babble » blogs » Strollerderby
Strollerderby
New research confirms what conventional wisdom has long suspected: that a relaxed, happy woman is a more fertile one.
Women have been telling each other for generations to keep their stress levels low when they’re trying to conceive. “Don’t upset her!” my grandmother would say when I was pregnant. Intuitively, there’s something fragile about that in-between state around conception, something that seems to call for hushed voices, dim lights and calm.
There’s a scientific basis for that intuition. Scientists have now shown that women with high levels of the stress hormone adrenaline had a harder time getting pregnant than the more chill ladies in the study.
From the time I was in kindergarten until my older brother got his driver’s license, I walked to and from school. My school was a good ten blocks from my house, but it was residential all the way with wide sidewalks and friendly neighbors looking out for me. But this was the 1970′s and I had lots of company on my journey as every other kid in the neighborhood was also walking to and from school.
These days, it’s rare to see a kid walking to school. My own child rides the bus because her school is about three miles away and the majority of the route involves busy roads with no sidewalks. But if she could safely walk to school, experts say she might actually reduce her risk of heart disease later in life.
In a world where there’s a drug available to treat everything from thinning eyelashes to erectile dysfunction, it’s no surprise to learn that some kids are growing up believing that the answer to all their problems can be found in a bottle. And according to a report released by the Partnership for a Drug Free America, girls are particularly vulnerable to the “drugs make everything better” mentality. Continue reading »
If researchers were to set up video cameras up in your home and record your family life for a week, what do you think they would see? If the California families who participated in just such an experiment are any indication, they’d see fussing, fighting and a whole lot of stress and mess.
The video experiment, conducted by University of California graduate students from 2002 to 2005, recorded the everyday lives of 32 middle class families living in the Los Angeles area. Though ethnically diverse, the families shared a few important characteristics: All had two working parents and multiple children. Continue reading »
Most of us would agree that males and females respond differently to stressful situations. While boys might cope by ignoring a problem and waiting for it to resolve itself, girls tend to respond by taking action and attempting do something about it. And while these responses are generalized and may even sound like stereotypes, research has found that there is some biological truth here. In fact, the differences in male and female responses to stress was recently documented in the womb! Continue reading »
Babies cry. They keep you up all night, sometimes for years. The less money you have, the worse those sleepless days feel. You can’t afford a trip to the spa, or to pay a babysitter while you enjoy a relaxing night out. Being poor can make you feel trapped, and the stress of the recession has caused more people to snap and shake their children, according to research presented this weekend at the Pediatric Academic Societies meeting in Vancouver, Canada.
The study is co-authored by Rachel Berger, a child abuse specialist at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, and Philip Scribano of Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, OH. They traced 511 cases of shaken baby syndrome from 2004-2009 at hospitals in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Seattle and Columbus and found that two-thirds involved children less than 12 months old. Additionally, two-thirds of the infants were admitted to intensive care and 16% died. “Nearly 90% of the children were covered by Medicaid,” according to USA Today. So, is child abuse related to unemployment rates? Continue reading »
In an effort to calm the nerves of their fourth grade students prior to taking an important test, two teachers at Westchase Elementary in Tampa, Florida reached for the bottle. The pill bottle, that is. Continue reading »
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