The Office finale might have been sad for some, but Gretchen Rubin set out to make it an enjoyable experience for her family. Pictured, the cast of "The Office," from left, Phyllis Smith as Phyllis Vance, Jenna Fischer as Pam Beesly Halpert, Jake Lacy as Pete, Rainn Wilson as Dwight Schrute, Ellie Kemper as Erin Hannon, right, in a scene from the series finale. (Associated Press/NBC)

The Office finale: How I made this sad moment a happy one for my family

By Gretchen Rubin, Guest Blogger / 05.17.13

My daughters and I are huge fans of the TV show, The Office (the American version). We have the DVDs, we’ve watched every episode several times, and they get funnier each time.

Now, admittedly, you may question the wisdom of allowing an eight-year-old to watch the show. But I always watch with her, and I skip through the inappropriate parts.

One thing that my happiness project has taught me is that my own frame of mind can significantly boost (or diminish) the amount of happiness I get from something.

Therefore, one of my aims has been to boost my feelings of pleasant expectancy–to make little things into real events, so that I can look forward to them and revel in them, instead of letting them pass by only half-noticed. With a little mindfulness, I can often re-frame activities to help myself anticipate them more.

So when I read that the finale of The Office would air on May 16, I first thought, “Oh, too bad, the show is over.” Then I thought–wait! This is an opportunity to make a really fun night for me and my family.

As I write about in The Happiness Project, there are four stages for enjoying a happy event, and I tried to exploit each on this occasion:

– anticipation (for weeks, we talked about the fact that the retrospective and finale were going to air soon)
– savoring (enjoying it in the moment – no multi-tasking while watching!)
– expression (sharing your pleasure with others – we all watched together)
– reflection (looking back on happy times – I took photos as mementos, also emailed them to my parents and sister, which is another form of “expression”)

Framing the event in this way turned a minor event into a real happiness opportunity for my family. It was fun, it was easy, and it made a difference.

Have you found that you’re able to dial up the happiness you get from something, by framing it differently?

P.S. Because I’m such a huge fan of The Office, one of my favorite happiness interviews is with the brilliant Mindy Kaling, a/k/a Kelly Kapoor.

The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best family and parenting bloggers out there. Our contributing and guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor, and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. Gretchen Rubin blogs at www.happiness-project.com

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The original Merida, left, was taken up (or down) a notch for her figurine debut, eliciting groans and anger from people tired of Disney's quest to "princessify" everything they touch. (Screenshot via Disney)

Disney misses the point in response to Merida petition

By Rebecca Hains, Guest Blogger / 05.16.13

Recently, Disney released a new, 2D image of Merida. This prompted outrage because the character's design was altered, for no good reason. The new Merida has been "prettified"--made more conventionally attractive in a way that undercuts the character's strengths, to the detriment of the children who view her as a role model.

In response, A Mighty Girl released a petition to Disney that outlines the reasons why the redesign is problematic. The petition culminates with a request: to pull the new 2D Merida and restore the character to her original form.

Yesterday, Disney executives went on record regarding the petition. They're refusing to retract the new Merida--and their comments show they've missed the point.

The L.A. Times reports on the refusal to retract the new Merida:

"Disney has no intention of abandoning its sexier version of the Scottish archer featured in the movie, "Brave."

The modified Merida was created specifically to welcome the character into the company's princess collection. And according to a Disney representativeon Wednesday, the image of Merida that sparked this maelstrom is part of a limited run of products including backpacks and pajamas. But images of the original Merida will also be available on consumer products, the Disney representative said."

No one ever doubted that the original Merida would still be available on products; the objection is to the new Merida redesign. Full stop. The fact that it's "part of a limited run" doesn't make it any less problematic.

A Disney representative expanded on their stance in an exclusive interview with fan site Inside the Magic, calling the controversy "blown out of proportion." This makes clear that Disney execs either don't truly understand the objections, or are willfully ignoring them.

According to Inside the Magic:

"[Disney] had no intention of changing who Merida is. The artwork that has circulated online depicting the new 2D rendering of Merida was intended to be used only on a “limited line of products” as a “one-time stylized version.” They noted Disney uses different styles of art on characters regularly, changing them to fit their needs at the time.

And in this case, that time was the coronation. Noting that Merida wanted to “dress up” for her coronation ceremony, the new 2D artwork was created, first debuting on the official invitation that was sent out to the media."

So, Disney's justification for making the change is that Merida herself wanted to dress up for her coronation ceremony. This seems disingenuous: Merida is a fictional character who doesn't want anything – and besides, at the actual coronation in the Magic Kingdom, Merida was dressed in attire more closely resembling her outfit from the film than from the new 2D art.

And where is this "limited line of products" to be sold? At Target, according to Inside the Magic. Have a look at Target's main page for the Disney Princesses.

It's all about the new Merida, and it features rather frightening products, like this doll with spindly space alien arms.

Ugh.

In their exclusive piece about Disney's response, Inside the Magic concludes:

"Looking forward, [Disney execs] could not say exactly how she would be depicted alongside the other Disney Princesses other than to again repeat that this “one-time stylized version” was only intended for the coronation and some products, hoping to create some calm in the communities who are up in arms over the matter."

This brings us to the crux of the matter: If Disney hopes that the girl empowerment community and our allies will be placated because 2D Merida is only temporary, they're missing the point. People are up in arms because the changes to Merida -- even if temporary in nature -- completely undercut the character, selling girls short.

Let's review the chief problems:

- They took a strong character and weakened her.

- They took a natural beauty and glamorized her.

- They took a youthful 16-year-old and made her look like she's 22.

- They disrespected the fact that Merida is a princess who goes against the grain, eschewing the trappings of being a princess in favor of being an individual.

By squeezing a character so widely regarded as a barrier-breaking role model into a cookie cutter mold, Disney's Consumer Products Division sent the message that in the end, looks are all that matter.

In short, if Disney's response is, "Don't worry, folks; this new Merida is only temporary!", they've missed the point. Let's call on Disney to address their poor decision to redesign Merida in the first place--however temporary and "limited" that change might be and reassure us that they will treat this character with integrity in the future.

Sign the petition here.

-----

P.S. I hope A Mighty Girl will consider updating the petition to a) include Target, which is apparently to be the main retailer of products featuring the new 2D Merida; and b) respond to Disney's response, outlined above.

-----

To read my previous posts on Merida, click here.

To read my previous posts on the Disney Princess brand, click here.

The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best family and parenting bloggers out there. Our contributing and guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor, and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. Rebecca Hains blogs at rebeccahains.wordpress.com.

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Kirstie Alley slams A&F CEO Mike Jeffries about comments he made toward plus-sized consumers. Mr. Jeffries is not a stranger to controversy. Here, an A&F employee stacks clothes at a company store in Chicago, April 29. (Associated Press)

Kirstie Alley slams Abercrombie (+video): Moms, will you be shopping there?

By Lisa Suhay, Guest Blogger / 05.16.13

Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries has managed to tick off actress Kirstie Alley and the entire Over-size-10 population his employee “look” policy. Yet Wall Street isn't complaining. The brand’s profits remain steady, and the stock is trading at the top of its 52-week range.

But Wall Street doesn't represent Kirstie Alley, or most moms, I suspect.

Alley, who is a mom, denounced Jeffries comments in an interview with Entertainment Tonight (see video):  "He said Abercrombie clothes are for people who are cool and look a certain way and are beautiful and are thin' and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah," Alley said. "That would make me never buy anything from Abercrombie."

"I’ve got two kids in that bracket," said Alley (who's sons are 18 and 20). "But they will never walk in those doors because of his view of people -- forget women, his view of just people.”

While Mr. Jeffries has caught flak for his comments for now, he may have the last laugh if parents and other consumers continue to shop there.

For the moment, Jeffries is getting the opportunity to see how the other 67 percent lives — that’s how many shoppers are plus-size, according to ABC News.

He’s also experiencing something close to the bullying suffered by those who don’t fit his company’s “look.” 

There’s a petition on Change.org demanding the store stock larger sizes (only 75 people have signed it). Teenage critics protested outside a Chicago Abercrombie and Fitch store earlier this week. And in a viral video campaign, "#FitchTheHomeless," filmmaker Greg Karber is trying to "re-brand" the company by giving its clothes to homeless people. I really like the "Karberizing" of the brand as a form of punishment.
 
By now Jeffries’ 2006 Salon interview, resurfacing since ABC News ran a piece showing the company sells mainly size 00, is cemented in the annals of marketing history; a monument to how long a bad remark can remain potent thanks to the computer and online memory.
 
He told Salon in 2006: “In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids. Candidly, we go after the cool kids…. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”
 
As a result of his remarks Jeffries is being momentarily schooled on how it feels to be unpopular. I hope he’s also learning that size only matters when it comes to mistakes.

However, I wonder if this lesson will stick. While under his direction, the brand has been a constant source of courtroom and news fodder for its discriminatory in-store “look” policy, but it has also won praise from the LGBT community for “inclusion hiring policies.”

Huh?
 
The Human Rights Campaign lists Abercrombie & Fitch at the top of its 2012 Corporate Equality Index.
 
In response to the ranking, the company's senior vice president of diversity and inclusion is quoted by HRC saying:
 
“Through A&F's corporate values and sound diversity strategy, we remain committed to a focused and funded initiative that supports all of our associates including the LGBT community."

Of course it is always much easier to be “tolerant” of your own reflection than that of others, so I’m not entirely sure how big a pat on the back Jeffries, who himself has a male live-in partner, gets for his championing of LGBT rights in his company’s stores.
 
Maybe the LGBT community isn't factoring in more general discrimination against those who don’t fit the company’s visual standard. I suspect that if they were more aware they might just rescind the honor.
 
For example, according to The Associated Press, in 2004, “Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) agreed to pay $40 million to black, Hispanic and Asian employees and job applicants to settle a class-action federal discrimination lawsuit that accused the clothing retailer of promoting whites at the expense of minorities.”
 
“The settlement required the company to adhere to a consent decree that calls for the implementation of new policies and programs to promote diversity and prevent discrimination in its workforce. It also must pay about $10 million to monitor compliance and cover attorneys' fees,” according to the AP.
 
Also, according to the BBC, Abercrombie & Fitch was taken to court in 2009 for banishing an employee with a prosthetic arm from a store in London. The employee, Riam Dean, was awarded £8,000 for unlawful harassment, though the tribunal ruled that she hadn't suffered disability discrimination.
 
More recently, the Employee Relations Law Journal, Spring 2013 issue cites the case where a court ruled the company violated Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act by refusing to hire a Muslim applicant, Samantha Elauf, for a store model job because she wore a headscarf, which was deemed inconsistent with the chain's "Look" policy.
 
The court held that making an exception for Ms. Elauf to wear the scarf would not have caused Abercrombie undue hardship.

 
But checking the stock market this week there is little “hardship” on the company’s bottom line.
 
We, the over size 10 and female set, have the power to stop this behavior, and Forbes Magazine has our backs on this one.

From its March blog “The Real Reason Women Shop More Than Men”:

“The real reason is sobering.  In virtually every society in the world, women have primary care-giving responsibilities for both children and the elderly (and often, just about everybody else in-between). In this primary caregiving role, women find themselves buying on behalf of everyone else in their lives,” Forbes writes. “The list is long: in addition to buying for themselves, women buy on behalf of husbands, partners, kids, colleagues, adult children, friends, relatives, elderly parents, in-laws, their businesses and even their kids’ friends, to name just a few.  If somebody, somewhere needs a gift, chances are there’s a woman thinking about it; tracking it down; wrapping it; making sure it’s accompanied by a personal message and then arriving to the person on the appointed day.”
 
That’s one hefty footprint on the ledger, especially if we change the color from black to red.
 
So let me just take this opportunity to remind Jeffries of the classic Momism, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

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Underage drinking is a major public health concern. Here, Walton County, Fla. Deputy Sheriff Brad Barefield, right, checked for alcohol in a drink as spring breaker Wesley Bell watchedon a Florida beach, March 13, 2013. (Associated Press)

Drunk ASU student left at hospital with a Post-it note stuck to him

By Andrew Averill, Correspondent / 05.15.13

The Post-it note left on an Arizona State University student who was left in a wheelchair, passed out, in front of a hospital said he had participated in a fraternity drinking competition and downed about 20 shots of tequila. He was 19 years old. 

Good thing the fraternity brothers wheeled him to the hospital in spite of what the Associated Press reported was their concern everyone would get in trouble if they did. His blood-alcohol content was at life threatening levels – six times the legal limit for driving – at .47.

The illegal use of alcohol by people under the age of 21 is a symptom of what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls a "major" public health problem. Each year, more than 4,700 people under age 21 die from their alcohol consumption, CDC statistics show.

Kids 12 to 20 years of age consume about 11 percent of all alcohol in the United States. And, says the CDC, 90 percent of the alcohol they consume is by binge drinking, defined as five or more drinks for men and four or more drinks for women consumed in two hours. 

The CDC estimates that binge drinking costs the US $1.90 a drink, or $223.5 billion in 2006, due to health care costs, crime, and productivity loss. 

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The Disney makeover. On the left, Merida from "Brave" — disheveled and normally-proportioned. On the right, sketches of the new Merida post-makeover, posted on Disney's website until they were taken down yesterday — slimmer, glitzy, and... evil? (Screenshot )

Disney Princess Merida makeover: A 7-year-old’s verdict on the 'Brave' heroine

By Lisa Suhay, Guest Blogger / 05.14.13

The newest, most feminist-forward Disney princess, Merida of the animated film "Brave" asks, “If you had the chance to change your fate, would you?”

Disney corporate answered with a resounding “No!” when it stuck to gender-typed tradition and converted the disheveled, feisty, normally-proportioned, self-reliant archer to a slimmer, glitzy, doe-eyed version, sparking a petition by outraged fans.

Worse, it disappointed a chunky little red-haired girl I babysit for because it put her princess dream back out of reach.

Merida was crowned as Disney’s 11th official princess last Thursday at Disney World. Sadly, it wasn’t the sassy Scottish lassie who won her own freedom with archery and willpower who took the stage at the coronation. Instead Disney marketing missed the target again where the good of little girls is concerned and sexed-up the character with more cleavage and a vapid look.

“Yuck!” squeaked Laurel when her baby blue eyes saw the side-by-side before and after versions of Merida on my computer this morning. Laurel, who is 7 and has wavy bright red hair, likes to hover at my right shoulder like a ditzy little angel in the mornings because I blogged about her and she’s always on the lookout to see her own face on my screen.

“Yuck?” I responded. “Which one’s the one you like?”

A chunky little finger went to the old Merida. So I asked her why, and she responded with what, for Laurel, is a super cohesive answer: “The one in dark blue is smiling and her hair’s prettier 'cause it’s more like mine and 'cause the new one’s scary-pretty with all that blowy hair and cat-eyes. The new one looks mean and I don’t know her.”

Then she made my day and my blog by pointing back to the make-over Merida and asking, “Is that the Evil Merida?”

It took Herculean restraint not to say, “Yes! Behold the demon Disney spawn that is a slimmer, girlier, and more stereotypical version wrought in the cauldron of marketing’s poisonous spell.”

Instead I simply explained that Disney had given her a make-over. To which Laurel simply replied, “Oh. That’s too bad.”

For those, like me, who agree with Laurel’s assessment of the Disney-engineered damage to how girls view themselves and their future roles as women there is a petition “Disney: Say No to the Merida Makeover, Keep Our Hero Brave!” It's online at Change.org 

The petition, created by the webmasters at A Mighty Girl reads in part: “The redesign of Merida in advance of her official induction to the Disney Princess collection does a tremendous disservice to the millions of children for whom Merida is an empowering role model who speaks to girls' capacity to be change agents in the world rather than just trophies to be admired. Moreover, by making her skinnier, sexier and more mature in appearance, you are sending a message to girls that the original, realistic, teenage-appearing version of Merida is inferior; that for girls and women to have value -- to be recognized as true princesses -- they must conform to a narrow definition of beauty.”

The petitioner also quotes "Brave" writer and co-director Brenda Chapman in a 2011 interview with Pixar Portal: "Because of marketing, little girls gravitate toward princess products, so my goal was to offer up a different kind of princess – a stronger princess that both mothers and daughters could relate to, so mothers wouldn't be pulling their hair out when their little girls were trying to dress or act like this princess. Instead they'd be like, ‘Yeah, you go girl!’ ”

This new Merida is definitely the opposite of what her creator intended.

So I found myself signing a petition in support of an imaginary girl because I believe in real girls like Laurel having a fighting chance at hitting the target of self-esteem in life. I believe that they like themselves a little more and dream with a bit more confidence when the waist lines and imaginations are slightly expanded in their role models.

If you had the choice to change a little girl’s fate of self-loathing and obsession with makeup, hair, and wasp-waisted fashion slavery would you? I would, and I don’t even have a daughter of my own. Also, as the mother of four sons, I want more of the old Meridas out there in the dating pool for them to meet.

The Golden Rule of parenting is to be consistent and not mix messages. Disney is exhibiting some poor parenting of its brands with this move. It’s also making the error of telling us “Do as I say and not as I do.” "Brave" succeeded because it resonated with all of us who might not have ever fit the princess mold, but who have risen to be queens of our own castles by being brave enough to overcome the stereotypes that weighted us down early in life.

If you want to see a real princess, cast your gaze back at England’s late Princess Diana when she walked the minefields of Cambodia in support of children who’d been disfigured by the devices. Diana looked every inch a princess of the realm than when she wore that plastic face shield, helmet, and khakis as she championed the Land Mine Ban Treaty. While Princess Diana was often noted for her fashion sense and beauty, she also had the courage to help people while not looking like a fashion model.

As the Queens of our own little realms we must unite the feminine clans against this dark army of old school marketing shills that has captured our princess.

Personally, I’d love to see moms put on a Disney princess protest in their own areas by dressing their girls up in their favorite princess costume, but with messy hair and a few dirty smudges on their cheeks, tiara rakishly askew.

I vow to tilt my crown, roll up my frilly sleeves and let Disney and little girls everywhere know that being a good ruler is a dirty job. Instead of asking little girls “would you change your fate” I’d rather ask Disney, “If you had the chance to change your mind, would you?” Let’s hope they’re brave enough to admit defeat and retreat from this attack on progress.

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Who is the typical sexter? Media reports would have you believe it's a she, she's white, and she's straight. But that's not the whole story. Here, a costumer holds up a smart phone he just had serviced at a MetroPCS authorized dealer. (Mary Altaffer/AP Photo)

The girls are all right: Girls not as vulnerable to sexting as media says

By Anne Collier, Guest Blogger / 05.13.13

This is the last post of a three-part series on youth sexting. Here are Part 1 on the motivation spectrum and Part 2 on recommendations for sound education around sexual health and ethics.

Sexting is the latest subject of “intersecting panics about technology, youth, sexuality, raunch culture and celebrity,” Australian author and research Nina Funnell wrote me after I heard her speak in Sydney in March. “While these panics all pre-existed the phenomenon of sexting, they have found new life and form” with it.

Along with her qualitative research on sexting among 16-to-25-year-olds, Nina looked at news reporting on the subject. She analyzed coverage in 738 newspaper articles in the Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the US published during 2009. Here are some of her findings, which she presented in a talk I heard her give in Sydney this past March:

• Heterosexual bias: “Not one mentioned homosexual sexting. This is despite the fact that taking and sharing nude images is an established courtship practice within many parts of the gay community and that apps such as Grindr have popularized the practice considerably.
• Gender bias: “Not one specifically mentioned teen boys “‘ruining their reputations,’ although this was a commonly stated concern for girls. Numerous studies show that teen boys are producing images at almost the same rate as teen girls. While it is true that girls’ images get down-streamed (forwarded on) more often than those of boys, the rate of production of boys images is by no means trivial.”
• Racial bias: “Virtually all the photos associated with these stories featured white teenagers: particularly, slender, white, attractive teen girls.” If you only saw the newspaper photos, Nina said, “you would be forgiven for thinking that sexting was exclusively a “hot white girl phenomenon. This of course is not the case.” As a University of Texas study of sexting among Latino and African American 10-graders found that 20% of black and Hispanic teens have sent a sext and 30% have received one.
• “Purity vs. prospects”: The coverage indicated that concerns about sexting “tend to break down along clear gender lines. For girls, the main concerns were that sexting could lead to shame, humiliation, embarrassment, loss of reputation, bullying and regret. For boys, the fears tended to revolve around the belief that sexting could lead to prosecution or sex-offender registration and that this in turn could affect future prospects (particularly in terms of college admission and employment).”

The coverage pointed to a “problematic double standard” whereby “the risks for girls are discussed in relation to privacy and a female’s moral reputation, while the risks around boys are framed in terms of a boy’s legal standing as a public citizen.” Nina added that the sexting coverage reflected an odd blend of “paternalistic concern” for and “prurient interest” in the particular demographic of teenagers featured in photos and cases covered.

All in all, what her analysis indicated to her is that “the panic around sexting is highly scripted and conforms to a predictable narrative where girls are reduced to victims or sluts, boys are assumed to be aggressors, and same sex couples get ignored all together,” she wrote. That resonates with findings in the last decade by researchers Justine Cassell and Meg Kramer, then at Northwestern University, and reported in “High Tech or High Risk: Moral Panics about Girls Online.” In it Cassell and Kramer write, “The myth of girls’ vulnerability online has unfortunate consequences, because it may result in positioning girls as disempowered with respect to technology.” And I would add: disempowered in general. And if girls are simplistically represented as potential victims, what message does that send about boys?

These are the kinds of questions that fuel good media literacy discussions at home and school — discussions that would serve both boys and girls well if they analyze news coverage for assumptions and biases about both sexes, as well as young people in general.

The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best family and parenting bloggers out there. Our contributing and guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor, and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. Anne Collier blogs at NetFamilyNews.org.

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My Mother's Day gift — a reality check from this little punk, Laurel. This little red-haired, high-energy child is as effervescent, unpredictable and dangerous when applied incorrectly as one of Willy Wonka’s Fizzy Lifting drinks. I was too, but (Lisa Suhay)

Mother's Day gift to mom of four boys: a little girl with Willy Wonka ‘lift’

By Lisa Suhay, Guest Blogger / 05.12.13

This Mother’s Day my gift came early in the form of a reality check on my relaxed and fun quotients. I learned to enjoy the present, thanks to a little girl named Laurel, 7, who entered our lives for school day mornings a few months ago and helped me get my mom skills to sparkle and shine again.

Laurel is in the chess program I run at the local community center and is always there and smiling no matter what. Win, lose, draw, cookie falls on the floor, she giggles through it all.

After being uncharacteristically absent for two weeks, Laurel came in one afternoon very somber and asked, “Mrs. Suhay, are you going to die today?” When I made light of it telling her I didn’t have that on my social calendar, Laurel solemnly replied, “My Daddy died. Am I going to die today?”

That exchange led to the chat with her mom, Theresa, and learning that Laurel’s step-father died very suddenly of a stroke, at age 34.  

The shock of the loss had the effect of shattering Laurel’s rose-colored view of the world.

Then I learned that Laurel’s mom was up at 5 each morning in order to drive her 18-month-old son to daycare across town and then get back to our neck of the woods to get Laurel to a breakfast program at school and then, finally, to work, again, across town.

Both Laurel and my son Quin, 9, attend the same elementary school, and it seemed an easy fix to offer to take Laurel from 7 to 8:30 each morning, give her breakfast and take her to school with Quin for the remainder of the school year.

My husband has a key phrase that applies here: “Everything is easy when you don’t know what you’re doing.” I learned fast that I was right out of my depth with a little girl.

True confession time – I’ve always longed for a daughter, but said otherwise so as not to hurt my sons’ feelings or appear to be ungrateful for the gift my four boys are.

So Laurel’s become part of our morning routine for the past several months. She’s back to her old self, which is to say that this little red-haired, high-energy child is as effervescent, unpredictable, and dangerous when applied incorrectly, as one of Willy Wonka’s Fizzy Lifting drinks.

Here is the “daughter” of my dreams and she drove me crazy from the first moment she walked in the door because I had completely lost touch with my inner-girl child.

Here is a child speaking in a stereotypical high-pitched, baby-talk voice, in pink and with the attention span of a butterfly but the optimism of Super Pollyanna. If you put Laurel in a room filled ceiling to floor with poop she’d yell, “YAAAAAAAY! and run in to look for the pony.

I caught myself cringing and developing a sharp tone when answering her questions and feeling angst when it was time for her to arrive. What was wrong with me? She had a similar effect on Quin, only at a multiple of Pi. His Apergers nature means that interruption of routine can melt him down. Since my husband is the same way. Over time, I have learned to keep things quiet, predictable in the extreme and low-key in order to keep the peace.

“Why do you think everything is fun,” Quin demanded in frustration of Laurel after she’d tried to mimic  him using a hula hoop as a jump rope, resulting in hitting me on the head so hard I was loopy.

Unfazed, Laurel squeaked out, “Cause ima gerrraal!”

“No! Not all girls think everything is fun. Like my mom,” Quin sputtered. “Would you think it’s fun if Godzilla came out of the river over there?”

Without the slightest hesitation she squealed, “Yes!” She then whirled around in an epic non-sequitur and shouted, “Kitty!” at one of our cats.

“Mom, she’s just like that dog in the movie 'Up'! The one that would be in the middle of a sentence and just stop and shout ‘Squirrel!’” Quin despaired. She was doing it more to make him groan – because that made her laugh – than because she’s actually that ditzy. Well, she’s pretty ditzy, but she puts it into hyper-active-hyper-drive for Quin.

I actually made a little video of them, comparing them to the cartoon "Dexter’s Lab" with Quin as Dexter and Laurel as DeeDee and her mom and I have had hours of laughs over the truth of that revelation. Unfortunately, Laurel saw the video and has embraced the Deedee role with more fervor and took to calling Quin “Dexter.”

After the second week of mornings with Laurel my husband finally met her and gave me that husband look that lets you know a big “Gotcha!” is about to manifest.

“She does everything you do that drives me insane,” he said. “You make everything funny, or you did until you learned to tone it down.”

I was incensed that he’d dare accuse me of being girlie, and that’s when reality tapped me on the shoulder and whispered in my ear that he was right and there was nothing “wrong” with Laurel.

I was the problem. I’d stopped many of my own happy-skippy, fuzzy-pink-optimist behaviors in the past few years and not realized it.

Moms are like minerals, the pressure can make us into diamonds, which is great, but diamonds need a lot of work to shine properly. I was still in the rough and didn’t even know it.

Having four boys, one in college and another headed to university in the fall, and working from home in a bad economy has both seasoned and toughened me up. I am a diamond in the rough with a glaring flaw – I’ve forgotten how to be a happy kid of either gender.

It’s taken the Laurel experience, being in another mom’s shows to cut me down to size as a mom.

In a house full of men and boys, instead of showing them how wonderful it can be to be yourself – be sparkly and free – I bowed to the household trend and blended in to the crowd.  

Laurel brought back my fun side and helped me to see that if we want our kids to be themselves then we need to not bow to peer pressure, even in our own homes.

For Mother’s Day I am going to ask them to skip the usual breakfast in bed and crank the stereo to my favorite music, make waffles, and then paint my nails hot pink with little sparkly thingies on them. I may even wear heels with the apron just to freak them all out as much as possible. After all, I’m making up for lost time.

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More moms are getting a college education than ever before, a Pew Research Center study says. In this file photo taken Feb. 10, 2008, Sheena Payne of Orlando poses with her daughter, Laila. Ms. Payne put her education on hold when her daughter was born, but had just won a scholarship for an online college degree through Project Working Mom. (Courtesy of Sheena Payne/American InterContinental University )

Moms are getting schooled: Record amount of mothers college educated, Pew says

By Lisa Suhay, Guest Blogger / 05.10.13

A new study of the impact of education on child bearing released today, “Record Share of New Mothers are College Educated” by the Pew Research Center, indicates that educating women beyond high school improves the health, social, and educational wellbeing of their kids, while the poorly educated get more children, both out of wedlock and much sooner.

The study confirms the more education a mom has, the better off her children will be in the short and long term by virtue of the fact that among all women with infants in 2011, the largest share, 54 percent, were married with at least some college education. This was compared to only 17 percent in 1960, according to Pew.

That increase appears to have resulted in women who wait to have kids and get married before becoming mothers. The children resulting from those more educated unions are healthier, full-term babies brought into more economically sound households, Pew researchers discovered.

“The current pattern of fertility and marital status is largely due to the close link between marriage and educational attainment," the report says. "Women with college experience are more likely to be married than their less educated counterparts. 

“On average, a mother with more education is more likely to deliver a baby at term, and more likely to have a baby with a healthy birth weight. As they grow up, children with more educated mothers tend to have better cognitive skills and higher academic achievement than others. It is difficult to determine whether maternal education is causing some of these outcomes, or if it is serving as a proxy for some other causal factor (for example, economic well-being). What is irrefutable, though, is that on average the more education a woman has, the better off her children will be.”

However, the overall rise in educational levels has not equated to a decline in unwed pregnancies overall according to a survey released last week by the US Census Bureau which stated, “as of 2011, 62 percent of women age 20 to 24 who gave birth in the previous 12 months were unmarried. This compares with 17 percent among women age 35 to 39.”

The information comes from Social and Economic Characteristics of Currently Unmarried Women with a Recent Birth: 2011, an American Community Survey report. According to the Census, in 2011, 4.1 million women reported that they had given birth in the past year. Of these women, 36 percent were unmarried at the time of the survey, an increase from 2005 when an estimated 31 percent of recent births were to unmarried women (2005 was the earliest year for which statistics are available from the American Community Survey).

That survey did not take educational levels into account, therefore it’s difficult to know if the unwed 20- to 24-year-old moms were also enrolled in a four-year, higher education plan. Almost half (48 percent) of new mothers without a high school diploma are younger than 25, only 3 percent of new mothers with a bachelor’s degree are younger than 25, according to the report. Also, according to the research, about 6 out of 10 (61 percent in 2011) women with less than a high school diploma were unmarried when they give birth. This share declines to only 9 percent among women with at least a bachelor’s degree.

It seems there is little doubt that education plays a powerful role in the choices women make when it comes to life strategies.

Rose Kreider, a Census Bureau family demographer and one of the American Community Survey report’s authors, drew the conclusion that, “The increased share of unmarried recent mothers is one measure of the nation’s changing family structure. Nonmarital fertility has been climbing steadily since the 1940s and has risen even more markedly in recent years.”

One of the Pew study’s authors, Gretchen Livingston, said in an e-mail interview, “Yes it is certainly the case that non-marital births have been rising over time, and this is the case for all educational groups (though non-marital births are far less common for more educated women).”

However, Ms. Livingston added, “One way to think about it might be, were it not for the fact that the educational profile of new moms was increasing, the share of non-marital births would be even higher than it is.”

“Another thing to keep in mind — while it is the case that women are gaining more education, and more education is associated with births within marriage; it’s also the case that delaying marriage to go to college means that women have additional years where they are ‘at risk’ of a non-marital birth than would have been the case in the past (when they got married at 18 or 20, let’s say),” Livingston concluded.

When Livingston and her colleagues analyzed the age and educational attainment together, the largest category of mothers of infants in 2011 — accounting for 42 percent —includes those age 25 to 34 with at least some college education. Comparing that to the Census survey it appears that the figure of 62 percent of women age 20 to 24 who gave birth last year while unmarried does, in fact, correlate to the standard age of those not yet graduated from an institute of higher learning. Again, we can look back to the Census and see that this compares with 17 percent among women age 35 to 39, an age bracket that would be considered typically post-collegiate.

Also, from 2008 to 2011, the number of new mothers with less than a high school diploma declined 17 percent, and the number with only a high school diploma went down 15 percent.

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Teens are, when allowed to be, refreshingly competent to discuss the moral underpinnings of sexting. As mobile use becomes more prevalent, have pro-active conversations with teens, not reactive. Here, in Philadelphia, Miss., texting looks to be more popular than the high school football game these fans in the stands are attending. 2010, file. (Melanie Stetson Freeman/The Christian Science Monitor)

Sexting: Tips for educators, parents for talking to teenagers about sexting

By Anne Collier, Guest Blogger / 05.09.13

Editor's note: This is part two of Anne Collier's series about sexting. Read part one here. 

Social norms – the expectations and cues that govern behavior in a group or a society — are protective. There hasn’t been much reference to them in the Internet safety field, but they’re a pillar of individual and collective wellbeing wherever there is community. You may’ve noticed that, at the end of Part One of this series, I quoted Sydney-based researcher and author Nina Funnell where she touched on the social norms young people are developing around sexting — an important safeguard against the violation of trust involved in forwarding someone’s photos without their consent.

Young people she interviewed told her they’d never do such a thing. One invoked the Golden Rule as a reason why she’d never do such a thing, another pointed out the “exploitation” or “cheating” that nonconsensual forwarding would represent. A high school student I spoke with recently said, “Nice kids would never do that.” There is growing evidence that young people already have in place preventive or protective social norms around digital photography of all kinds, including sexually related imagery.

Advanced moral reasoning among sexters

Going through her interview results, Nina thought of Kohlberg’s stages of moral development because most of the answers from the “non-forwarding group” in her sample “fit somewhere between stages 3-6,” she told me. “No one [emphasis hers] mentioned anything that would actually fit into stage 1 or 2.” A Stage 1 or 2 answer would be the response that virtually all anti-sexting education has been aimed at to date: something like “I don’t want to get prosecuted/charged with child porn offenses” or “She’d never send me another nude again” — responses that are only about consequences for oneself, not the other person(s). Nina’s point, she wrote me, “is to illustrate that the ‘non-forwarders’ are actually highly capable of advanced moral reasoning. We shouldn’t assume that young people are not capable of this and can only be engaged in education around the laws.”

That should be underscored: We shouldn’t assume that young people aren’t capable of caring about the consequences of their actions for their peers. Or at least we shouldn’t build educational campaigns based on such an assumption. What kind of message would such an educational campaign send to young people?

Risky sexting correlates with other risk factors

“I think,” Nina continued, “young people are actually doing a pretty good job most of the time of developing and negotiating what those values are. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule but, very often, when you find that an individual is out to humiliate or hurt others, there are all sorts of other things (and risk factors) going on in that young person’s life.”

Which raises two questions for educators to consider: 1) If there are other risk factors in a person’s life, how effective would education be if aimed strictly at a behavior that is likely more symptomatic than the root problem? 2) How effective is it to develop education that fails to acknowledge the intelligence or wisdom demonstrated by most of the intended recipients of that education?

Sexting as individual as sex

So here are Nina’s own take-aways about young people who engage in sexting from interviews she has conducted so far: They have a wide range of views, values, and experiences around sexting; probably parallel to sexuality in general, “their reasons for sexting are highly diverse and individual”; they “have very different views of consensual vs. non-consensual sexting”; and “they are eager, able and willing to discuss the issue provided it is done in a safe, respectful space.”

Respect is key. One of the problems that has hampered digital-risk-prevention education to date is that adults “do not recognize or celebrate the competencies young people bring to these discussions,” Nina wrote. I wholeheartedly agree.

For effective education

Her recommendations on how to talk with young people about “nudes” or “selfies” is that the conversations be…

• “Pro-active (not reactive)
• “Evidenced-based
• “Ongoing, not one-offs (like a single school assembly or class)
• “Gender-inclusive (not heteronormative)
• “Free from demonizing technology or young people
• “Build on young people’s strengths and ethical decisionmaking ability
• “Developed in consultation with young people"

The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best family and parenting bloggers out there. Our contributing and guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor, and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. Anne Collier blogs at NetFamilyNews.org.

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