More than half said they’d consider being a stay-at-home dad if financially feasible   Most working fathers say they want to share child-raising duties equally with their spouse/partner, but a lot of them admit that they aren’t actually doing so, a new survey shows.  The findings suggest that many dads are conflicted about finding a work-family balance, according to researchers at the Boston College Center for Work & Family.  Fathers who spend more time with their children had more confidence as parents, but only one in 20 took more than two weeks off work after their child was born, the results indicated.  Most fathers also said that a supportive work…

Finding helps explain why some kids more apt to develop asthma, other diseases, study says Women who smoke during pregnancy may be putting their unborn children at increased risk for a DNA change, a new study suggests. The change, called DNA methylation, can change a gene’s usual function. The researchers argue that the altered genes, which can be passed from parent to child, may explain why some children are more likely than others to develop certain diseases, such as childhood asthma. The study, which was to be presented Wednesday at an American Thoracic Society conference in Denver, analyzed questionnaires completed by the mothers and grandmothers of 173 children that assessed…

  Close your eyes for a moment, open your treasure trove of memories and take a step back in time to your childhood. Do you remember your grandfather gently scooping you up into his warm and comforting embrace? Or sitting by your grandmother’s side as she lovingly baked pies chock full of delicious, juicy warm apples sprinkled with crumbly cinnamon bits? The bond between grandparents and their grandchildren seems to be a magical one, and now, a new article published in the April issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, sets out to discover why grandparents and their grandchildren share such strong…

  The best teacher for a young mother is her baby, contend experts who train social workers to interact with first-time moms. “We like to think of babies as ‘ordinary miracles,'” said Victor Bernstein, a research associate at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. But adjusting to a baby can take work, and the task of social workers often is to help young mothers learn to focus on an infant’s needs, say Bernstein and other SSA experts. “Mothers are not only important to their kids, but kids are really important to their mothers,” Bernstein said.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011 – As more states consider universal preschool programs, a new study led by a Michigan State University scholar suggests that two years of pre-K is beneficial – although more time should be spent on teaching certain skills. In the current issue of the Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Lori Skibbe and colleagues argue that pre-K programs generally do a good job of teaching literacy and that two years of preschool is better than one.

The wise and older parent. By Kevin D. Arnold, Ph.D. Created Jan 29 2011 – 8:23am   Probably one of the most challenging things parents face is putting our children to bed…..and helping them stay there. When they are babies, they don’t have a routine way of sleeping. But, as they get older, around six months or so, they start to sleep with a regular pattern, several times each day.  By the time children reach elementary school, they usually go to bed, fall asleep, and sleep all night.