babble » blogs » Strollerderby
Strollerderby
I find myself reporting for the third time this week about lead in children’s products. Despite having to pay hefty fines, retailers like Target continue to import lead-laden items. WalletPop reported earlier this month that Target, Walmart, Sears and Macy’s had all been busted for selling purses, belts and shoes meant for adults with high levels of lead in them. Items sold to adults are not currently regulated for lead the way children’s products are, however, maximum lead levels will be implemented for purses and other accessories by the end of this year. (Do we have to go through consumer items one by one to say they can’t contain lead? Shouldn’t all products be made to contain less than 300 ppm of lead?)
The Associated Press announced today that the children’s belts recalled for lead levels (pictured) were manufactured in China and sold at Target stores nationwide, “as well as on Target’s website, between December 2008 and December 2009. For more information, call 800-440-0680 or visit http://www.cpsc.gov.
Infant Carriers and onesies were also recalled this week. Continue reading »
While Memorial Day honors those we’ve lost in battle, today is a day to celebrate the future. June 1st was proclaimed International Children’s Day by The World Conference for the Well-being of Children in Geneva, Switzerland in 1925. It is widely celebrated in former Soviet nations such as Russia as well as China. Science and technology museums in Beijing spent the weekend getting ready for an influx of children, and in Russia, Andrei Fursenko, the Minister of Education and Science, gave a speech during which he said, “In Russia the attention on this day is focused on each of 30 million young citizens. For us adults this is first of all a reminder of our responsibility.”
Child abuse and adoption are two of the most pressing issues surrounding Russian children. According to The Voice of Russia, “Last year, over 108,000 children were exposed to violence, of them 1.6 thousand died at the hand of adults and 2.4 thousand sustained serious harm.” On a more positive note, in the past three years “334,888 orphan children and children left without parental care have found their family,” Fursenko said, adding that “over 100,000 children are still waiting for their parents.” Strollerderby reported recently on the Tennessee family that returned their adopted son to Russia, resulting in Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov banning all future adoptions by Americans, “pending a new agreement with the United States to regulate them.”
But what about Children’s Day celebrations in the US? For most American school kids, today is just another day. One Illinois father hopes to change that. Continue reading »
Last year, the US government offered its citizens between $3,500-$4,500 to trade-in their old car in favor of purchasing a new, fuel-efficient vehicle. According to the official government “cash for clunkers” site, nearly 680,000 people participated in the program. Japan, the latest nation to offer parents a stipend for having children, is hoping for a similar surge – not in auto sales, but in population growth. Families are to be paid $1,800 annually per child, but with childcare so difficult to access in cities like Tokyo, will that money be enough to encourage procreation? Japanese officials say 46,000 children “are on waiting lists to get into day care.”
According to CNN/WCVB Boston, “Japan has the world’s fastest aging population, and one of the lowest birth rates. By 2050, experts estimate 40 percent of the country’s population will be over age 65.” A new crop of workers paying into the pension system is needed to cover the cost of taking care of the elderly members of society. And affordable, government-run facilities for the aging are as difficult to get into as daycare centers, according to Catherine Makino of IPS News. Continue reading »
American kids are often over scheduled, pushed on by parents driven by a fear that they won’t be able to succeed in today’s competitive world.
But all those after school dance classes and music lessons have nothing on what this three-year-old Chinese girl has to put up with. Watch as the brave little tot walks a tightrope over a den of hungry tigers … and then falls:
Most adoptions from China now are of special-needs children, versus the girl infant that most of us probably think of.
There’s lots of reasons for this. The government has loosened the one-child policy that led to girls being abandoned and eventually adopted out to foreigners. Also, there’s been a growing demand for domestic adoption within China, making fewer healthy infants available for international adoption. And the wait for adopting internationally from China used to be about year — now, it’s stretched to four.
Meanwhile, Continue reading »
The old saying, “we’ll just be happy if the baby has ten fingers and ten toes” isn’t really about fingers and toes. It’s just a bland statement about wanting a healthy baby and caring about nothing else. But what does finger and toe count have to do with general health anyhow?
For example, take this six-year-old boy with 15 fingers and 16 toes. Continue reading »
Pang Ya is only two and yet, at 90 pounds, she weighs as much as the average adult Chinese woman.
Lori Garcia 
Joslyn Gray 
Amber Doty 
Julianna Miner 
Monica Bielanko 
Sierra Black 
Meredith Carroll 
Carolyn Castiglia 
Sunny Chanel 
Madeline Holler 
Rebecca Odes 
Danielle Smith 
Danielle Sullivan 
Katherine Stone 
The Walt Disney Company supports Babble as a platform dedicated to honest, engaged, informed, intelligent and open conversation about parenting. However, the opinions expressed on this site are those of individual parents/writers and do not reflect the views of Disney. In addition, content provided on this site is for entertainment or informational purposes only and should not be construed as medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, or safety advice.
0