A comparative survey on parenting in Japan, South Korea, Thailand, the United States, France and Sweden by the National Women’s Education Center, Japan, underscores problems that Japanese fathers must deal with. The problems range from the few hours they spend with their children, and their dependence on wives for disciplining their children, to their lack of preparation to be fathers in the first place. Social circumstances may be responsible for some problems, but fathers can help themselves by raising their levels of awareness…

The survey found that Japanese fathers spent an average of 3.1 hours a day with their children — compared with 3.3 hours in a 1994 survey. This amount of time was the second shortest after South Korea’s 2.8 hours. By contrast, Thai fathers spent 5.9 hours — the longest — followed by 4.6 hours in both the U.S. and Sweden, and 3.8 hours in France…

The survey found that many fathers in Japan, South Korea and France have not had an experience that might have prepared them better for fatherhood…

Source: Japan Times Online
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ed20060930a1.html

The Internet’s premier social networking site allows millions of teens (113 million personal profiles at last count) to post all the gossip that used to be confined to high school hallways on the World Wide Web — for every nosy parent to see…

MySpace is no longer just the cornerstone of adolescent social lives. It doubles as a parent’s best friend, Barnett said the other day. The Southern California mother is teaching other parents how to maximize their MySpace spying potential through her own Web site: myspaceforparents.com.

She launched the site this spring to give parents a step-by-step guide on how to discreetly create their own accounts, find their teens’ profile and then navigate the MySpace features to find out what behavior their kids are up to…

A group of Southern California college students started their own MySpace monitoring business in January to help parents clueless about teen lingo. They call themselves SafeSpacers.

“Parents don’t want to read their kid’s diary, so we do it for them,” said 20-year-old Parker Stech, a founder of SafeSpacers. “We’re able to decipher their messages and the lingo. These are things we’re familiar with that parents aren’t.” …

Some call these tactics an invasion of privacy. Barnett, and others like her, call it good parenting.

Source: SFGate.com
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/09/30/MYSPACE.TMP

Breastfeeding is portable, nutritious, always served at the right temperature and free, said breastfeeding counsellor Terry Lyon…

Breast milk is the optimal nutritious snack because it contains the perfect balance of fatty acids, lactose, water, and amino acids resulting in optimal brain development.

The benefits are not just for babes - their mothers’ risk of developing breast or ovarian cancer is greatly reduced if she breastfeeds her child.

Another benefit is that it helps most moms make a quicker return to their pre-pregnancy weight…

Despite the benefits, only 19 per cent of Canadian women breastfeed exclusively after six months. The Canadian Pediatric Society recommends that babies should receive only breast milk for the first six months of life.

The World Health Organization recommends breastfeeding until the baby is four years old.

Source: SaanichNEWS
http://www.saanichnews.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=28&cat=46&id=739236&more=

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder is becoming a condition that family members are treated for together: Parents of children taking ADHD medication are about nine times more likely to also use the drugs than parents of children who aren’t on these drugs, according to a prescription analysis out today…

The upsurge in adults seeking treatment is partly a result of consumer advertising by drug companies, says behavioral pediatrician Lawrence Diller of Walnut Creek, Calif.
He says genetics alone doesn’t explain the overlap between parents and children taking ADHD drugs; environment can play a key role. Disorganized parents may find it more difficult to manage children with attention problems by using behavioral techniques, Diller says. So these parents may be more likely to choose medication for their children…

“No wonder these women feel distracted and overwhelmed,” Diller says. “I’m not sure if the Ritalin is treating their ADHD or allowing them to act as superwomen in our demanding culture.”

Source: USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-09-27-adhd-drugs_x.htm

Jo Frost, star of the ABC-TV series and a professional nanny, has won praise in Newsweek and The New York Times, and her parenting books have been international best sellers.

While your children are probably not as unruly as those on the show (now on hiatus), Frost’s lessons on childrearing are relevant to all families. And they work.

The payoff will be both immediate and long-lasting. How you handle your children during their early years (firmly and gently, please) will directly affect their behavior as teens.

This is how it works. If your toddler bites or hits, for example, you should tell her “no” and put her on a time-out chair or step for a few minutes. If she gets up before the allotted time, place her back, over and over again. Do this consistently and gently, every time she bites or hits. If you’re out, do it when you get home. And make sure both parents are disciplining the same behaviors in the same way.

Source: Democrat & Chronicle
http://tinyurl.com/225r8p

… Many South Korean fathers stay at home and work while they send their wife and children abroad - often for years at a time - for the sake of their children’s education. The left-behind fathers have taken on a common nickname - and a common set of problems…

Geum, the dean of political science at Seoul City University, says he wanted his children to have a U.S. education because he believes the rigidly conformist South Korean school system is inadequate.

“The education they got was how to memorize. Not how to analyze, how to describe, explain. They don’t learn to solve a problem logically.” …

Despite the hardship, goose dads have a better situation than the men Koreans refer to as “penguin dads.” As the nicknames imply, goose dads can fly, because they can afford the occasional plane ticket to visit their families. Penguin fathers, who work in lower income jobs, remain grounded - and often go for many years at a time without seeing their wives and children.

source: VOAnews.com
http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-09-27-voa27.cfm

Only a girl could write The Female Brain and walk away with life and reputation intact. This new book may be contentious, but in fact modern science is merely playing catch-up with what we know intuitively. Girls are different from boys…

Mind-blowing news, huh?

But here’s the really brave bit: the unisex brain is a feminist fabrication. Louann Brizendine, an American neuropsychiatrist, has written a book debunking stubborn notions that girls are different only because society makes them so. It’s much more to do with the brain, she says. The female brain, to be more precise.

Here’s a snap brain quiz. Which sex uses, on average, about 20,000 words a day, in contrast to the 7000 uttered by the other sex? Who has two-and-a-half times the amount of brain space devoted to sexual drive, meaning they think about sex, on average, every 52 seconds? When their feelings are hurt by someone they love, which sex reacts by assuming the relationship is over? Who has larger sections of the brain for action and aggression? If you answered, in order, women, men, women, men, you’ve been watching too many Woody Allen movies. Now, science is confirming that Woody was right all along.

While more than 99 per cent of male and female genetic coding is the same, it’s the less than 1 per cent of difference that packs a punch in marking out women from men. Drawing upon advances in gene technology and brain-imaging techniques that have revolutionised neuroscientific research, Brizendine presents a heady cocktail of structural, chemical, genetic, hormonal and functional differences between women and men…

Source: NEWS.com.au
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20481760-5007146,00.html

Zac Goldsmith, one of David Cameron’s key policy advisers, yesterday backed the Hold on to Childhood coverage in The Daily Telegraph and said he was worried at the ease with which doctors prescribed pills to tackle children’s emotional upsets…

On Monday his magazine will publish a detailed report into the crisis of British childhood, echoing many of the themes of Hold on to Childhood, which was itself sparked by a letter from 110 children’s experts, authors and doctors.

The Ecologist article, written by Rachel Ragg, a former Leeds University lecturer and mother of two, points out that almost 400,000 children were last year prescribed Ritalin, a drug almost unknown in Britain in the early 1990s…

“They have provided financial incentives to parents to go back to work, and pressurised them to send children to nurseries by implying that their children will be economically, academically and culturally disadvantaged if they aren’t in a nursery by the age of two. In fact, all evidence suggests this is the reverse of the truth.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk
http://tinyurl.com/hjson

… In Korea, Germany and Scandinavia, science degrees (that is, degrees in engineering, health, mathematics, computing, physical sciences, agriculture and life sciences) make up between 45 per cent and 50 per cent of all degrees awarded. In the rest of Europe and Japan, the figure varies between 35 and 50 per cent. In Canada, the proportion is a mere 30 per cent…

… Science isn’t sexy, and young people don’t want to enrol in it. And that may well be hurting our economy… This is the point at which we are obliged to note that higher education — particularly in the arts and social sciences — is not entirely about servicing the job market.

… It is certainly an argument that some science graduates need more arts education. But in no way, however, is it an argument that society in general or employers in particular need more arts students. There is at least as strong an argument to be made that arts students need a great deal more science and math in their curriculums…

Our economic future belongs to those who can marry technological innovation with an insight into human needs and desires. That suggests very strongly that getting the correct blend of science and arts is an important policy goal.

Source: Ottawa Citizen
http://tinyurl.com/2a9emc

The frowning teacher, the bullying father and the pleading mother are common characters in the life of a browbeaten child receiving a traditional Chinese education.
However, a new child-centred approach known as the “Child-Friendly School” framework is likely to replace this traditional model and offer Chinese children a genuine quality education…

According to UNICEF, child-friendly schooling consists of five broad dimensions: inclusiveness, academic effectiveness, health, safety and protection, gender-equality and the involvement of students, families and communities.

Source: People’s Daily Online
http://english.people.com.cn/200609/26/eng20060926_306427.html