Raising

Meat, Breast Cancer, and Grandmothers’ Eating Habits

A twelve-year study of over 90,000 women has found that daily consumption of red meat may significantly increase a woman’s risk of certain breast cancers, even before menopause. Women who ate more than one and a half 100-gram servings of red meat per day had nearly twice the risk of developing hormone-sensitive breast cancer as […]

IKEA Hacks

A comment on Parent Hacks tipped me off to the great blog Ikea Hacker. It’s full of ways to tweak, enhance, and otherwise modify products from the Swedish retailer. Add doors to a shelving unit. Make a pinhole camera from a plant-pot holder. Add a pattern to the inside back of a bookcase. (This would

Marital Bliss, Part II

First, thanks to all of you who have sent me good wishes for my impending nuptials. I’m humbled by your kind thoughts. Our chosen Justice of the Peace e-mailed us some sample vows. She’s a lesbian herself, and understands that we’re celebrating our thirteen years together as much as our new marital status. The vows

The 2006 Weblog Awards

Nominations for the 2006 Weblog Awards open later today Monday. [They just updated the date.] Polly at LesbianDad wrote to me suggesting that LGBT-family bloggers flood the existing Parenting Blog category with LGBT-family-blog nominations as a way of raising awareness about our families. (Our blogs could also go under the general LGBT Blog category.) Polly

Do Non-Traditional Gender Roles Boost Creativity?

A recent study from Washington University in St. Louis found that firstborn children who had many siblings, close in age, and of the opposite sex tended to have more creative ideas than their latter-born siblings. I’m not sure the study has any daily relevance to parents—I’m for encouraging creativity in all children. Still, one passage

Young People, the 2006 Elections, and Preparing Our Children

Americans under 30 voted in the largest numbers for midterm elections in at least 20 years, and may have made a difference in the many close races. Young people favored Democrats by 22 points, nearly three times the Democratic margin among other age groups. Some say this indicates a rising Democratic bloc that could be

Hacking Board Games for Preschoolers

Although my son has an apparently infinite capacity for playing Candy Land (interspersed only by rounds of Cariboo), I have a limit. I don’t, however, have a limitless budget for buying new games. My solution has been to create variations of older kid/adult board games we already have around the house. Here are a few

Marital Bliss, Part I

My partner and I applied for a marriage license in Massachusetts Friday, though we weren’t sure we’d be able to do so. We explained to the very nice clerk in the Gloucester City Hall that we did not yet have a home in the state, but my partner will be starting work there on Monday.

Reciprocal Membership at Children’s Museums

I’m visiting Boston with partner and son on a house-hunting trip. We took a break today, however, to go to the Boston Children’s Museum—and got in free, thanks to a Reciprocal Membership I’d bought at our local Mid-Hudson Children’s Museum. The Reciprocal Membership Program, sponsored by the Association of Children’s Museums, gives free admission to

Health Roundup

Several pieces of health news caught my eye today, so I’ve rolled them all into a single healthy treat: People may have overreacted to the link between children’s use of antidepressants and suicide, say researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Although an earlier FDA study showed that a very few people (about one

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