Yesterday I had the pleasure of seeing a talk by Dr. Devorah Heitner, the author of Screenwise and site Raising Digital Natives. Dr. Heitner has the unusual disposition that she doesn’t believe digital technology and social media will lead our species into an apocalyptic downfall. Nor does she jump on the technophile bandwagon so often…
The only other generational topic receiving as much attention as the young Generation Z or Homeland generation is the Millennial parenting cohort raising them. Still held back in life by economic setbacks and lengthy educations, Millennials are nonetheless a family-loving generation and will eventually go for the parenting life phase with full steam. In fact, they like…
When I worked with forecasting infant and family trends back in the 2000s there was a noticeably growing interest for nutrition among parents. Food was no longer only food, it had to be healthy, fresh, local organic, tasty and sometimes even “nutraceutical”. Mothers started breastfeeding their babies again, and for longer intervals. Busy parents turned even busier carefully…
In America there is a sweeping shift in values towards more family diversity and we are starting to see this reflected in commercials for consumer goods. The shift reflects cohort changes (effects isolated to single generations) as well as period effects (change over time in an entire population). This means that variables that indicate tolerance of diversity is…
In I’m Gonna Pop Some Tags I referred to an article indicating that toy innovation has been sluggish since the recession. But even if the average consumer might not feel the effects of an improving economy (yet), an increasing number of economists believe we are on our way out of the abyss. At the same…
During most of the years that I have covered parenting trends there has been a growing tendency to overprotect children. This phenomenon has in the United States and some other countries been dubbed helicopter parenting. Other places the tendency to micromanage ones progeny is known as curling parenting and the term hyper parenting has also…
Poverty or economic insecurity manifests itself directly and indirectly on child development. Here are just a few ways in which poor children suffer that privileged kids do not.
Climber Dallin Smith and his girlfriend are depicted chilling out in their self-made lawn chairs that they attached 350 feet high on a cliff wall in Utah. You can look at the amazing pictures here. Smith weaved his own lawn chairs and explains “the springs aren’t bolted in. They just rest nicely in a crack.” Did someone say…
If you wonder why I spend so much time on gender stereotypes and public shaming videos-gone-viral these days, take a look at this Google keyword trend:
If you read parenting blogs (and maybe even if you don’t) you might have read the now famous Texas mother Kim Hall’s letter to teenage girls. The post went viral last week and stirred controversy in as crowded parts of the blogosphere as Huffington Post and BlogHer. Apparently she lives right here in Austin, but…
