parenting

This coming New Year's was supposed to start with a bang for me -- literally. It was going to be the year my husband and I were finally going to make that baby. When we first discussed the time line a couple of years ago, my clock wasn't ticking that fast and 2009 seemed like an ideal year to...

I've been reading a lot about ethics lately and have been interested to see how game theory (think A Beautiful Mind and little tic-tac-toe grids with choices for each of the 'players' as column and row headings) affects our choices as parents. It turns out that ethics are taught at home, not at...

If you build it, they will come. But not necessarily. A recent three-part report in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reveals that the building spree by Milwaukee Public Schools is a dismal failure. The $102 million initiative to revamp buildings was supposed to get students into local neighborhood...

Yesterday on talk radio, a host was discussing the concept of "helicopter parents"... Those parents who are so involved in their young adult children's lives that they literally hover over them. Apparently this is nothing new, although I hadn't heard of it before and was intrigued.I'd heard stories...

After reading my "Kitty Couture" column this week, BloggingStocks producer Amey Stone asked that I write more about what parents can do to encourage healthy character formation in their children. It's a wonderful question that we don't often articulate. It's right at the center of what good parents...

BusinessWeek's Karyn McCormack laments the cost of raising children -- pegged at around $289,000 for the first 18 years of a child's life if you're in the top third of income earners. Are they worth it? Blasphemy! But in a way. they're not. Kids no longer work on the farm, and so the value they...