According to a significant proportion of UK therapists, the chances that adult depression is linked to an episode of sexual abuse in childhood are relatively high. Estimates of the extent of childhood sexual abuse vary wildly from one in four to one in 100. But a substantial proportion of mental health professionals and other therapists signed up to the message in the late 80s and early 90s that 'just because you don't remember being abused, doesn't mean you weren't'. Over the past 10 years, this theory has been challenged, not least by the British False Memory Society (BFMS) set up to represent the thousands of adults who say they've been falsely accused by children whose 'repressed' memories were 'recovered' in therapy.

cashed up, product savvy and still in primary school. Australian children aged from seven to 14 spend $471 million a year, with 92 per cent saying they decide how they, not their parents, spend their money. And 92 per cent admitted to pestering their parents into buying products for them. These are just some of the results of the Cartoon Network's New Generations Australia 2003 survey into children's attitudes, values, media consumption, pester power and spending power. The study, undertaken by the pay TV channel's vice-president of research for the Asia Pacific Region, Duncan Morris, involved interviews with 600 children and their parents in NSW and Victoria. The results proved that children were emerging as a new, powerful consumer group with 72 per cent of children receiving pocket money, getting $8.80 per week on average. On top of this, 90 per cent of children receive an average of an extra $160 each year as gift money or earnings. "When you add it all up it is a startling figure," Mr Morris said.

Given the proliferation of books about how Americans should raise the baby, it was inevitable that scholars would eventually turn to the question of why Americans are so obsessed with raising the baby. In a string of new books, social and cultural historians are trying to figure out just what it is about American parents that makes them so anxious � and so eager to turn to the experts. Their theories differ, but what they do agree on is that there's a lot more to child care advice than simply child care. Views on family values, cultural trends, social developments and economic conditions have often turned out to be more important than any research. (The time-consuming child-centered approach wouldn't have had a chance in the 1950's if affluence hadn't made washing machines and vacuum cleaners commonplace in middle-class homes). "It wasn't firm data that drove child rearing expertise," Ann Hulbert points out in her forthcoming book, "Raising America: Experts, Parents and a Century of Advice About Children" (Knopf), "but changing social concerns that seemed to dictate its swerves and emphases."

A study of American college freshmen shows that support for abortion rights has been dropping since the early 1990's: 54 percent of 282,549 students polled at 437 schools last fall by the University of California at Los Angeles agreed that abortion should be legal. The figure was down from 67 percent a decade earlier. A New York Times/CBS News poll in January found that among people 18 to 29, the share who agree that abortion should be generally available to those who want it was 39 percent, down from 48 percent in 1993. "Abortion isn't a rights issue � it's become for increasing numbers of young people a moral, ethical issue," said Henry Brady, a professor of political science and public policy at Berkeley who has taken surveys in this area.

Successful women are marrying down, but they are not yet fighting over construction workers. Recent analysis by Kathleen Fisher and David Charnock of data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey shows only 52 per cent of 30 to 49-year-old men in low-status occupations - such as construction workers, fishermen, labourers - are married, with 33 per cent never married or divorced/widowed. This compares with a 74 per cent marriage rate for same aged men in high-status occupations, with only 17 per cent never-married, divorced or widowed. Low-status jobs mean less money, and here, too, women's preferences are clear. Only 48 per cent of men earning less than $20,000 are married, compared with 76 per cent of men earning $90,000 or more. The researchers point out that married rates remain low for men earning up to $40,000. Demand increases for the more successful men.

What follows is drawn from a new study by the Australian Council of Social Service, Poverty, policy and the cost of raising teenagers. Teenagers cost a fortune. For a start, they want a room of their own. Next is the gargantuan quantities of food they eat and the fancy clothes - and footwear - they insist on. Then there's the higher cost of their schooling and study. Last but by no means least is the big blighters' spending on "recreation" - the $50 notes you have to shell out on Saturday nights, when they go out on the ran-tan while their oldies stay home with a book. (Did I mention that our two ankle-biters are now both at uni?) Research by the social policy research centre at the University of NSW, which developed a set of minimum budgets, estimated that it should cost $96 a week to look after a three-year-old (in today's dollars), but $149 a week for a 14-year-old. That's a 55 per cent increase.

Last week, New Democrat Sen. Evan Bayh introduced the Strengthening Families Act, which would provide new resources to support two critical pillars of post-welfare reform social policy: promoting responsible fatherhood and preventing teen pregnancy.

Drago and Tseng's study shows the egalitarian couples are sparklingly symmetrical - slightly more than 40 hours each of paid work. A beautiful set of numbers. Yet they also struggle under a much heavier overall workload - 84 hours total paid work time, double the paid work component of the traditional family. These families are more maritally strained, feel worse about parenting, have fewer children and, according to another conference paper, continually complain about their lack of time. Meanwhile, the less desirable neo-traditionals work about 10 hours less in paid work each week, have more children, feel better about their parenting, and express less marital distress. This is perhaps one reason so many gay families have housewives or are neo-traditional, and why female politicians such as Jenny Macklin as well as male politicians such as John Howard need supportive partners.

"I fully support marriage and see it and family life as the foundation of a strong and stable society. The Government's primary concern is with the stability of relationships where children are involved, and it recognises that this stability is most easily found within marriage."

...some men could see up to a quarter of the money on their payslip disappear as the Working Families Tax Credit - a top-up for lower wages paid to the family's main earner, usually male, through the pay packet - makes way for the new Child Tax Credit which is paid to the children's main carer, usually female, through their bank. The change is particularly awkward as it comes ahead of a 'feminised' Budget promising new benefits for working mothers, including increased maternity pay and new rights to work part-time.

In spite of new technology, disposable nappies and the claimed advent of 'new man', one in four British mothers thinks being a parent is significantly harder than it was for their own mothers. Three in four fear they are bringing up children in a world more dangerous than a generation ago. And two in five mothers say they do more than three-quarters of the work associated with having children, according to a nationwide study of motherhood in the twenty-first century. 'In some ways things seem easier today than they were a generation ago,' said Justine Roberts, who carried out the research for Momsnet, the internet advice service. 'There's heaps of advice and information for parents alongside a myriad of books. However, 50 years ago everyone was much less judgmental than today, and you just got on with it. Today there is much more pressure on mothers to get parenting right.'

We appreciate the importance given to the promotion of healthy two-parent married families in recent policy debates. Research indicates that children fare best if raised by two biological parents in a healthy (low-conflict) family but says less about what government can do to nurture such families. While the signers of this letter hold varying views on whether and how government can work effectively in this area, we agree that conducting a limited number of small, rigorously evaluated experiments to promote two-parent low-conflict child-rearing would be warranted. Research suggests that increasing economic supports to families and building interpersonal skills should both be part of the mixture of strategies evaluated. High-conflict or abusive marriages should be distinguished from healthy relationships and should not be encouraged.

Two observations. First, in the paragraph on family formation, the signers avoid saying that research suggests that low-conflict marriages tend to be best for kids--they say "two-biological parents in a healthy (low-conflict) family." Also, they are careful not to lend support to healthy marriage promotion--they say "promot[ing] two-parent low-conflict child-rearing would be warranted." When they point to bad situations, they refer to "high-conflict or abusive marriages," and when they point to good situations, they refer to "healthy relationships." There is still a reluctance to lend support to the notion that marriage matters, at least in a good way.