babble » blogs » Strollerderby
Strollerderby
The announcement that Al and Tipper Gore are splitting up after 40 years rocked the news media. They’ve reminded all of us that no one knows what’s happening inside a marriage except the people living it.
What’s the secret to lasting happiness in marriage? Only you and the person you’re married to can answer that question. The experts on the topic are no better at spotting troubled marriages than the bartender you pour your troubles out to. Which is to say, not good at all.
In a scientific study mentioned in the New York Times this week, pastors, marriage counselors and relationship experts were shown videos of couples talking and fighting. They had to guess which couples later divorced. They got it wrong as often as they got it right.
So you can’t tell by watching people interact with their spouses. What about a peek under the hood? Can brain scans tell us what makes a lasting marriage tick?
After being barred from practicing medicine in Britain earlier this week, Andrew Wakefield vowed to continue his research here in the U.S.
The Chicago Tribune reports that he told a “small, cheering crowd” at a rally in Chicago that he will continue to research the link between autism and vaccines.
This worries me, because he was barred from practicing medicine over unethical research practices.
Marriage has a lot of health benefits, but for women it can be a mixed bag. Science Daily reports that marrying a much younger man can shorten your lifespan. The effect holds true for marrying substantially older men as well, but is less pronounced.
Men, on the other hand, get a huge benefit from marrying a woman substantially younger than they are. Guys with young wives live longer, healthier lives than their peers who married someone their own age.
Why the discrepancy?
For most of us the word “ultrasound” conjures images of a pregnant woman getting a peek at her unborn baby. We might have a whole new, and opposite, set of associations with ultrasound soon.
Researchers at the University of North Carolina are starting human trials on using birth control as a safe, effective, reversible form of birth control for men.
Think your kid has a food allergy? Think again, says a new report commissioned by the federal government. Food allergies are much less common than most of us believe.
While only about 8 percent of kids and 5 percent of adults genuinely suffer from food allergies, 30 percent of us think we do. Why are we so confused?
Comedians and real-life married couple Abbi Crutchfield and Luke Thayer. Photo by Gregory A. Gilbert.
Tara Parker-Pope, New York Times columnist and author of the new book, For Better: The Science of a Good Marriage, has written a piece detailing several scientific experiments trying to decipher people’s motives for cheating and the factors that lead to a contented relationship.
Parker-Pope says research suggests “that while some people may be naturally more resistant to temptation, men and women can also train themselves to protect their relationships and raise their feelings of commitment.” You hear that, ladies? As you potty train your babies, you can pooty train your husbands. (Okay, okay. If the 30,000 women signing up for Ashley Madison yesterday is any indication, I guess women cheat, too.)
Hasse Walum of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, “studied 552 sets of twins to learn more about a gene related to the body’s regulation of the brain chemical vasopressin, a bonding hormone.” For the record, it’s been a long time since someone was pressin’ my vas. I’m happy to bond with any interested parties. Haha?
As it turns out, “men who carried a variation in the gene were… more likely to have had serious marital problems and unhappy wives. Among men who carried two copies of the gene variant, about a third had experienced a serious relationship crisis in the past year.” My ex-husband is a twin, and given the severity of our marital problems, I’m gonna assume he carries three copies. Wah-wah! (What’s the emoticon for depressed sarcasm? I think it’s ;( – though my friend Baron Vaughn says that means, “makes me sad that I like you.” Both translations apply.)
Research out of McGill University indicates that men and women in relationships react differently to flirtation. “In a study of 300 heterosexual men and women, half the participants were primed for cheating by imagining a flirtatious conversation with someone they found attractive. The other half just imagined a routine encounter. Afterward, the study subjects were asked to complete fill-in-the-blank puzzles like LO_AL and THR__T.”
Now stop. If you’re married, take a minute to imagine yourself flirting with your boss, or your favorite bartender, or if you’re a new mom and you don’t get out much, the man in the yellow hat. (He is kinda hot. But I’m a sucker for nerds.) Then fill in the blanks on those words, and I’ll tell you what it means after the jump. Continue reading »
If you have children, you have probably observed that your baby is an immoral little savage who would cheerfully beat his sister to death over a bowl of cheerios.
A century of research on human development backs this obvious premise: that babies are born a moral tabula rasa, who must be socialized by their parents to know right from wrong.
A major article coming up in this Sunday’s New York Times reveals research that turns shows babies have moral judgement. Even babes as young as five months.
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