January 2016

As researchers have come to understand how poverty and its stresses influence children's brain development, they've begun untangling how that can lead to increased behavior problems and learning difficulties for disadvantaged kids. Rather than trying to treat those problems, NYU child development specialists Adriana Weisleder and Alan Mendelsohn want to head them off. They say they've found a way: Working with low-income parents when they bring babies and young children to the pediatrician.

Remember those baby boxes Finland started giving out to parents of newborns for free? They're boxes with basically everything you need to keep an infant alive, healthy, and happy: clothes, a towel, a quilt, diapers, bibs, a book, a toy. The kit even comes with a mattress, so the box itself can be used as the baby’s first crib. Unsurprisingly, Finnish parents love the baby box . Since its introduction in the late 1930s, the country has seen the infant mortality rate plummet, something...

As I move full steam ahead into my 30s, friends all around are beginning to start families and have babies.  Watching them go through pregnancies is exciting, observing them as they bond with babies is special, and experiencing them letting me bond with their babies is something I have no words for sometimes.  This past weekend I visited a friend in the hospital and snuggled her 28-hour-old little one.  It was mesmerizing. Yet one thing that is not fun to watch them do is try...