A selection of anxiety-inducing news stories, collected, and delivered all at once to ruin your weekend (instead of your entire week)? It's the Daddy Types Friday Freakout:
- Is your kid not advanced enough for his age? Are you already fearing he'll end up at a state school? You may be suffering from Pressured Parent Syndrome. Actually, you definitely are. [the atlantic]
- "Chinese elites" are having their surrogate children in the US to get around restrictive family planning policies, and to lock in green cards for the newborn US citizen's family, Reuters reports. One surrogacy agency has had half a dozen Chinese clients in just the last five years. Oh wait, and the article goes on to say that most Chinese parents seek US surrogacy for infertility, and because the US has better treatment options than in China, where surrogacy is illegal. China: they're just like US! [babycenter/reuters via marginalrevolution]
- But honestly, for parent pressure, it's hard to top driving up the West Side Highway in your Range Rover with your wife and small child in the back, and getting caught up in a joyriding motorcycle gang that decides to mete out mob justice on you for problems entirely of their own collective making? Holy crap, people. Oh, and there were off-duty cops in the gang. Who ya gonna call? [animalnewyork; nypost, even]