The fertility rate in the United States is steady at 2.1 kids per woman (it’s slightly higher among immigrants though). That’s at replacement level. However, women in the poor countries of Guinea-Bissau and Liberia can expect to have between 7 and 8 children in a lifetime. There are a lot of factors that go [...]
You’ve heard of the personal enrichment classes offered at your community college, usually in the evenings. The classes are filled with stay at home moms and retirees who dream of spicing up or changing the direction of their perceived unfulfilled lives. They think ”Maybe I’m a dormant genius!” The example that always comes to my mind when I think of [...]
Recently I’ve gotten a few obnoxious e-mails from Redbook magazine. They’re collecting stories about stay at home dads who became stay at home dads after first being working dads, then switching places with their wives, and finally, who are now considering going back to work (or something like that). In any case, the criteria for a [...]
Yesterday I took the boys to our favorite restaurant to eat our favorite meal, crêpes. I ordered a German Apple Strudel crêpe while the boys each had a ham and cheese one. As we ate, and were sitting at our favorite table, I reflected on what a simple and enjoyable tradition eating crêpes at that [...]
Neil (my 7 year old) has extra wide feet, and that makes buying shoes for him difficult. His feet simply do not fit into regular width shoes. Even wide shoes are a squeeze. Having no desire to see him develop misshapen feet due to ill fitting shoes, I sometimes end up spending an entire [...]
You think it’d be easy to tell your kid, “Don’t lie, don’t cheat, be honest, and good things will happen.” But it’s unfortunate that life doesn’t always reward our honesty. Sure, we tell ourselves that it does, but does it? Are all happy people good people? Are people who lie and cheat any less [...]
By now everybody has heard of Abby Sunderland, the 16 year old girl who tried to be the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe solo in a sailboat. She failed, and was feared lost at sea until her rescue signal was picked up and she was confirmed alive by aerial reconnaissance. Today she was [...]
Obese parents are not by rule bad parents. Yes, it’s unhealthy to be really fat, but it’s also unhealthy to be an alcoholic, chain smoker, lazy and a bunch of other stuff. We are all human and we all do stuff that could be construed as making us unfit parents even if we really aren’t. [...]
I have never activated any parental controls on any of my game consoles for the simple reason that I trust my kids to know what content they shouldn’t watch. They know, for instance, that they need to ask me before watching anything on Netflix. And they do. They also know that certain video games [...]
Most friendships are temporary, and most friendships for little kids are especially temporary. According to my handy dandy childhood psychology book here (which was given to me, coincidentally, by my best friend 18 years ago), kids won’t start understanding the true nature of friendship until their teenage years. Up to that point friends are defined [...]
If it were up to me I’d never want to kick my kids out. I tell them all the time how I’d like to stay with them for as long as I’m alive. Unfortunately, as much as I don’t like to admit it, that’s not good for them. At some point they’ll strike out [...]
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