I’ve always loved Barbie. And I pooh-poohed any naysayer who complained Barbie contributed to stereotypes of women and to eating disorders—teens aspiring to attain Barbie’s highly unattainable proportions. Nonetheless, I’m cheering the organization, Dads & Daughters latest victory—successfully campaigning against Hasbro to scrap plans to make dolls based on the Pussycat Dolls, a musical sextet of very sexy and scantily-clad women.

The organization’s letter-writing campaign put pressure on Hasbro to shelve plans to make the dolls and to issue this statement, which is featured on the Dads and Daughter’s web site (www.dadsanddaughters.org):

“Hasbro and Interscope have jointly agreed that Hasbro will not move forward with the line of dolls based on the recording group, The Pussycat Dolls. Interscope’s current creative direction and images for the recording group are focused on a much older target than we had anticipated at the time of our original discussions, thereby making a doll line inappropriate for Hasbro.”

Originally, the dolls were expected to be on sale by Christmas and would’ve been marketed to children aged 6 to 9. 6 to 9!!! That’s insane. For those of you who are not familiar with the Pussycat Dolls, here’s your gateway to familiarity: Their first hit was “Don’t Cha,” which featured the chorus, “Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me/Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me?” and their dancing is quite risqué, as well as their wardrobe. Don’t get me wrong—the Dolls are highly energetic and entertaining, but their look and dancing is not appropriate for girls aged 6 to 9 to imitate, let alone, have in their hands as plastic dolls. Hasbro got it right by realizing the inappropriateness of this.

Not only is it inspiring to see an organization devoted to strengthening the relationship between fathers and their daughters—an issue that is often not taken seriously, but also it’s inspiring to see an organization take on contemporary issues—issues that affect how young girls see themselves. Cheers to Dads and Daughters!

I was racing through the Washington Post this morning, trying to finish the A section before it was time to go into border collie mode and start nipping heels (who wants to go to school in June, anyway?), and came across a brief item about a new government survey.

The National Center for Health Statistics surveyed about 4,900 men between the ages of 15 and 44. Based on the results, the researchers estimate about 28 million men have children under the age of 19, and that 75 percent live with at least some of those children.

They also found a clear connection between a father's level of education and his level of involvement with his children. More educated dads were more likely to read to their kids, bathe and change them, eat meals with them, and play with them. They were also much less likely to father a child outside of marriage...about 6 percent of college graduates had done so, compared to almost half of those who hadn't finished high school.

All very interesting, if somewhat basic, information.

A bit more interesting to me was the fact that this was the first time that this major survey, the National Survey of Family Growth, actually bothered to include men. (It's been carried out since 1973.)

Remember when we all woke up to the fact, some years back, that all the medical research we'd been counting on to keep us safe from dangerous side effects of drugs or the cancer-causing properties of various chemicals had been carried out exclusively on men, as though men were the template for everyone else when it came to biology?

Women, I guess, have been the template for family life.

I hope the NCHS will keep on checking with men about their experiences of family life and fatherhood. Findings like these have clear and compelling policy implications -- such as providing more support for the idea that closing the education gap between men and women is important for the well-being of children.

Van Jones, head of the Ella Baker Center which works for juvenile justice reform in California, writes:

World-famous environmental heroine Julia Butterfly Hill has climbed
another tree to stop a new injustice.

Julia gained global fame for living for two years in a redwood to
prevent it from being chopped down. But this time, her perch is far
from the quiet redwood forests of northern California. Today, she is
in the middle of South Central Los Angeles.

The tree is in the middle of a huge urban farm, which feeds hundreds
of urban residents and is slated to be bulldozed. And Julia is
putting her body on the line, to give the community time to raise the
funds to buy the land. The community needs $16M. With the help of
Julia and folk singer Joan Baez, the gap has narrowed to about $4M.
People who want to contribute can do so.

I know that some cynics will snicker and sneer. But I don't care. I
am very proud of Julia.

We often criticize the eco-elite for standing aside or looking away
when the urban poor are struggling for their rights. So many of us
TALK about the need for progressives to get out of our single-issue
silos (choice, environment, civil rights, etc.) and link arms with
other struggles. But so few ever do.

Well, Julia Butterfly Hill is SHOWING the way forward for all of us
with her actions. And - in these days of oil shocks and obesity
epidemics - I can't imagine a more worthy cause than helping to
ensure that urban folks can maintain a healthy connection with the
land - and guarantee their own food security.

Of course, I am not surprised that Julia has taken this stand. After
her famous tree-sit (which ended in 1999), Julia moved to Oakland,
California, where she has become a beloved and active resident.

In other words, though the media is just now figuring it out, Julia
Butterfly long ago transformed herself from "forest goddess" to
"urban heroine." I just hope the rest of us can learn to cross racial
and issue divides as joyously and beautifully as she has done.

In the meantime, she and the Urban Farmers deserve our support.

As a parent, I will be breathing a big sigh of relief in a couple of weeks when my older son leaves middle school behind. And the parents of his classmates tell me they will be doing the same. I'm almost expecting that the entire neighborhood will feel the breeze emanating from the middle school auditorium next Wednesday when the whole ordeal finally ends for the lucky 8th graders and their parents.

Elementary school is a time of positive discovery and growth for most kids, and parents get a second-hand thrill from watching mastery develop, friendships form, interests and talents emerge. While high school can be catastrophic for some kids, for others it is a time to soar. Middle school, though, just seemed like a frustrating nowhere-land, with a few bright spots provided by wonderful teachers.

I think it was about three years ago that a New York Times columnist referred to middle school as "the Bermuda Triangle of education". I didn't get it at the time, but now I do. It's where your kids drop off the radar. It's where the whole home-school communication thing falls apart dramatically. It's where the odds that at least one of your child's six or seven teachers is going to rub you the wrong way are very, very high.

Education expert Hayes Mizell gave his thoughts on the topic at a speech a few years back. One thing that strikes me in reading his talk is the notion that physical activity is identified by researchers as one of the key developmental needs of middle schoolers. That makes sense -- this is a time of rapid growth, rivaled only by the years from 0 to 3 in terms of the speed of change and development that goes on. Young adolescents need to keep in touch with their rapidly changing physical selves.

Yet at my son's middle school, like many others, there is no longer any recess during the school day. Gym class is a one-semester affair. There are a few after-school sports, but a lot of kids have jobs or other obligations, and a lot of kids that age aren't into team sports, with their potential for public humiliation.

Parents, Mizell says, are a key to middle school reform. But it's hard to know how to assess your child's middle school and how to approach the job of trying to make it better. There's help available. MiddleWeb is a wonderful window into the philosophy and practice of middle school education, and the teacher blogs can be addicting. Schools to Watch offers a parent-friendly assessment exercise that can be completed in as little as two hours by interested parents. I wish I had known about it a few years ago. If you have a rising middle schooler in your family, think about giving it a try next fall.

Let's put middle school back on the map.

I’m trying to remember what I watched when I was 5 years old. I don’t remember. What I do remember is that I didn’t have a television in my room, but that’s not the case with many 5 year olds today. According to a Kaiser report—Electronic Media in the Lives of Infants, Toddlers, Preschoolers and Their Parents—43% of 4 to 6 year olds have a television in their room. The most common reason parents name for having a TV in their child’s bedroom is that it frees up other TVs in the house so other family members can watch their own shows.

I refuse to be holier-than-thou by criticizing these parents for allowing their youngsters to have TV in the rooms, but it’ll probably appear that way since I do not have a 4 to 6 year old child (I have an almost-4-month-old who loves her overheard mobile). My concern is that by having a TV in their rooms, kids are not spending enough quality time with their parents. And at that tender age, I think it’s too important. I sympathize with exhausted and stressed-out parents, but when they step foot in the home, that should automatically be family time--give or take the 20 minutes it takes to unwind from work. While mom or dad unwinds, hopefully, if the TV is turned on, a PBS show or cartoon is what the kids are watching. Is this wishful thinking? Ask me when my daughter reaches that tender age. I'll definitely know what she's watching.

Census data shows that the fastest-growing household type in the U.S. is the "multigenerational household," one that includes members of three generations or more.

It's not exactly a new idea -- and while in this individualistic age it may be the disadvantages that leap to mind first (Who wants to hear, "You're going outside in that?" at the age of 35 or so?), it doesn't take much deep thinking to see the advantages, particularly for children, too often deprived of close relationships with their grandparents, and for young parents starting out, for whom housing and child care costs are a major burden.

According to a NY Times article, some of the growth is culturally driven, as immigrants from countries where the multi-generational model is the norm (as it was in this country until the advent of Social Security made independent living affordable for more elderly Americans) carry on that tradition. Single parenthood is another contributor, with young mothers often relying on their own mothers and fathers for financial and child-care support. Most multi-generational households are low or moderate income, and clearly the financial advantages are important.

But another segment of the growth seems to be driven simply by preference. Developers are catching on, building houses and planning developments geared at a new niche market of well-off multi-generational households.

When my children were small, we lived for two years in the Republic of Macedonia, a country where the multi-generation model was the norm. Though Macedonia struggles with serious ethnic divisions between Slavs, ethnic Albanians, Roma and Turks, all the groups at least have that in common. Grandmothers -- babas -- ruled the roost in the neighborhoods, caring for young children while their parents were at work, sweeping the sidewalks outside their homes and keeping an eye on older children at play. It made for a neighborhood setting so safe that my three-year-old son could walk out the door to play with neighborhood children -- a very unsettling luxury for me.

There was a whole different ethic of care among the children, as well, with older children keeping a big-sibling eye on all the younger kids, whether related or not. In fact, most of them were related, at least as cousins, since each neighborhood tended to be settled by people from a particular village. But the babas were the glue that held it all together.

Still, there was a feeling of change in the air. Some of the younger women -- the mothers -- told me that they felt this arrangement was not modern. And a primary school teacher complained to me once that children who stayed at home with their babas rather than attending preschool entered first grade unprepared -- "They can't tie their shoes, they can't button their coats, they can't do the simplest things!"

Here in the U.S., multigenerational households were still only 4 percent of all households in 2000 -- but that was a 38 percent increase from 1990, and real-estate and building industry sources say the trend has accelerated since then. It will be interesting to see how far back this particular pendulum will swing.

You can't imagine how happy and excited we are at Connect for Kids these days. Martha Pitts is our brand new writer/reporter. Every CFK staff person, past and present, has made incredible contributions toward our goal of engaging and equipping adults to act in positive ways on behalf of kids and young people. I know that Martha will as well.

Martha, a 2001 graduate of Princeton, already has an impressive resume. She's worked with high school journalism students; she interned for her hometown newspaper, the Times-Picayune; and she trained to be a court-appointed special advocate (CASA volunteer) for abused and neglected children.

Besides all of that, Martha and her husband are the proud parents of a four-month old daughter named Olivia.

Watch for Martha's byline on upcoming articles. She's already won my spot as a CFK blogger!

When I was applying to college three long decades ago, it seemed like there was a relative handful of schools that most students at my high school applied to. It was a list that was heavy on the Ivies, heavy on the liberal arts, and sprinkled with "safeties" that included some state schools and small single-sex institutions.

In typical teenage fashion, I set my heart on a particular school -- Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania -- as much for the rather perverse reason that no one from my school had gone there in decades -- as from any real understanding that it would be a good school for me. Fortunately, it turned out to be just right, and I think there was some real good sense behind my desire to re-invent myself in college without any witnesses from the agonies of high school.

These days, it's all a lot more scientific, and a lot more anxiety-producing. As the book "The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less" (coincidentally, written by a Swarthmore professor whose introductory psychology course I still remember vividly, even though it was at 8 a.m.) points out, a proliferation of options doesn't always make us happy. In the case of kids applying to college, it seems to be a recipe for angst.

But in this case, there is at least one real and very significant benefit to all that choice, all those niche schools, all those possibilities, and that's the fact that more and more colleges are looking to a market segment that for too long was not considered college material. Students with learning disabilities are going on to college in greater numbers than ever before, and some smart colleges are making substantial efforts to attract, support and retain them.

The Boston Globe ran a story this week on a number of high schools in Massachusetts that have started holding special college fairs for special education students and their parents. One such event at Arlington High School drew about 200 students and parents to meet representatives of three dozen colleges and trade schools.

For special education students, such fairs can be less intimidating than college fairs for a more general audience, since they don't have to wrestle with how much to say about their learning difficulties in such a public setting. They know that the participating colleges are going to be willing to work with them.

So amid all the societal angst about the grueling college application process, it's good to be reminded of the many benefits of a system that does, indeed, offer a whole universe of choice.

Yesterday afternoon, I got a strange request. Lisa Derx, director of e-buddies—a non-profit that provides opportunities for e-mail friendships between an individual who has an intellectual disability and a peer who does not have an intellectual disability and the subject of a potential story I’d wanted to write about—requested that I not do a story on e-buddies. Why? She said that they had too many volunteers already, and that by writing the story I’d be implicitly soliciting volunteers. She cited a recent blurb in CosmoGirl about E-Buddies. “We received hundreds of requests for applications,” she said, and the organization had to turn them down. “We don’t want to disappoint anyone.” What about a disclaimer saying that e-buddies is no longer accepting volunteers I suggested. Derx respectfully declined. I thought about begging—I really wanted to do the story, and there could be more stories on children with intellectual disabilities on our Web site, but alas, I didn’t. The sympathetic part of me beat out the unyielding journalist that lurks in me that only comes out when really needed.

On Saturday night, my husband and I sat in bed with our laptops and waited for 9pm. We were waiting for the polls to close in New Orleans—promptly at 8 pm (New Orleans is an hour behind DC). Specifically, we were waiting for the online results of the mayoral election—who had New Orleanians chosen to lead the city for the next four years? Hopefully, as voters entered the voting booths they thought of a couple of things: Which man would provide the best opportunities for my child? Which man would provide a safe and healthy environment for my child?

About a month ago, I flew to New Orleans a few days before the primary election on April 23 with my then-2.5 month old daughter. I carried her in my arms as we slipped into the voting booths. She stared at me as I made a mental pro and con list of the mayoral candidates. In the end, I could think of only her and other children as I made my selections. I didn’t believe any candidate was more qualified than the other, and I can’t say I was happy with whom I had chosen, but, well….

Afterwards, when I found out it would be a runoff, I thought the candidates would at least mention children or youth during the televised debates. Nope. Nada.
Neither of them had children’s issues explicitly on their platforms—it was an afterthought. Sure they talked about families torn apart because of Hurricane Katrina and bringing families back to New Orleans as soon as possible. There are larger issues concerning children that are looming: How many children are still considered missing? What’s the state of children in foster homes? What’s with the dragging of the feet regarding re-opening schools and hiring teachers? Are there special programs being created to help children cope with the most traumatic event that’s probably ever happened to them?

My husband and I are DC transplants who are committed to staying in DC, but we are also native New Orleanians who love the city that we were born and raised in. New Orleans is not a love ‘em and leave ‘em type of city. For years, I struggled to understand this city that I thought was backwards in every sense, and it took a natural disaster to make me realize how much I love the city.

I hope Nagin thinks of the kids second time around.