Under-age drinkers consume about 20 percent of all the alcohol imbibed in this country, according to a report published last week in The Journal of the American Medical Association ... Teenage drinking rates have fallen by some measures in recent decades, a change that may be partly attributable to the legal drinking age's being raised to 21 in all states. But as often happens when it comes to the relationship between Americans and alcohol, many of the young people who continue to drink appear to be the very ones least able to control their consumption.

The economists � Shin-Yi Chou, Henry Saffer and Michael Grossman � presented their findings in a working paper called "An Economic Analysis of Obesity" for the National Bureau of Economic Research. In the paper, the economists note that the number of fast-food restaurants per capita doubled in the United States from 1972 to 1997, a period in which obesity, well, ballooned. In analyzing the relationship of weight to incomes, food prices, restaurants, workforce participation and other variables, the economists concluded that the growth of fast food accounted for 68 percent of the rise in American obesity. Why all this fast food? As women devoted more time to paid work, the theory goes, they had less time for cooking, a burden that the men in their lives (who typically spend more time at their jobs) presumably had little time or interest in assuming. Fast-food restaurants � offering cheap, convenient meals dense with fat and calories � rushed in to fill the vacuum.

In anticipation of his anniversary speech, at a Cabinet meeting last week Howard gave a detailed presentation to his ministers about family policies. Enamoured by the work of British sociologist Catherine Hakim, Howard's PowerPoint presentation included extracts from her essential thesis: that working mothers are divided into three groups. The first, stay-at-homes, comprise only 20 per cent; the second, who are work-centric, also make up 20 per cent; and the third and largest group, who adapt to circumstances and move in and out of the workforce depending on the children's age, make up the remaining 60 per cent. Howard's enthusiasm for Hakim's work - which is critical of largesse to work-centred mothers and emphasises the need to make life easier for stay-at-home and "adaptive" mums - has ensured her panaceas will be critical to the Government's policy development.

The idea is that the new homemaker payment would be available to any mother for baby's first year - injecting around $6,000 as a one-off into the family budget that year. The new payment would become part of an existing tranche of family payments offered by the Government, including the baby bonus, which is paid to stay-at-home mothers; the parenting payment; two sets of family tax benefits, which are means-tested; child-care subsidies; and a maternity allowance. As well, the Government is considering a 14-week paid maternity leave proposal put forward by Sex Discrimination Commissioner Pru Goward late last year.

But mothers of the future may not be grateful for this added pressure to be a lactating superwoman less than two weeks after giving birth. Breastfeeding is difficult enough even for a woman with nothing else to do. For a woman with a full-time job outside the home, it can be a nightmare ... No one wants to go back to the days when children were seen and not heard and breastfeeding mothers had to hide in toilets. But neither should parents' rights be allowed to override common sense and economic reality. What's more, the push for feminist concessions in the workplace is in danger of reaching farcical levels which ultimately will make employers think twice before hiring women.

According to Tony Tanner, an English critic, Western literature begins with The Iliad, a tale of war precipitated by an adulterous act, and "it is the unstable triangularity of adultery, rather than the static symmetry of marriage, that is the generative form of Western literature as we know it." Indeed, adultery has remained a prominent theme in Western literature: it is a major theme, Tanner points out, in Shakespeare's last plays and in Restoration drama, and many of the great nineteenth-century novels touch on it. Among these, one thinks immediately of Madame Bovary, The Red and the Black, and Anna Karenina. In these novels the theme of adultery dramatizes issues of authority and transgression not only in individual psychology but in the social order as well. When the adulterous impulse is enacted, it violates the rules of possession in both the private and the public sphere, most often with unfortunate results.

In a survey of nearly 100 women physicians in two-career couples with at least one child under 14, those who worked full time reported better relationships with their husbands than those working reduced hours. Marital quality may actually suffer when mothers work part time, Barnett says.
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Barbara Risman, cochair of the council, explains that when a woman goes from a full-time to a part-time schedule, she may lose whatever negotiating power she had with her husband in getting him to become a more equal partner at home. 'Now he can say, Well, I work full time and you don't.' "

The domination by boys is getting worse ... "It's everywhere, all the time. Beatings, rapes, the lot. The worst is the names they call you, especially if you're dressed in a girly way which makes you a slut," says Amel, 21 ... Home to many immigrants from the Maghreb, such suburbs have seen a rise in radical Islam that has turned attitudes toward women even harsher. Pressure is mounting for Muslim women to wear veils and forced marriages that snatch girls from college and a career are now commonplace.

Britain's top family court judge declared today that a black man whose sperm had mistakenly been used to fertilize the eggs of a white woman at a fertility clinic was the legal father of the twins born nine months later.

�Beliefs, even strongly held ones, can be somewhat aloof from a world in which people actually feel things,� making it hard �to simply turn our backs on convention.� (all italics hers)

�...it turns out, that third person inevitably has feelings too, of all things! �That third person might even be likely, in fact, to have extra feelings, the kind that find expression only in phoning compulsively throughout the night or popping by after supper with an ice pick. Michael [her boyfriend] and I were ultimately so strained by a few rounds of non-domestic toad-in-the-hole that we gave it up� [But] we still believe in the principle of nonmonogamy, even if we don�t have the energy to do it.� (p. 68)

Afghans involved with women's issues say the selling of young girls is on the rise. After a quarter-century of war, civil chaos and most recently drought, many families have been strained to the breaking point, and the outright selling of daughters for cash is one harsh result. The practice has a cultural basis here in southern Afghanistan, where prospective husbands have long paid a "bride price" for their wives � a kind of dowry that is traditionally set by the status of the bride's family and the resources of the groom's. But what was a custom has evolved into a market in which men can buy young girls from poor families. And with the country's legal system a shambles, there is nothing to stop them.

The 1970s have brought an increased awareness of the stresses associated with complex relationship systems and a healthy respect for human limits. Anthropologists have long been aware of the elaborate normative and hierarchial structures required for the successful functioning of such systems. Those who reject such structures as alien to personal growth and flexibility have found that they and their significant others must instead possess the necessary personality characteristics and negotiation skills to develop their own norms. For some individuals this has worked, but it is now clear that most, at least at this stage of our societal development, find complex relationship systems, such as multilateral marriage, and communal life, too stressful to allow for long-term participation.

It's a kind of theater of the absurd, especially when one considers that in the battle against childhood obesity, television is Public Enemy Number One. To some it is the primary cause of sedentary behavior, cravings for all foods fatty and caloric, and the dramatic rise in childhood fatness. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one out of three kids aged 6 to 19 is overweight or obese. That's triple the proportion that were carrying too much weight in 1980. But the three visual arts professionals and moms (two from Bethesda, one from Kensington) behind the federally funded "Dynamotion" project believe that to view TV only as a villain in the childhood fat epidemic is a copout -- or at least a missed opportunity. No one doubts TV's power to influence and educate, they reason, so why shouldn't it be enlisted in the fight against obesity and inactivity, instead of being used as a scapegoat?

Much of what I know about Emily I learned after her death. I learned that her parents divorced when she was an infant. She never had a relationship with her father. It pained her to know he had remarried and was living with children he could talk to, hug and play with every day. Her mother married and divorced several times. Emily became lost in blended families. Toward the end of her life, Jordan told me, she was depressed and cut her flesh when her emotional pain became too great. I had never heard about cutting. I couldn�t imagine why a person would do that.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - While having children from a previous relationship tends to reduce a Mom's chance of a new relationship, new research suggests these children can be a bonus for Dad's.
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These findings suggest that new mates believe a man invested in his children bodes well for the future of the relationship, study author Dr. Susan D. Stewart of the University of Richmond in Virginia told Reuters Health.
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It shows that the men are "invested in parenting, and women like that," Stewart added.

In terms of why the opposite might be true with women, Stewart said that men don't need special signals to inform them whether a single woman will be a good mother. "Men assume women will be good mothers, whether or not they have kids," she noted.

In addition, when parents break up, children are much more likely to live with their mothers than their fathers, Stewart said, and live-in kids are more likely to be dependent on parents and drain them of their emotional energy. This situation may limit a mother's ability to meet new people, and render her less attractive to potential mates when she does.

An absent father may also play a limited role in his children's lives, the researcher suggested, and filling the emotional gap left by an absent parent may be too daunting a task for prospective mates.

These trends are closely related to fatherlessness. As James Q. Wilson has written, �When there is a low sex ratio--that is, when there are many more women than men--marriages will be less common and more fragile, cohabitation will become more general, divorce will be more frequent, and children will be more likely to be raised in one-parent families.� And with more and more boys growing up fatherless, without that most important male role model, this gap can be self-perpetuating. We can�t expect an army of �father figures� or after-school programs to replace fathers.

What will help is a multi-pronged effort to reduce father absence and raise the status of black men in America. What won�t help would be getting bogged down in arguments about culture vs. economics (It�s both, stupid!) or trying to avoid the marriage issue. A good starting point would be to revisit �Turning the Corner on Father Absence in Black America.� Ellis Cose also has some sage advice.

The new Swedish study is important because it is the only study in the world of a whole population, divorced versus not divorced. At the same time, like so much quantatitve research, the researchers are left with numbers they cannot really explain, and as a result the only "causes" they can think to offer are socioeconomic. But no one ever became suicidal or a drug addict because their family did not own a house. These findings cry out for explanations that are not primarily economic, especiaily since Sweden has a much better social welfare system than we do, or almost anyone does.

Beyonce Knowles: Well, my father is a big part of my life, and that has always made me feel safe because I knew he was always there. Even now I don�t need a man because I have someone who loves me and supports me without fail.

Star Jones: I grew up with my stepfather, who made a point of making me and my sister feel we belonged. My stepfather�s love and devotion and the wonderful way he treats my mother�that�s the kind of man I want.

Foxy Brown: I know my dad, and I love him dearly, but he didn�t live with us. I think because of that I always hung on to guys too tight. I think it makes you lack confidence as a woman in your own skin without your father.

Her 1-year-old son cried when his dad put him down and left for Chicago. The tot called out for "da-da" all the time. Their oldest son said simply, "Mom ... I miss my dad."

"My kids are like, 'Mom, where dad go?'" she said in her boyfriend's absence. "They're used to seeing him there every day."

This book originated as a magazine article, in which Critser pointed to class and poverty as "key determinants of obesity and weight-related disease" and claimed that the fast-food industry has deliberately targeted people of color. This idea may be politically appealing, but it dims under scrutiny. While some racial minorities have higher rates of obesity, particularly in childhood, obesity levels overall have increased steadily in all racial and socio-economic groups over the past decade. And while Critser's whole argument rests on obesity being a peculiarly American problem, it is in fact a global one.Thriving on progress, obesity has hit everywhere that Western-style prosperity has taken root. Half the adult populations of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, England, Finland and Russia are overweight, as are those of Bulgaria, Morocco, Mexico and Saudi Arabia. In India, excess weight and obesity are endemic in the middle class. And while American childhood obesity rates have doubled in a generation, the British rates have soared by 70 percent in just one decade, a trend that holds true for Russia, Australia and -- incredibly -- China. The reasons for this have very little to do with parenting practices or conspiracies, and a good deal to do with a clash between modern lifestyles and genes passed down from a very different age.