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Better Babies Contests: Eugenics Goes to the Fair
by Cristen Conger | September 8, 2011
In the 1920s baby parades evolved into Better Babies Contests, marketed as public health initiatives. At these contests, often held in rural fairgrounds, babies would be disrobed, measured, weighed and evaluated for temperament and intelligence. Winning babies might claim titles such as “Heaviest Boy Under 1 Year of Age.” If this sounds a lot like livestock competitions at homegrown fairs that’s because it was!
In “Should women donate their breast milk?”, Molly and I chat about what women do with excess breast milk they can’t use. That inevitably led us to a mention the Baby Gaga ice cream that made a media splash earlier this year. The Icreamists shop in London sold breast milk-flavored ice cream for a whopping $22 per serving, due to that special ingredient that came from around 15 women selling their breast milk online.
Gallup poll finds American men prefer sons
by Cristen Conger | June 28, 2011
Since 1941, American men have expressed a preference for sons over daughters. Gallup poll data stretching back decades reveal that the proportion of both men and women who say that they’d rather have a son than a daughter has barely fluctuated, always hovering around 40 percent.
Indeed, women can be pregnant without even knowing it, as discussed in the Discovery Health article 10 Reasons You Might Now Know You’re Pregnant (Until You’re in Labor).
Since it seems like such a far-fetched notion, we asked listeners to send in any real-life anecdotes. And they’ve been rolling into our MomStuff Inbox — at an admittedly startling rate.
Just when we thought we had everything figured out about magically predicting how the sexual organs inside a fetus will turn out (barring telepathy — although I could probably sell a TV series called “Mind Reading Mommies” faster than you can say ‘breastfeeding’), some Japanese scientists had to come along and shake things right back up like a hysterical baby rattle.
Having a baby bring about a host of changes in new moms’ lives — and their brains. A recent neuroimaging study suggests that women experience gray matter growth in certain brain regions during the first few months of motherhood. The added gray matter volume was concentrated in the prefrontal cortex, parietal lobes and midbrain areas that are associated with maternal care. Mothers who openly doted on their babies the most showed the greatest amount of gray matter growth, indicating that the neurological adjustment is the body’s way of prepping women to be good mothers.
Average Childbearing Age Continues to Rise
by Cristen Conger | May 26, 2010
Presumably as more women elect to postpone building families in favor of building careers, the age of childbearing women continues to rise, the Guardian reports. While the average maternal age has only climbed about a year from 28.4 years old to 29.4 years old over the past decade, the number of women having kids in their 40s has shown dramatic growth in England and Wales.
You Asked: At what age is your skull fully formed? — Marko, Zagreb, Croatia Marshall Brain Answers: The following video shows the bones of the skull, and early on it talks about the “sutures” that hold the bones together: When a baby is born, these sutures have not fused and there are gaps between the [...]
If you’ve ever sat through a viewing of Stephen King’s “Cat’s Eye,” you know that cats don’t actually climb into the beds of child actresses and suck their breath out — you’re thinking of tiny wall trolls.
Still, a great deal of concern persists among cat owners whenever there’s a new baby in the household. Will the cat and the baby become fast friends, or will one try to eat the other? How’s a person to be both a responsible parent and a decent pet owner?
According to an article from the Associated Press this week, the key is understanding how a cat reacts to the arrival of a newborn. Just think about the noises associated with a new baby. Think about all the curious new smells — the utter chaos that a baby brings into a household.
A human could eat mother’s milk for up to two years. To learn more about milk, check out this HowStuffWorks podcast.
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