I love it when a Freakout comes together.
- Parent/gadfly/media savant Tom Scocca flags Newsweek's "sneaky selection" of an excerpt from Priscilla Gilman's new memoir which turns the story of one mother's grappling with her son's complex and rare developmental disorder into pure, overachieving parental anxiety gold. The headline: "Annals of Parent-Terrorizing: Your Child Seems Brilliant. Could That Be a Sign of Severe Disability?" [slate, which gets bonus points for all the commenters who entirely miss Scocca's point]
- For some reason, the media sources I rely on failed to note that Arizona's recently vetoed law requiring presidential candidates to prove their US citizenship by providing a "long-form birth certificate" would also have accepted proof of circumcision. [motherjones, whose url, reads like a Google search from our Idiocracy Future. I mean, it worked, but seriously.]
- "Mothers who feed their babies breast milk exclusively, as opposed to formula, are more likely to bond emotionally with their child during the first few months after delivery." I mean, assuming you want to bond emotionally with your baby. [press release; abstract]
- "Personal genetic tests are available directly to consumers at drug stores and over the Internet. They are controversial, and generally marketed to adults for their own use. However, it might be only a matter of time before parents become the focus of advertising campaigns targeting their children for testing." [press release; press release where the abstract should be]
- And the winner of the glib press release headline and pullquote of the week: "'Junk food' moms have 'junk food' babies" and FASEB Journal editor-in-chief "Perhaps in the future, studies like these will convince pregnant moms to go heavier on the green vegetables and a little lighter on the ice cream and Twinkies." [press release; abstract of rat-based study]
