Bob CollinsThe St. Louis Federal Reserve isn’t exactly Dr. Spock but you’ll not likely find more proof of the value of parents spending time with kids than its study in this quarter’s Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Tag: Parenthood
In their race to pass legislation, lawmakers often don’t have or don’t take enough time to fully think about what they’re passing. Then, it’s up to courts to clean up the mess. Read more →
During the downpour on Saturday, probably three hours into what turned out to be a four-hour rain delay, nobody was in the entire upper deck of the outfield seating at Target Field in Minneapolis except a father and his little boy (7 or 8 years old, I’d guess), who were under the scoreboard overhang. The boy was patiently waiting, his baseball glove still on his hand. Read more →
Jails and prisons fill with the addicted, and the country’s homes fill with parents who can only hold their breath and try not to give up on their children. Read more →
If they told people how heartbreaking parenthood is from time to time, nobody would ever have kids. You go into it with no experience, you suffer with an 18-year case of imposter syndrome, and on the first day after your kid asks you to drop him off a block away from school because of his embarrassment, some punk couple, expecting their first child in a couple of months, offers you an opinion on how you could’ve been a better parent. Read more →
It’s unlikely there’ll be many people on the sidelines in the case of a lawsuit that alleges children have been taken from parents in Minnesota because they were spanked. You’re either for spanking or you’re against it. Read more →
Because the internet is full of parenting experts, some of the reaction was entirely predictable. How can a kid learn to fail if Mom pitches in? Read more →
I don’t know if I’ve ever read a story that has so haunted me like today’s Star Tribune story of Jon Markle and his wife Mandy Markle, whose daughter drowned in Lake Minnetonka when Jon, who’d had a few drinks, decided it would be fun to drive on the ice. The girl was just 9 months old. Read more →
Solway, Minn., just west of Bemidji, has a population of 95 people and two apparent angels, judging by the story today in the Bemidji Pioneer about Kent and Shantel Dudley, who have adopted children no one else would. Read more →
At some point today, Shannon Haines, 29, a fourth-year medical student in Omaha, will find out where she will do her residency.
That fulfills a dream she had in high school of being a doctor, a dream that collapsed — or so she thought — when she got pregnant in high school. Read more →
The New York Times says new data shows that having a daughter makes it less likely a couple will try to have more children. Why? Once you have a daughter, why mess up a good thing with a son? Read more →
It was good to catch up with some old classmates at my high school class’ 45th reunion a few months ago.
The usual reunion discussions included one unique to my generation: What happened to the baby that girls gave up under tremendous pressure in high school? Read more →
Bob Bloomberg’s story is the story of thousands of parents of dead children across the country who didn’t think heroin was targeting their children. He wants to alert anyone else who still doesn’t think it does. Read more →
In North Dakota, the law gives women the right to breastfeed if they act ‘in a discreet and modest manner,’ but it does not define what is discreet and modest.
Read more →
There is no more helpless feeling in the world than being the parent of an adult child.
We raise them, we let them go. Sometimes they fly and sometimes they crash and die. Our human instinct, however, does not allow us to take such an intellectual approach to the realities of life. They’re our children, after all. Read more →