secret too, no?
posted by hitsman on Dec 21, 2001 - 76 comments

Victims' families of Sept. 11 attack to get average of $1.5 million. Will this include the families of those who are still listed as missing instead of dead? Is the compensation structure fair? Should the families have to give up most of their rights to sue (and who would they be able to sue)?
posted by bakiwop on Dec 21, 2001 - 19 comments

familiesofseptember11.org is the website for the advocacy/political action groups being formed by the families of 9.11 victims. WTC United Family Group is another. Do these families have too much influence on post-9.11 policy or is it their right as someone directly affected?
posted by owillis on Dec 12, 2001 - 14 comments

I was just over at Matt's blog, and he mentions that his favorite baby blog is evohr.org. Personally, mine is henrysdiary.com. What's yours? Or do you have problems with this sort of site... do you think it's exploitive or otherwise dangerous?
posted by silusGROK on Oct 23, 2001 - 44 comments

"My son is not a bad boy" has become a cliche. But what's the right thing to do when a loved one does something wrong? What about something VERY wrong? What is a parent's proper response?
posted by marknau on Aug 30, 2001 - 31 comments

Father kills daughters while mother listens on the phone. Even if you are against the death penalty, is a case like this an exception to the rule?
posted by thinkdink on May 4, 2001 - 147 comments

American Hollow - The Bowling family has lived in the same rural hollow in Kentucky for seven generations. The Washington Post tells their story using the Bowlings' own words (including audio clips) and photographs with a Web site you might expect from PBS. Urban Americans (and others, too) might be surprised to learn that there are many, many families in the U.S. who still live like the Bowlings.

"It's 1998 and we just last year put running water in the house, into my kitchen sink. We did it ourselves. We bought line, hooked into Iree's well, dug up a ditch and ran it to the house. But I still need a bathroom and a septic tank. I got a rinse tub that we take a bath in. I'd rather have a bathtub, but meanwhile I can make do."
posted by ewagoner on Apr 27, 2001 - 8 comments

The estate of a divorced father is freed from paying a failing son's tuition. Basically, the ruling establishes (at least in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts) that children have obligations to parents. OK, if you want your parents to pay for your college education, you should at least try to graduate. But what are the other consequences of this ruling? What's the point at which a child's bad behavior releases a parent from their obligations as a parent? If your divorced dad is the Great Santini, can he cut off your child support if you hit him back?
posted by dchase on Apr 20, 2001 - 2 comments

More hours in daycare makes bad kids. "'If more time in all sorts of (child care) arrangements is predicting disconcerting outcomes, then if you want to reduce the probability of those outcomes, you reduce the time in care,' said Belsky. 'Extend parental leave and part-time work.' One of the lead scientists on the study with Belsky, [Sarah Friedman of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Developmen] said, 'The easy solution is to cut the number of hours but that may have implications for the family that may not be beneficial for the development of the children in terms of economics.'" Or, to say that in English, if you want your kids to be cared for at home you have to short them on food, clothing and shelter.
posted by jfuller on Apr 19, 2001 - 98 comments

6 year-old boy in foster care because his mother insists on breastfeeding him. "It's an offense to me that my child has been in foster care for over 120 days because [the state] decided it didn't believe in my parenting philosophy," said the unidentified mother.
posted by ethmar on Dec 12, 2000 - 26 comments

Mother of serial killer an AIDS worker, dies. "While throwing herself into her work with AIDS patients, Flint was never able to shake the memories of her son's crimes and his death."
posted by Neale on Dec 1, 2000 - 1 comment

"My dad will fix it," said John "Jebby" Bush, son of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, after being caught "naked from the waist down" with his blonde companion in his car outside the Tallahassee Mall. The Media took a pass at this story once they found out the "Bush" in question was not the older brother George P. Bush.
posted by tamim on Nov 15, 2000 - 3 comments

Yikes. What the hell is wrong with some people?
posted by evilmaryellen on Aug 2, 2000 - 4 comments

Massachusetts father surrenders in hockey rink killing A local story for me, but a scary one at that. The story is that Junta fought the hockey coach after the game because the game was too rough. This was after he had been kicked out by the rink manager. He then proceeded to beat the coach unconscious, in front of the kids, and the coach later died. His plea is self-defense. Yeah, he left the rink, came back, beat up a guy who was 100 pounds lighter, and pleads self-defense.
posted by jmackin on Jul 12, 2000 - 7 comments

Parenting: Is Aol Worse Than TV? After reading this article my first reaction was "what an over-reaction," my second was "Do these parents think AOL is the only way to (not) access the internet?" (stolen from Robot Wisdom)
posted by Mick on Jun 6, 2000 - 12 comments