Babble

Boston public radio host Robin Young recently looked at a troubling rise in the most horrifying crime: familicide. The term may not be familiar yet, but the concept sure is -- the murder of an entire family, usually by a father who then commits suicide. There are currently four to six of these crimes nationwide each year, yet Young's guest, ...

So, we all know that once you have a new baby in the house everything falls apart -- your cleanliness standards, your ability to read grown-up books for more than a pages, your capacity to stay up past 10 pm (with the caveat that you're often up after midnight, attending to the wee one). But one of the saddest losses that can come along with ...

Okay, so we all know the economy's in the crapper. But no matter how bad things get, we'll be looking for better eats than this. Is there any excuse for a cookbook title this unappetizing? I mean, I realize it's the lovable bear's name and all, but why not call it "Cooking With Winnie"? And no, this is a real book, ...

Not that you needed another reason to choose breastfeeding -- or pat yourself on the back if you did/do, or feel horribly guilty and pissed off if you didn't/don't -- but this week came news reports of even more dramatic health benefits for moms who breastfeed. The new study, published in the May issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology, found ...

The story of Melissa Huckaby, the 28-year-old Sunday school teacher charged with raping and murdering 8-year-old Sandra Cantu, just gets more and more upsetting. CNN reported this week that Huckaby was connected to another possible abduction of a child in the trailer park where she and Cantu live. In the earlier case, which took place in January, ...

The United States Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in the case of Savana Redding, who was strip-searched by school officials when she was a 13-year-old middle school student. The 2003 incident in question involved a vice principal who believed that Redding was holding prescription-strength ibuprofen; she wasn't, and when a nurse and ...

Have you ever lost your child -- in the park, the mall, or even your backyard? Or were you ever lost as a child -- or rather, did you wander away happily, only to find later that your parents were searching high and low? Are today's parents more easily freaked out by lost kids (due to hyped up fears of stranger danger and so forth), or is the ...

Last week I wrote about the death of an Indian schoolgirl due to corporal punishment, which got me reading about corporal punishment rules worldwide, including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), an international treaty that has been signed by 193 of the world's countries -- that's every member of the United ...

A tragic and horrifiying story emerged from the Boston suburbs this week. Fang Chi Xue, a 38-year-old woman living in Quincy, Massachusetts, allegedly killed her nine-year-old daughter, then turned slit her own wrists. Many accounts indicate that she then turned the knife on her own pregnant belly, stabbing until she had killed her unborn child. ...

An 11-year-old girl in India died this week after being forced to stand in the sun for two hours, with bricks on her shoulders, for not successfully reciting the English alphabet in class. Eventually, the child vomited, then fainted, and was taken to the hospital where she later died.  Worse yet, some reports indicate that the girl, Shano ...