Our Latest Survey Presents...

[Lil]

Ok I've had enough. This is my offering to compensate reality...

This new topic is in response to today's headline (in the Times), following in the footsteps of "Women working leads to less A-level passes" we have today..."Breastfeeding after 4 months raises heart risk"..this survey was done on a grand total of 331 people and says that those breastfed after 4 months had a higher risk of hardening arteries!!! This was then quickly parried by the NCT who replied that "bottle fed babies become obese teenagers"

... What next folks in the bizarre world of media scientists?

Salon has another article today on Jay Belsky, the guy who does the lion's share of the talking to the media for these studies...

www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2001/04/26/belsky/index.html

It's by the same woman as the previous articles.

Lil, Salon.com is a web magazine based in the US. It's nice and opinionated.. I don't always agree with the people writing (they don't agree with each other) but it's clear what the reporters' biases are.

www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4177510,00.html

Interesting analysis of all this debate in the Observer last Sunday...

I love the bit that says "What is not in dispute is that some children having full-time childcare tend to behave a little less well than others" ... and don't tell me, some children at home full time behave less well than others too...!!! Come on, is this supposed to be big news?

I know we've all had it up to here #:-> (hair on end!)with the reports on working mums affecting their kids. But I just fell over the actual report matey boy wrote about this subject regarding kids consequently not doing well with their A-levels:

www.iser.essex.ac.uk/pubs/workpaps/wp2000-31.php

Its very techie in its writing, but can anyone pleeze explain the last sentence....

"In the context of our conditional demand function framework, these results suggest that a higher full family income increases the educational attainment of children, and given full family income, a higher mother’s or father’s wage reduces their children’s educational attainment."

Is this a real live oxymoron?

Lil, reading that sentence could be a great cure for insomnia. I have been thinking about it for a minute or two, staring at the screen, and now feel quite sleepy.

It makes no sense to me. Can only say its meaning may depend on the writer's definition of 'full family income' and 'wage'.

WOW. It's a bit like an eel isn't it? You think you've got it and then........it slips away again. I think that group who specialise in gobbledy-gook would like to get their teeth into this sentence!