Here are some headlines of late, all primed to ruin your weekend with freakoutery:
- The quantity of new parents' sleep is more important to their relationship satisfaction than how well they thought they slept. Of course, the study was conducted seven weeks after giving birth, so maybe "relationship satisfaction" is just fancy science talk for "finally had sex again." [eurekalert.org]
- If 94% of breastfeeding mothers don't have the "proper" diet, do you think that maybe there's absolutely no info on what the proper breastfeeding diet should be? (More lipids, less protein, sounds like.) [eurekalert]
- "Violent video games are like peanut butter," says a doctor. And by that he means, "good for most kids, bad for a few," not "banned from everyone's lunchboxes until fifth grade." [NYT; apa press release]
- Attention affluent parents! Your iPhoning and Blackberrying is causing serious, untold damage to your kids' development, education, and psychological and emotional well-being, and basically destroying your relationship and their future. Says a NY Times reporter's extrapolation from a study of some completely unrelated thing which was conducted before anyone even had email. [nyt]
- All these non-problems can be solved, of course, by giving the kid his own iPad. Or at least an iPhone. [thanks, AdAge!]
- Unless you're poor, of couse, like the 21% of kids in the US who live in poverty. It's basically 1975 again for kids, in terms of everything but health care, iPhones, and Elmo. HELL. ON. EARTH. [cnn, washingtonindependent.com via the awl]
- PS 421 in Park Slope had 475 applicants for 12 pre-K slots. And yet somehow two of those twelve kids manage to have the same Knufflebunny? The mind reels. [nyt]
- Maybe if Sweden's awesome parental/paternity leave system were made of sawdust, glue and birch veneered ABS, and it came in a giant blue box with a side of lingonberry jam, the rest of the world might catch on a little better. [nyt]
- Like ten people sent me this stupid Babble article on SAHDILFs, and yet not one mention of the real problem: the playdates section on Nerve.com. Why is that, I wonder? [babble via seriously everybody. It's like Father's Day token linkbait]
- A teacher in Seattle sent the one small brown child away because her hair product smelled, shall we say, uppity. On the bright side, when the one brown kid in my North Carolina elementary school class was out, our teacher seized the opportunity to tell us, "Whatever you do, just don't call them 'colored.'" So, perhaps some progress? No? [the stranger via the awl]
- Look, English people. Why do you think there's no children's book called, "It's just a heroin substitute"? Because sharing your methadone with your kids kills them, that's why. [bbc via dt sr freakout correspondent sara]
- Seriously, one kid gets his head stuck in the storage bin, and 2,000 Costco Pirates of the Caribbean beds have to be recalled? What's the repair kit, a nail? [cpsc]
