Tag: Children and Childhood

Parents Are Highly Involved in Their Adult Children’s Lives, and Fine With It

American parenting has become more involved — requiring more time, money and mental energy — not just when children are young, but well into adulthood. The popular conception has been that this must be detrimental to children — with snowplow parents clearing obstacles and ending up with adult children who have failed to launch, still […]

Read More

We Americans Neglect Our Children

Individually, we adore and pamper our children. We shuttle them from soccer practice to music lessons and then organize their play dates with meticulous fanaticism. Yet collectively, we mistreat America’s children, especially by the standards of other wealthy countries. When we’re formulating policies for children as a whole rather than coddling our own little angels, […]

Read More

New Research Raises Concerns About Long Covid in Kids

A large analysis published Wednesday in the journal Pediatrics underscores the toll long Covid can take on children, in some cases leading to neurological, gastrointestinal, cardiovascular and behavioral symptoms in the months after an acute infection. “Long Covid in the U.S., in adults and in kids, is a serious problem,” said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, chief […]

Read More

A Super Bowl Broadcaster With Slime and Swagger

Nate Burleson, far removed from the 11 seasons he spent toiling in the National Football League, pulled up his shirt to wipe sweat from his forehead during a well-deserved break. Burleson was in a buzzing laboratory with green slime-filled industrial containers, recording Nickelodeon’s “NFL Slimetime” days after explaining the challenge of overcoming turnovers on “The […]

Read More

Robie Harris, Often-Banned Children’s Author, Is Dead at 83

Robie Harris, a children’s book author and former teacher whose writing about sexuality made her among the most banned authors in America, died on Jan. 6 in Manhattan. She was 83. Her death, in a hospital, was confirmed by her sons David and Ben Harris. Ms. Harris’s most well-known book, “It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, […]

Read More

In Gaza, We Can’t Justify This Much Suffering

There’s a whip-smart 10-year-old girl in Gaza who speaks good English, displays a radiant smile and seemed to have a bright future. The daughter of an X-ray technician, she had been accepted to an international exchange program and was supposed to be leaving soon. Instead, she’s lying in a hospital bed with a badly infected […]

Read More

Fighting Book Bans, Librarians Rally to Their Own Defense

During 12 years as a youth librarian in northern Idaho, Denise Neujahr read to and befriended children of many backgrounds. Devout or atheist, gay or straight, all were welcome until a November evening in 2021, when about two dozen teens arriving at the Post Falls library for a meeting of the “Rainbow Squad” encountered a […]

Read More

As Kids, They Thought They Were Trans. They No Longer Do.

Grace Powell was 12 or 13 when she discovered she could be a boy. Growing up in a relatively conservative community in Grand Rapids, Mich., Powell, like many teenagers, didn’t feel comfortable in her own skin. She was unpopular and frequently bullied. Puberty made everything worse. She suffered from depression and was in and out […]

Read More

How Maurice Sendak Lived With His Own Wild Things

On a frigid Wednesday afternoon, sunbeams poured into Maurice Sendak’s studio in Ridgefield, Conn., crisscrossing one another with the precision and warmth of the children’s books that were born in this room. Sendak died almost 12 years ago, but his studio is exactly as he left it. There are his pencil cups and watercolor sets; […]

Read More

Tech CEOs Got Grilled, but New Rules Are Still a Question

A lot of heat, but will there be regulation? Five technology C.E.O.s endured hours of grilling by senators on both sides of the aisle about their apparent failures to make their platforms safer for children, with some lawmakers accusing them of having “blood” on their hands. But for all of the drama, including Mark Zuckerberg […]

Read More

Will Lawmakers Really Act to Protect Children Online? Some Say Yes.

In the final minutes of a congressional hearing on Wednesday in which tech chief executives were berated for not protecting children online, Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, urged lawmakers to act to safeguard the internet’s youngest users. “No excuses,” he said. Lawmakers have long made similar statements about holding tech companies to account […]

Read More

New York Will Debate Mayoral Control of the NYC Schools This June

For two decades, New York City has been something of an anomaly: Unlike the school boards that reign over thousands of towns and cities, the nation’s largest public school system is ruled by the mayor. But this year, the city’s method of running its schools is facing a unique and significant challenge that threatens to […]

Read More

Senators Denounce Tech Companies Over Child Sex Abuse Online

Lawmakers on Wednesday denounced the chief executives of Meta, TikTok, X, Snap and Discord for creating “a crisis in America” by willfully ignoring the harmful content against children on their platforms, as concerns over the effect of technology on youths have mushroomed. In a highly charged 3.5-hour hearing, members of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee […]

Read More

More Money for Parents? Both Parties Just Might Make It Happen.

At a time when congressional Democrats and Republicans seem unable to agree on almost anything, they may soon pass an expanded child tax credit, which gives money to parents. The credit, part of a $78 billion tax package that the House is set to vote on Wednesday night, is the rare family policy that has […]

Read More

Kids Online Safety Act Is a Bipartisan Push to Protect Children on Social Media

Members of Congress have introduced a number of different bills intended to boost protections for children and teenagers online. One is a wide-ranging measure, the Kids Online Safety Act or KOSA. It would require online services like social media networks, video game sites and messaging apps to take “reasonable measures” to prevent harm — including […]

Read More

Meta Rejected Efforts to Improve Children’s Safety, Documents Show

Hours before Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, was set to testify on Wednesday about child safety online, lawmakers released internal documents showing how his company had rejected calls to bulk up on resources to combat the problem. In 90 pages of internal emails from fall 2021, top officials at Meta, which owns Instagram […]

Read More

Today’s Teenagers: Anxious About Their Futures and Disillusioned by Politicians

Although it has never been easy to be a teenager, the current generation of young Americans feels particularly apprehensive, new polling shows — anxious about their lives, disillusioned about the direction of the country and pessimistic about their futures. Just one-third of respondents ages 12 to 17 said things were going well for children and […]

Read More

Trial Begins for Michigan School Shooter’s Mother, Jennifer Crumbley

The trial of Jennifer Crumbley, whose son carried out the worst school shooting in Michigan history, began on Thursday with dueling portraits: of a negligent mother whose indifference caused a tragedy, and of a good, even “hypervigilant” mother who was in the dark about her son’s troubles until after that tragedy unfolded. Lawyers for the […]

Read More

Michigan School Shooter Ethan Crumbley’s Mother Goes on Trial

The trial of Jennifer Crumbley, whose son carried out the worst school shooting in Michigan history, began on Thursday with dueling portraits: of a negligent mother whose indifference caused a tragedy, and of a good, even “hypervigilant” mother who was in the dark about her son’s troubles until after that tragedy unfolded. Lawyers for the […]

Read More

Ohio to Ban Transition Care After Lawmakers Override Governor’s Veto

Ohio lawmakers on Wednesday overrode Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto of a bill that would bar transgender minors from receiving puberty blockers, hormone therapy or gender transition surgery. The move by the Republican-controlled state legislature comes less than four weeks after the Republican governor’s veto. The state House voted on Jan. 10 to override Mr. DeWine’s […]

Read More

Europe Faces a Measles Outbreak

The News Measles, a disease preventable by vaccination, is resurgent in Europe and in Britain. Small outbreaks have also popped up in multiple parts of the United States. In Europe, reported measles cases rose more than 40-fold last year compared with 2022, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday. Nearly a third of those cases […]

Read More

Gene Therapy Allows an 11-Year-Old Boy to Hear for the First Time

Aissam Dam, an 11-year-old boy, grew up in a world of profound silence. He was born deaf and had never heard anything. While living in a poor community in Morocco, he expressed himself with a sign language he invented and had no schooling. Last year, after moving to Spain, his family took him to a […]

Read More

Turning Down Food Aid for Children Is Shockingly Callous

Last week I read something that shocked me, even if it really shouldn’t have: Fifteen states — all but one run by Republican governors — skipped the deadline to apply for a new federally-funded program that will provide $120 per child for groceries during the summer months to families of children who already qualify for […]

Read More

Our Kids Are Living In a Different Digital World

Do you know what a Zynbabwe is? Or an upper-decky lip pillow? OK, here’s an easier one — how about just Zyn? If you are scratching your head, don’t feel bad: Almost no adult I have spoken to has had any idea either. This is despite the fact that the nicotine pouch Zyn is a […]

Read More

15 G.O.P. Governors Shut Out Food Aid for 8 Million Children

More than eight million children in 15 states, all led by Republican governors, will be shut out of a new federal food assistance program intended to help needy families during the summer months. Set to begin this summer, the new program provides low-income families $120 per eligible child, which can be used to purchase food […]

Read More

What Happens When There Is No Food: Experts Say Severe Malnutrition Could Set in Swiftly in Gaza

A panel of experts affiliated with the United Nations has warned that the population of the Gaza Strip is at imminent risk of famine, with more than 90 percent of its 2.2 million people facing “acute food insecurity” and a quarter of the population experiencing “catastrophic levels of hunger.” Even before the war between Israel […]

Read More

New York Begins Evicting Migrant Families Who Hit a Shelter Time Limit

Since arriving from Venezuela four months ago, Joana Rivas has slowly found some semblance of stability in New York City, picking up occasional cleaning jobs and enrolling her 9-year-old daughter at a public school in Manhattan. As she navigates her new city, a crucial anchor for Ms. Rivas has been the free housing she was […]

Read More

What to Know About the Science of Reading

During an era of intense politicization of education, there has been rare bipartisan consensus on one issue: the need to overhaul how children learn to read. Over the past five years, more than 40 states have passed laws that aim to revamp literacy instruction. And on Wednesday, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York announced a […]

Read More

How Do You Respond to Kids Dealing With Racism and Bullying at School?

The sixth-grade boy who raised his hand was wiry and small. “People at my school make racist jokes,” he said, when I called on him. His voice had yet to change. “How do I get them to stop?” I was sitting on a high school stage in Piedmont, Calif., where I had finished a conversation […]

Read More

The Year in Opinion Video

Decades ago, the leaders of Britain launched a, frankly, incredible plan, to provide every kind of medical treatment to everyone free of charge. It had never been done on this scale under capitalism before, and Britain was broke. But with courage and vision, these politicians pulled it off. [INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC PLAYING] The National Health Service […]

Read More