TEXANNE writes:

I highly recommend this talk by an attorney who follows the trends in law relating to family, marriage and children. Bill Duncan provides an overview of these concepts and how they are evolving and how new law is being shaped by the changes, and vice versa. He spoke at the Ruth Institute conference (It Takes a Family to Raise a Village) in July of this year, so is current enough to note the proposed legislation in California which would provide for three legally-recognized “parents,” and other developments in the fields of “domestic relations,” reproductive technology, etc.

IN RESPONSE to comments on the phenomenon of over-attentive parents, Alex A. gives a a great summation of one of the main underlying causes of this problem. “Pushiness,” he says, “is a compensation for not being there.”

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Sebastien writes in response to Nanny Power:

It’s a with great deal of interest that I follow your blog from where we are in Paris. 

We have two boys, one of 18 months and the other of three years. In our building there are four households, including our own, that have young children. My wife is a full-time mum and has no desire to change this. The other three families have nannies. Read More »

ANNIE writes in response to the post The Cheapest Babysitter in Town:

Do you think that any TV at all is bad for a two-year-old? I am really wondering what your personal opinion is. I was in agony when my little boy started watching TV around the time he turned one! I wanted to fight my husband on this to the bitter end. He was raised watching LOTS of  TV which I believe is what caused his habitual drug use as a teenager. He thought I was crazy until we did a little experiment; no TV for the baby for a whole week. And what results! He went from being an aggressive, mean, crying baby to a happy, sweet, easily contented baby, like the one I knew before the TV watching began.

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Paul Velde writes:

In your piece on men and housework, you remark apropos of another subject altogether, “The average woman wants control over her domestic realm and she doesn’t like the way men… manage the children.” Perhaps the operative word here is “average,” but nonetheless could you find time to expand on this point? In my experience the male-female conflict over children is the cause of much tension in marriages, and, when the results become manifest in terms of spoiled, ill-behaved, ungrateful offspring, profound grief.

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