On Parenting

Learning that a child has autism can be devastating, especially since moms and dads often hear that parents of children with autism have an 80 percent divorce rate. But that high divorce rate, it turns out, is just an urban legend. Parents of a child with autism are no more likely to divorce than are parents in unaffected families.

"We looked and couldn't find where this statistic came from, so we did our own well-conducted survey," says Brian Freedman, the study's lead author and clinical director of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore. Parents often would tell him how upset they were to be getting a "diagnosis of divorce" at the same time their child was diagnosed.

Continue reading »

MRSA may be the most frightening epidemic since AIDS, and it's already in homes and schools in our communities. That's the news in Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA (Free Press, $26). I've been wondering what to do when my daughter's playmates show up with nasty-looking wounds that haven't healed. One peeled off a bandage and dropped it on our dining room table just the other day. So, how can we keep our families safe from methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus without becoming crazy germaphobes? I called up Maryn McKenna, a Minneapolis-based journalist and author of Superbug, to ask. Here's an edited version of our conversation:

[Read A Nasty Bug Breaks Out: Drug-Resistant Staph Bacteria Now Stalk Even Students.]

You write about Carlos Don, a 12-year-old San Diego boy who went on a school camping trip and came home with a fever of 104 degrees. Less than three weeks later, Carlos was dead, killed by a MRSA infection that destroyed his lungs. His death came despite getting top-notch medical care. What can parents do to make sure that doesn't happen to our children?
It's a difficult conversation for parents to have. On the one hand, for so many years we've had people being [fanatical] about their kids' germ exposure: buying antibacterial toys, and cutting boards, and soaps, and really overdoing it. Only recently have people started to get the message that being overly germaphobic isn't really good for kids' health. It's OK for kids to have some pathogen exposure because it builds up their immune system and damps down the immune response that leads to allergies. On the other hand, there are some pathogens you really should be concerned about. It's worth being aware of MRSA and taking simple, practical steps to reduce kids' exposure.

Continue reading »

Moms often feel they can't do anything right: Either they're neglecting the kids to work, or neglecting work to take care of the family. I feel that way about 49 times a day, so I was delighted to talk with Sharon Lerner, a 43-year-old mother of two in Brooklyn, N.Y., whose new book has an ultimately comforting message: It's not our fault that we can't "do it all." We're living in a country that makes life harder for parents than in just about any place on the planet. But by helping each other, we can make motherhood, and family life, happier and more sane.

[Read Mothers Are Key to Preventive Health.]

U.S. News: Your new book is called The War on Moms: On Life in a Family-Unfriendly Nation, which isn't exactly a cheery title. You studied how motherhood works in different countries, and said women elsewhere have a much easier time of it, thanks to family-friendly government policies. Is there any good news for us moms in America?
My agent said, "What, are you crazy? Nobody's going to buy this book." But I'm hoping that we can actually see it's uplifting. Other countries have evolved policies over the past century that acknowledge the fact that women are increasingly workers as well as parents. We have had a real lag here in responding to that reality. We're one of a tiny handful of countries that doesn't have paid maternity leave. That leaves women in a terrible position. Many have to go back to work days and weeks after giving birth. It flies in the face of how we like to think of ourselves as a family-friendly nation. If other countries can do it, we can, too.

Continue reading »

Children in Washington, D.C. will soon be getting 60 extra minutes of exercise at school every day, thanks to a new law aimed at combating the discouraging rate of childhood obesity in the capital, which has the fattest teenagers in the nation. The measure, up for a final vote today, would require schools to promote 60 minutes of physical activity daily by:

• Extending the school day;
• Encouraging students to walk or bike to school;
• Promoting active recess;
• Including physical activity in after-school activities;
• Supporting athletic programs;
• Integrating movement into classroom instruction.

Continue reading »