The latest analysis from the RAPID-EC longitudinal study found that while families with young children reported decreasing levels of emotional distress in the spring, distress levels over the summer rose again. The latest fact sheet explores the reasons.
By Paurvi Bhatt, STAT, October 19, 2021 A s a working daughter, I recently embarked on a new and uncertain phase of my career: taking paid leave for my seriously ill mother. Without children of my own, I never needed to consider paid leave. This new role in caregiving is making me square cultural norms and values engrained in me as a second-generation South Asian immigrant and as a female only child with my senior leadership role in corporate America. While I’ve juggled responsibilities for...
By Claire Cain Miller, The New York Times, October 25, 2021 Congress is now considering four weeks of paid family and medical leave, down from the 12 weeks that were initially proposed in the Democrats’ spending plan. If the plan becomes law, the United States will no longer be one of six countries in the world — and the only rich country — without any form of national paid leave. But it would still be an outlier. Of the 185 countries that offer paid leave for new mothers, only one, Eswatini...
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 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 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...
By Alyssa Lukpat, The New York Times, October 3, 2021 “Anyone recognize him?” the police in Winter Haven, Fla., asked on Facebook last month. Photos with the post showed a man walking out of a Walmart without paying for his items after several of his credit cards were declined, the police said. Among the items in his cart were boxes of diapers. “When your card is declined and you try another one with the same result, that is NOT license to just walk out with the items anyway,” read the...
By Jason DeParle, The New York Times, October 9, 2021 To understand the problems Democrats hope to solve with their supersized plan to make child care better and more affordable, consider this small Southern city where many parents spend more for care than they do for mortgages, yet teachers get paid like fast food workers and centers cannot hire enough staff. With its white pillars and soaring steeple, the Friendly Avenue Baptist Church evokes an illusory past when fathers left for work,...
By Lizzie Tribone, Talk Poverty, October 5, 2021 When Jennifer Brown left Minnesota Correctional Facility-Shakopee on a work-release program, it had been six-and-a-half months since she had seen her son, Elijah. The last time they’d been together was when she gave birth to him, under the watch of two prison guards, in a hospital near the prison. Brown had forty-eight hours with her newborn before she had to hand him over to a family chosen by Together for Good, a religious nonprofit that...
By Emily Bramhall, Housing Matters, October 6, 2021 For students who are also parents, completing higher education in an in-demand field can lead to greater opportunity and financial stability . Though a growing number of young parents are enrolling in higher education programs, postsecondary institutions are often structured to serve recent high school graduates who do not have children depending on them. Parenting students juggle costs of tuition, housing, and child care while attending...
Of all the sad statistics the U.S. has dealt with this past year and a half, here is a particularly difficult one: A new study estimates that more than 140,000 children in the U.S. have lost a parent or a grandparent caregiver to COVID-19. The majority of these children come from racial and ethnic minority groups. "This means that for every four COVID-19 deaths, one child was left behind without a mother, father and/or a grandparent who provided for that child's home needs and nurture —...
By Anna Maria Barry-Jester, Kaiser Health News, October 5, 2021 The tipping point for Dr. Paula Braveman came when a longtime patient of hers at a community clinic in San Francisco’s Mission District slipped past the front desk and knocked on her office door to say goodbye. He wouldn’t be coming to the clinic anymore, he told her, because he could no longer afford it. It was a decisive moment for Braveman, who decided she wanted not only to heal ailing patients but also to advocate for...