Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

How Parental Leave Policy Contributes to the Growing Gap Between Rich and Poor

May 9, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
maternity-leave

The United States is unusual among developed countries in guaranteeing exactly zero weeks of paid time-off from work upon the birth or adoption of a child. Japan offers 14 weeks of paid job-protected leave, the U.K. offers 18, Denmark 28, Norway 52, and Sweden offers 68 (yes, that’s over a year of paid time-off to take care of a new child). The U.S. does guarantee that new parents receive 12 weeks of non-paid leave, but only for parents who work in companies that employ 50 workers or more and who have worked there at least 12 months and accrued 1,250 hours or more in that time. These ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics
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Iceland: Stop Sleeping With Your Family Members

April 17, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
bjork

I ... I don't even. I just. What is ... are they? Huhhhhhh? From the News of Iceland (which also boasts most-read stories with headlines of "Iceland Is the Coolest Place to Go on Vacation" and "Ben Stiller Walking Around in Icelandic Nature"): The Icelandic population is very small and all Icelanders are related. But yet, it is big enough so everyone doesn't know one another. This means that each and every Icelander that is in a relationship, is dating a relative. In most cases those relations are distant. But not always. But how can they know? Yes, the population is tiny: 321,857 people ... Read More

More like this: Culture
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Nonprofit Helps Duggars Memorialize Lost Daughter

December 20, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

A year and a half ago, Kristin Ohlson told readers of Miller-McCune.com about Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, a now 6-year-old Colorado nonprofit that takes pictures of babies who have died as a memento for grieving families. While some might see a tasteful picture of a mother holding their deceased child as a touch morbid, others view the black-and-white photos as an important gesture to memorialize a loved member of the family and to help the survivors in grieving. Anthropologist Linda Layne of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute told Ohlson, “For professional photographers to do that kind of ... Read More

More like this: By The Way ..., Culture
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Deadbeat Dad Policy Needs Renewed Scrutiny

June 22, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

The federal government’s child support enforcement program is largely built around a single goal: Extracting money from fathers. “The way that the system is set up is that the government child support agencies in the states have incentives to collect as much as possible from the families in their case load,” said Joy Moses, a senior policy analyst with the Poverty and Prosperity program at the Center for American Progress. “Oftentimes, when you talk to folks in the child support community, they are highly focused on how are they going to meet that goal. How are they going to ... Read More

More like this: Legal Affairs, The Idea Lobby
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Fostering Strengths, Not Just Red Flags

December 15, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

The Carole Robertson Center for Learning on the near West Side of Chicago cares for children as young as 6 weeks old while their parents — 78 percent of whom are single mothers, 63 percent of whom live at or below the federal poverty line — are at work, sometimes for as long as 12 hours a day. Babies crawl across the floor of the nursery, a bright room lined with cribs and so fastidiously cleaned that adults must don disposable booties over their shoes just to enter. The infants graduate across the hall of the $4 million extension to one of four rooms designed specifically for the day ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Culture & Society
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A Cure for Child Abuse

December 7, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

No one wants to be anywhere near the phrase "child abuse." Parents flee from programs that would tar them as "high risk." Teachers and child care providers fear the mistrust that comes with any hint they might call Child Protective Services. Those services don't receive children until it's too late to prevent abuse. And the public numbs to PSAs with warnings like, "Every 10 seconds, another child is abused in America ..." (which is, unfortunately, about right). "What they hear is, 'It's so bad, there's nothing you can do about it, and we should just put those bad parents in jail,'" said ... Read More

More like this: Culture
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What I Could Tell Tiger About Divorce

August 29, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

Tiger Woods is hitting greens again and his now ex-wife Elin Nordegren has established residence on the cover of People magazine. Now that they have calmed the tornado of divorce with a settlement granted by a state court in Panama City, Fla., the couple may think that the worst part of their breakup is over. I know from personal experience that the hardest part of divorce starts when your ex falls in love and settles down, and his or her new partner snuggles up at night with your kids to read Goodnight Moon. Suddenly, you're sharing the mommy or daddy space with a stranger. Six years ... Read More

More like this: Culture
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Academic Research Does Not Take Holidays Off

November 24, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment

We gather together some of the more provocative papers of recent years, which are guaranteed to enliven the dinner table by providing fresh fodder for family squabbles. Genocide, With Stuffing and Gravy Anthropologist Janet Siskind of Rutgers University views the Thanksgiving holiday in sociopolitical terms in her 1992 paper “The Invention of Thanksgiving.” The traditional gathering, she writes, “subtly expresses and reaffirms values and assumptions about cultural and social unity, about identity and history, about inclusion and exclusion.” She views the holiday, which ritually ... Read More

More like this: November-December 2008, Research in Summary, Science
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The Edwards Effect?

November 12, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment

The 2008 tabloid revelation that presidential contender John Edwards had been caught in affair with a campaign staffer shocked many supporters who reveled in the candidate's family values shtick. This was, after all, a man routinely found at press junkets playing the model caregiver of a terminally ill wife. While Edward's begrudging disclosure of adultery marked a low in political duplicity, his affair and possible separation from his wife is — apparently — part of an all-too-common phenomenon. A new study, published in the Nov. 15 issue of the academic journal Cancer, suggests that ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Culture & Society, Findings
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Want Your Teen to Behave? Well, Pass the Potatoes.

June 3, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment

According to a newly published report in the Journal of Adolescence, American teenagers who have dinner with their families most nights were less likely to engage in a wide range of problem behaviors, including substance abuse for girls; binge drinking, physical fights, property destruction and stealing for boys; and running away for both genders. Among teens who smoke marijuana, those who engage in regular family meals do so less frequently. “These findings indicate that participating in family meals may have additional benefits to adolescents, even if there is good family connectedness ... Read More

More like this: Findings
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