No, I didn't backdate this list of alarming parenting conclusions drawn from preliminary or narrow scientific research; it was just freaking you out so bad last night, you blocked it from your mind:
Unmarried fathers who were involved in prenatal care and preparations were much more likely to be involved in raising the kid at age three. And by involved, the U of MD researchers mean, employed and living with them. Or as the Sex and The City-style press release put it, pregnancy offers "The best chance of 'reeling-in' an unmarried father and building the foundations for a stable family life." [press release; abstract]
Wow, is the Journal of Marriage and Family such a gold mine every month? Despite the prevalence of new norms of involved fatherhood in Russia, in-depth [but low sample size] survey of Russian nonresident fathers finds that they "reproduce minimalist standards of fatherhood because, in part, keeping the bar low enables them to still consider themselves decent fathers." [abstract]
Also, teen pregnancy with benefits: To the layman, it would seem like it was the "benefits" that got those darn kids in trouble in the first place. Yet researchers from ASU and U of W found other benefits for 235 teens who got married after giving birth. "Controlling for socioeconomic status and preexisting 'benefits,' we found that marriage conferred small, though statistically significant, benefits with regard to less economic adversity and less marijuana and polydrug use but no observable benefits with regard to alcohol or other drug use, poverty, psychological well-being, or high school completion, in contrast to prior findings." [abstract]
In completely unrelated news, Bristol Palin's grandpa says her and Levi Johnston's baby is due today--er, I mean tomorrow, Saturday. Oh, and Johnston's mother was arrested this week on six felony counts of misconduct related to a controlled substance. [grandparents.com; adn.com]
On to more traditional freakout material: a study of four mice found that single dose of caffeine during pregnancy causes lifelong heart damage and obesity in the offspring. [press release]
And the family of a 3-day-old baby who had what doctors thought was a brain tumor, but turned out to be a foot, possibly a "fetus in fetu," are a bit overwhelmed at the attention from the international media and medical communities. [local news report]
What's a "polydrug"? It sounds like something you'd spread on a cracker. Bawwk!