While most games for girls focus on fashion and beauty, Girls Inc., says its TeamUp game is a fun and educational game that encourages teamwork, exploration and spatial logic.

Parks give kids good places to play outside, but - based on the experience of a new generation of youth programs in urban parks - they can also go far beyond recreation to provide high-quality programs that foster healthy youth development, according to an Urban Institute report published in June 2004.

In a series of TV, print and radio ads, girls tell adults what positive messages they need to hear. Watch the PSAs and learn more online.

Here is a list of ten 'travel-time activities' for you and your children for those long summer car trips. The list ranges from the ever-popular license plate game to providing your child with a map of your travel route with stops along the way highlighted.

The Institute for Women's Policy Research reports that nearly half of all workers in the private sector get no paid sick time, and employers are reducing their paid sick time programs. Over 59 million workers have no sick leave. Only about one in every ten low-wage workers is allowed to use paid sick leave to stay home with sick children (11 percent), while more than four in every ten workers in the top wage quartile enjoy this benefit (43 percent).

Although access to maternity/paternity and paid leave is not universal, most working parents age 18 to 54 are employed at jobs that provide both. But those who need paid sick leave the most -- parents of very young children and welfare-to-work parents -- are least likely to have it, according to the Urban Institute. Many in the low-wage workforce lack paid time off, health benefits and opportunities for advancement that enable working parents to take care of their families.

This article in Pediatrics, "Early Television Exposure and Subsequent Attentional Problems in Children," examines the first-ever study linking early television watching with later attention and concentration problems. Researchers from the University of Washington found that, for children age 3 and younger, every hour of television they watched led to a 10-percent increase in the likelihood of attention problems at age 7. Even before their first birthday, kids watch more than 2 hours of television a day.

Child development specialist Ed Zigler says that children's play is under attack as schools focus on children's reading development at the expense of their equally important (and related) physical, social and emotional development.

An online community and resource for parents and expecting moms, including message boards, live chat, book and product reviews, parenting news and articles, resources for kids and more!

According to new data from the Ross Mothers Survey, 70 percent of mothers now start breastfeeding in the hospital, up from 54.2 percent a decade ago. Thirty-three percent are still breastfeeding their baby at six months of age, up from 18.9 percent in 1992. (The federal Healthy People 2010 plan aims for a 75-percent breastfeeding rate in the hospital and a 50-percent rate at six months.)