Blog

The single greatest antidote to poverty and social stagnation is the emancipation of women. Wherever this has been tried, wherever women have been empowered to do as they wish, the economy and the culture have been radically improved. A new book by Augusto Lopez-Claros, a senior fellow at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and Bahiyyih Nakhjavani, an Iranian writer and novelist, is among the first to comprehensively test this proposition by surveying data from 189...

When I was a child, my mom would on occasion make us kids a special breakfast of green eggs and ham. It magically merged worlds for me. The imaginary food from my book became a reality, right there on the table. But a few decades later, as a preschool teacher, I read the beloved children’s story, Green Eggs and Ham, to a class of 15 wide-eyed and openhearted children, and began to feel a just a little uncomfortable. In the era of #MeToo, this story sounded less like a paean to trying new...

We all know the experience of vulnerability, even if we don’t call it by that name. It’s that feeling you get when you’re about to tell someone “I love you,” try out a new skill, or ask for forgiveness. When the risk of getting rejected, laughed at, or criticized is real. In her research , University of Houston professor and author Brené Brown has explored some of the reasons why we shy away from vulnerability. While we often celebrate it as a strength in other people, she discovered, we...

ACEs, Adversity's Impact Adverse childhood experiences increase prediabetes markers in adulthood How parenting affects antisocial behaviors in children Documentary broken places uses archival footage to tell stories of ACEs and resilience over time NYC's first lady urges reporters to tackle mental health issues A guide to toxic stress The quest to find biomarkers for toxic stress, resilience in children - A Q&A with Jack Shonkoff Parent-child bond predicts depression, anxiety in teens...

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) advises parents against the use of spanking as a disciplinary tool, citing multiple potential hards. APSAC agrees and offers alternatives for parents

Today, 200 Americans likely will die from a drug overdose. Most of them will die alone. The government's modern-day response to our nation's overdose epidemic has been woefully inadequate. Rather than relying on medical science, our leaders have been influenced by the same misguided approaches that undergirded the “war on drugs” in the 1980s — fear, stigma and racism. We need a smarter strategy that reduces harm and saves lives. This starts with prosecutors ending the criminal crackdown on...

In Florida last month, a 16 year-old boy was attacked from behind and beaten in a juvenile detention facility by two fellow residents after he came out as gay. Reportedly, one his assailants told the victim he “didn’t want a faggot” in the unit. In an essay for The Advocate last year, a queer youth wrote of feeling singled out, scrutinized, and harassed by homophobic staff in a juvenile detention facility. “We are already there for negative behavior,” she wrote. “We need guidance — not...

Only one in 30 children does the recommended amount of daily physical activity, new research suggests. Guidelines from the Chief Medical Officer say people aged five to 18 should do at least 60 minutes of "moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity," every day. Previous research has often used less than seven days of data on children's activity and created an average based on that. [For more on this study by University of Exeter, go to...

Texas’ southern border is ground zero in the nation’s immigration debate. We’ve covered concerns that the Trump administration’s family separation policy could have lasting traumatic effects on the migrant children separated from their parents at the border. A recent study looked at the health impact on kids who are part of families of mixed legal status, such as the roughly 1,800 kids in the Rio Grande Valley who had a parent deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last year. Tania...

In America, we seem to have a limitless fascination with watching miserable people forgive their oppressors: We fetishize endurance, the survival of injustice. When I see this fascination trained on marginalized people who have survived violence enacted on them by someone in power, I often wonder what the point is. When the grieving survivors forgave a remorseless Dylann Roof , days after he walked into their church and murdered nine people, much was made of their forgiveness; it was written...

Climate change is an “ unseen driver ” behind the thousands of Guatemalan, Honduran and Salvadoran migrants heading toward the U.S. border, one recent article suggested. Food insecurity and poverty in Central America come not just from violence and corruption but also from worsening droughts and changing weather patterns. And Hurricane Michael in early October, perhaps the most powerful storm to hit the United States since 1969, is another stark piece of evidence that our world is fast...

Massachusetts already has the nation’s strongest gun laws and lowest firearm death rate. But its lawmakers recently boosted the state’s commitment to an emerging form of gun violence prevention, providing $10 million for programs specifically designed to stem the bloodshed in communities where shootings are most common. Moved in part by gun-related tragedies over the past year, the state legislature approved a funding bill in October that included initiatives that seek to prevent...