Blog

By 1,000 Days, October 2021 In this update to our 2019 report, The First 1,000 Days: The Case for Paid Leave in America , we present the latest research and data from the last two years on the opportunity to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in maternal and child health through the passage of a universal, comprehensive paid family and medical leave policy in the United States. [ Please click here to access the report .]

By Dasia Moore, The Boston Globe, October 13, 2021 When Felicia Love found out she was expecting her second child, she knew she needed a care provider who would make her feel safe. Love was in her early 30s, but the news transported her back to her teenage years, when she first became a mother. “It was a really scary experience for me. I felt really unsupported. I had so many questions that went unanswered,” she recalls. Love’s children are now 24 and 8, raised in her home state of Rhode...

By Judith Shulevitz , The New York Times, October 22, 2021 Eastern Village, a 55-unit apartment complex off a commercial strip in Silver Spring, Md., is a surprisingly lovely place, considering that it once housed the drab offices of a social workers’ association and then stood abandoned for nearly a decade, water dripping through the ceilings. When I visited this summer, ivy cascaded so exuberantly over the facade that I walked past the entrance. The landscaped courtyard, wrested out of a...

Healing the Heart Through the Creative Arts, Education & Advocacy Hope, Healing & Help for Trauma, Abuse & Mental Health “ Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars”. Kahlil Gibran The Surviving Spirit Newsletter October 2021 “Don't Quit” by John Whittier When things go wrong as they sometimes will, When the road you're trudging seems all uphill, When the funds are low and the debts are high And you want to smile, but you...

By Jenny Gold, California Healthline, October 21, 2021 For parents living in poverty, “diaper math” is a familiar and distressingly pressing daily calculation. Babies in the U.S. go through six to 10 disposable diapers a day, at an average cost of $70 to $80 a month. Name-brand diapers with high-end absorption sell for as much as a half a dollar each, and can result in upwards of $120 a month in expenses. One in every three American families cannot afford enough diapers to keep their infants...

The COVID-19 pandemic has been brutal on us all. Rising depression and anxiety plague our world more than any time in recent history, and it is not only adults who are affected. Children have been home from school living with adults who are out of work, out of money, and out of patience. This article will discuss the increase in childhood sexual abuse during the pandemic explaining the underlying causes and some possible solutions. Understanding the Problem The Centers for Disease Control...

By Joe Pinsker, The Atlantic, October 16, 2021 Throughout the pandemic, media outlets and online dashboards have provided constant updates on the number of people who have died from COVID-19. Far less prominent—but just as striking—are the tallies of those left behind. According to an estimate published recently in the journal Pediatrics , at least 140,000 American children had lost a parent or caregiver because of the coronavirus by the end of June—meaning that one of roughly every 500...

By Sarah MacLaughlin, LSW, and Rahil Briggs, Psy.D, Psychology Today, October 19, 2021 World Mental Health Day was October 10 and the American Academy of Pediatrics, alongside the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Children’s Hospital Association, just declared a national state of emergency in child and adolescent mental health. These kinds of public acknowledgments about the importance of mental health suggest we have come a long way toward recognizing its impact.

By Tara Siegel Bernard, The New York Times, October 11, 2021 Kindergarten often brings a flood of notices about events, school supplies and class photos. But when Vaniqua Hudson-Figueroa’s daughter started at a public school in Queens, there was one that Ms. Hudson-Figueroa wasn’t expecting: The city had opened a college savings account in her child’s name — and it already had $100 in it. For Ms. Hudson-Figueroa, the account opens up possibilities she didn’t know she had when she was her...

By Guest Author, 10/19/21, positiveexperience.org/blog On October 15 th , the American Academy of Pediatrics released the sixth snapshot in the Family Snapshots: Life during the Pandemic series. This snapshot highlights parent and caregiver concerns about their children falling behind in school. This is the latest in a series of articles about the results of a survey of 9000 US parents and caregivers that the HOPE team, in collaboration with the American Academy of Pediatrics , Prevent Child...

Aristotle believed, "Courage was the first of human virtues because it makes all others possible." The need for courage is paramount in today's new world. While some wish to return to 'normal' I believe it’s a time to take advantage of being out of our collective comfort zone and embrace our growth as individuals and as a society. Change takes courage and it is no coincidence that this is our first character value in the formula for Choosing Love! As American poet laureate and legend Maya...

By Caitlin Gibson, The Washington Post, October 13, 2021 P atty Sang sat alone in the living room of her Seattle apartment, riveted by the breaking evening news on her television. A White gunman had just murdered eight people — six of them women of Asian descent — in a rampage that spanned three spas near Atlanta. It was March 16, one year into a global pandemic that incited a torrent of anti-Asian racism and violence, and Patty, a 48-year-old Korean American actor, instructor and solo...