Most kids grow like dandelions. They bloom everywhere, growing up sturdy and strong in the most desolate neighborhoods or the ritziest.

Others seem to come into the world fragile. They’re sensitive kids who are prone trouble, but also brilliance. The kind who grow up to poets or addicts or both.

In the new issue of Atlantic Monthly, David Dobbs outlines the “orchid hypothesis,” an emerging genetic theory that offers some insight into how, and why, our genetic differences shape how we grow and who we become. Continue reading »

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It was a “Not Without My Daughter” kind of weekend. Not in a life-imitating-art kind of way. I just happened to read read two articles in different publications and was reminded me of that early ’90s Sally Field movie that got people looking suspiciously at any family with parents of different nationalities.

In both pieces, a child has been taken from home in the U.S. to live with a biological father abroad. How the mothers worked to return the child to the U.S. couldn’t have been more different. Both situations are pretty unimaginable, but child abduction typically is, right? Continue reading »

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I don’t understand pink sports equipment. Actually, I do understand it — and I don’t like it. I hate how pink baseball gloves and pink shin guards and pink basketballs limit who can (and by can, I mean “likely will”) play with them. Pink  is meant to segregate kids, to ensure boys don’t go roughing up the deliciously delicate little pink-mitted girls. There’s something so mocking about, say,  a pink hockey stick. It’s like, “ha, ha, check it out … a girl playing hockey. A girl!”

So I love — just love! — St. Louis Athletica goalkeeper Hope Solo’s reaction to a pink soccer jersey that had been specially designed by Puma for the Women’s Professional Soccer league’s first season.

She wouldn’t wear it. Continue reading »

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We middle- and upper-class parents can moan (rightfully) about the pathetic state of this country’s maternity leave policies, but I suspect nothing will change until the low-wage worker is brought into the mix. After all, those with greater means  can pretty  much make things work out. We have more choices, though it doesn’t always feel that way.

Workers who don’t earn much, however, suffer the brunt of our pathetic Family and Medical Leave Act (guarantees time off; does not guarantee pay). When you  earn at or near minimum wage, is there really much of a choice than to pass the placenta and get back on the job?

This goes for breastfeeding, too. Women who don’t live near poverty can take time off, find a private room to pump, demand a private room to pump.  Or get someone to bring the baby to the office to nurse.

Bringing baby to the workplace was the strategy of Maria Chavez, a cashier a Los Angeles taqueria, who wound up getting fired for nursing. On her break. In her car.

Oh, but there’s justice at the end of this story. Continue reading »

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