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Strollerderby
Do Skinny Parents Make Skinny Kids?
You know that really skinny kid? The one in your child’s class at school? Their stick thin figure may have nothing to do with what they eat or how much of it. The answer to why they are so skinny may simply be all in the genes, a new report published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine states. But is this is really something new?
Sure, it may be often true that skinny people have skinny kids. And chubby parents often beget chubby kids. Many have thought it was due to the family’s eating habits but a new study says that it not only has much more to do with their genetic makeup that they inherit from their parents but there was a one more interesting aspect that they discovered. Continue reading »
Add this to the evidence proving that race isn’t real.
A British couple of Nigerian descent, already the proud parents of two beautiful black children, have given birth to a white baby. Doctors concluded that the child does not have albinism and geneticists cannot really otherwise explain the baby’s skin color. Little Nmachi has a thick head of blonde hair and blue eyes. (View photos and video at The Sun‘s website.)
“Father Ben Ihegboro, 44, a customer services adviser, admitted that when he saw the baby he exclaimed ‘What the flip?’ before joking: ‘Is she mine?’,” reports The Daily Mail. Nmachi’s 35-year-old mother, Angela, said, “She is beautiful, a miracle baby.” Neither parent knows of any white ancestry on either side of the family.
Want a beautiful baby but don’t have the genetic material to make one yourself? You’re in luck! Beautiful People, a dating site where the average and ugly are not welcome, has announced a fertility introduction service for “people who want to maximize their chances of having good looking children.” Continue reading »
Happy National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day! Okay, maybe it’s not a reason to celebrate, but it is a good opportunity to educate yourself about mental health issues in kids.
As someone who has suffered from depression, I know how important it is to have family support and professional treatment. Unfortunately, with so many misconceptions about mental illness in children, some kids are not getting the help they need.
The National Mental Health Information Center estimates that as many as one in five children and adolescents may have a mental health disorder that can be identified and require treatment. Another study found that 13 percent of children ages 8 to 15 had at least one mental disorder, a rate that is comparable to diabetes, asthma, and other childhood diseases.
Continue reading »
I was amused when my 7th grade biology teacher insisted that it was impossible for two blue or green eyed parents like mine to produce brown-eyed children like me and my brother.
“You should talk to your parents about this,” said the teacher, looking more than a bit concerned that he had just revealed a family secret.
The truth is that it was my idea of a practical joke. My parents had already told my brother and me that we had been adopted as babies.
When it came time to create a family tree, I researched the ancestors of the only family I knew and ignored my biological origins. I don’t remember being troubled by the assignment at all, but I can see how others in the same situation might feel uncomfortable.
In yesterday’s “Motherlode” column in The New York Times, Lisa Belkin addresses the issue of how teachers assign family trees and other biology-related projects to students who may not know their biological roots.
It’s not just adoptees who might have a problem with genetics assignments. What about all of the kids who are part of non-traditional families? Once you include gay parents, blended families, and families formed by sperm or egg donation or surrogate parents, that’s a significant group.
Belkin’s column features David Smith, an adoptive parent and science teacher, hated to see his 4th grade daughter, who was adopted, to feel left out because of a homework assignment. Smith suggests a solution to the problem:
Teachers should teach population biology (there’s a great collaborative activity at k12science.org, for example) instead of pedigree genetics. Kids still learn that offspring resemble their biological parent, but they also learn that not all dominant traits are common.
Adoptive Families magazine also provides a 1-page handout for teachers to educate them about adoption and ways they can incorporate the it into the classroom.
The family tree project is instructive, but there are other ways to convey the same information. There is no reason an assignment should exclude a segment of the student population.
Photo:
Men are primitive, or so goes the popular opinion. Thousands of books authored by men and women hinge on this notion. However; new research indicates males are the more “advanced” of the species.
There is far more to being a parent than genetics. Sure, there are animals where the male drops by, makes a deposit, and leaves the female to bear and raise the young on her own, but they’re, well, animals. Most of us, I think, see ourselves as being evolved past that. For humans, being a parent means caring for the child more than it means being genetically related. For that matter, other than in cases of medical issues, does genetics really matter?
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