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Close on the heels of a national debate about women and work sparked by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and her new book, a new survey shows that more moms would prefer to work outside of the home full time.

A new Pew Research survey found changing preferences among working moms. While 20 percent of moms with kids under age 18 said that they'd that rather work full time in 2007, that number jumped to 32 percent last year.

The shift may have more to do with economic conditions than professional ambitions, the Associated Press reported.

"Women aren't necessarily evolving toward some belief or comfort level with work," study co-author Kim Parker, an associate director at the Pew Research center, told the Associated Press. "They are also reacting to outside forces and in this case, it is the economy."

Read on to learn a few reasons why the percentage of full-time working mothers has increased.

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Bea Johnson, environmental lifestyle blogger and author of Zero Waste Home, says her family of four's household garbage output plateaued about three years ago and has stayed the same ever since: one quart per year. That's not a typo. During a phone interview, I ask her what's in her "waste jar" for 2013, and she paused briefly as she rummaged through the few debris. "A laminated fishing license, a few bits of plastic from an electrical repair, a piece of cable from my son's bike, and a lollipop stick — probably someone gave it to my son and he couldn't refuse; I understand." That's three months of garbage. It would include butter wrappers, too, the one food item Johnson buys in packaging, since she found it was too expensive and impractical to make, but she's saving them for an art project.

The average American produces over 1,000 pounds of garbage a year, and 10 years ago, Johnson; her husband, Scott; and their two young sons were blithely dragging their overflowing 64-gallon trash cans to the curb in front of their sprawling suburban home just like everyone else. "As life rolled by effortlessly and afforded my Barbie-like platinum-blonde hair, artificial tan, injected lips, and Botoxed forehead," she writes, "we seemed to have it all."

Read on to learn how this eco-friendly family is leading by example.

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Worried about their 13-year-old daughter's increasingly disrespectful behavior, Gentry and Renee Nickell of Crestview, FL, decided to make her punishment humiliating and public. On Saturday, the teen (whose name has not been released) spent 90 minutes standing at a busy intersection with a handwritten sign describing her sins.

It read: "I’m a self-entitled teenager w/no respect for authority. I’m also super smart, yet I have 3 'Ds' because I DON’T CARE."

Passing motorists saw the teen, who was standing with her dad at the corner of Ferdon Boulevard and US Highway 90 in Crestview and snapped pictures of her with their cell phones. Some of the photos ended up on Facebook, where they were shared within the Crestview community (the Nickells said that they have not seen those photos; Yahoo! Shine was not able to find them online). Someone called the police, who showed up to talk to the teen and left after deciding that she was "aware of her punishment and she was not in any harm," Crestview police records show.

Related: Is Parental Shame the New Spanking?

Now, however, the parents are feeling a little public humiliation of their own.

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Callie Mitchell was a 25-year-old photography student with plans "to wander the world to capture the minuscule moments of my surroundings" when something happened that changed her life forever.

She got pregnant.

Related: Wisconsin Bill Claims Single Moms Cause Child Abuse by Not Being Married

In an essay for college newspaper The Daily Iowan, where she works as a photographer, Mitchell described her experiences as "a spontaneous moment leading to an unplanned life change. Not a mistake. Definitely a surprise." Her photo-essay and videos have had a powerful impact around the world. (You can see her entire slideshow here.)

According to the essay, she found out she was pregnant on March 25, 2012. She and her boyfriend decided to have the child and begin a new chapter in their life together.

Read on to learn how Callie felt via her intimate journal entries.

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While many college students across the United States are looking at the calendar and getting ready for a booze-fueled spring break, some students are planning a different kind of vacation bash: their weddings.

Also on Shine: Is 21 Too Young To Get Married?

It's not uncommon for teens attending small religious schools to forgo the typical drinking-and-partying college experience and instead focus on finding their soul mates. At Walla Walla University in Washington state, the idea of "dating to marry" is so much the norm that students have dubbed the school "Western Wedding University."

Is this a match made in heaven? Read on to find out.

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Greg and Sharon Kitchen had company coming over, so when their youngest son, Danny, asked for their iTunes password so he could download a cool new game, they tapped it in for him and left him alone to play while they entertained their guests in their South Gloucestershire, England, home.

Related: My Kid's First iPad?

"Danny was pestering us to let him have a go on the iPad. He kept saying it was a free game so my husband put in the passcode and handed it to him," his mom told the Telegraph. "It worried me when he asked for the password but I had a look at the game it said it was free so I didn't think there would be a problem."

Related: The Best Apps for Kids

On Monday morning, the mother of five woke up to 19 emails from iTunes, listing purchases adding up to 1,710 British pounds — about $2,500 — from the night before. By the time her credit card company called her to check up on the charges, Kitchen had figured out what had happened.

Find out how Greg and Sharon handled this delicate situation after the jump.

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Yes, that's a cat on a toilet. And yes, he does look pretty pissed about it. The whole Internet has just discovered the Litter Kwitter, a potty training system for cats that was—up until this point—known only to a rare breed of ambitious cat owners.

Created by a woman who toilet-trained her own cat, the Litter Kwitter works like this: You put a color-coded litter-filled ring with a very small hole on your toilet bowl. As your cat learns to jump on the porcelain throne every time he needs to relieve himself, you switch to a ring with a larger hole. This goes on until your animal suddenly realizes he's standing on a toilet bowl, praying he doesn't fall in.

Related: 10 Least-Trendy Cat Names of 2013

It's great idea, but according to the people who write reviews on Amazon about cat toilet training, it's not that easy.

Please take a moment to enjoy some of the comments posted about the Litter Kwitter, because they are brilliant:

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Celebrating birthdays at school just got a little less fun for kids in Australia. New guidelines issued Tuesday by the country's National Health and Medical Research Council say that children can no longer blow out the candles on cakes at school because doing so spreads too many germs.

Related: The Most Germy Place in Schools? It's Not What You Think

"We introduced new national standards to lift the quality of child care across Australia because we believe parents deserve peace of mind when they drop their child off they are receiving quality care to a high standard," Australia's Minister for Early Childhood and Child Care, Kate Elliss, explained in a statement. "All services across the country will be assessed and rated against new National Quality Standard which will ensure that services are meeting basic requirements including children's health, safety and wellbeing."

Read on to find out what parents think about this new birthday tradition.

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Tech-savvy students, faculty, and staff members at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology may be superadvanced when it comes to science, but a campus-only charm school — where megaminds get to hone their social skills — is one of the most popular things on campus right now.

Forget high-end etiquette like whether Americans need to curtsey to queens (they don't). In the MIT program, students who usually spend their lives in the labs learn about social niceties like how to shake hands properly, how to make small talk, and the basic dos and don'ts of table manners.

Read on to find out more about this geek-chic charm school.

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At a time when airlines are charging more for child-free seats and people are routinely enraged about out-of-control kids in public, one restaurant is rewarding parents when their pint-size diners show good manners.

When Laura King and her family got their bill at Sogno di Vino, a small Italian restaurant in Poulsbo, WA, listed under the subtotal was something they had never seen before: a discount for "Well-Behaved Kids."

Related: The No-Kids-Allowed Movement Is Spreading

King was so touched by the restaurant's gesture that she posted a picture of the receipt on her private Facebook page; a friend shared the photo on Reddit with the comment.

Read on to find out why their good behavior was rewarded.

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In 1950, the most common job for women in the United States was "secretary." With fewer careers open to women back then, it doesn't come as much of a surprise that secretarial work was a popular option.

Related: Can Women Have It All? What 4 Top Career Women Say

But the most-common job for women these days? It's still "secretary"—in spite of the fact that more women are earning graduate degrees than men, are rising through the management ranks, and are starting their own businesses in record numbers.

Read on to find out why women are entering and/or reentering the workforce as secretaries.

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A New Jersey Catholic school wanted to make kids quit cursing, so they asked girls to take a vocabulary purity pledge, vowing not to use foul language for the month of February. But the boys? They were told not to swear, but they didn't have to make any promises.

Related: Is Chivalry Sexist?

"We want ladies to act like ladies," Lori Flynn, the teacher who administered the pledge at Queen of Peace High School, told The Record newspaper in Woodland Park, N.J.

Read on to find out more about this New Jersey school double standard.

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The US economy may be on the mend, but that hasn't stopped it from influencing a generation in an unexpected way: for the first time ever, an annual survey of college freshman has found that first-year students are more focused on their job prospects than their party plans.

According to the "2012 Freshman Norms report," conducted by UCLA's Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) each year since 1966, only 33 percent of college freshman reported drinking beer in 2012, down from 35.4 percent in 2011 and far lower than the 73.7 percent who were knocking back drinks in 1982, when many of their own parents were in college.

Read on to find out if college freshmen are more focused on potential jobs than partying.

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Take a look at Pinterest and you'll find plenty of boards dedicated to amazing weddings. The perfect dress. Gorgeous engagement rings. Romantic up-dos. Awe-inspiring do-it-yourself decorations that would put Martha Stewart to shame. But among all of the wedding offerings, certain boards stand out: Ones created by women who are proudly and publicly planning for the big day even though they're still single.

LOOK: Celebrity Wedding Dresses -- What Should They Wear?

They're not pretending otherwise, either. With titles like "How single girls plan their wedding," "Planning my wedding while single," and "Single with BIG wedding plans," the boards are packed with Cinderella dresses, party theme ideas, and pictures of enormous diamond solitaires -- playing up the myth of the perfect wedding while ignoring the reality of real-life marriage.

Keep reading to find out more about this growing phenomenon.

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A new book on finding one's true self has rekindled an age-old discussion with a chapter saying that praise is harmful to kids. But parenting experts tell Yahoo! Shine that praise itself isn't the problem — the issue is that parents have been doing it wrong for years.

Related: Forget Tiger Mothers. Teach People How To Be Good Parents Instead

In "The Examined Life," Stephen Grosz pulls together insights gleaned from 25 years worth of work as a psychoanalyst. He became a father at age 50, and his experiences helping troubled, unhappy adults led him to agree with an old idea — that empty praise does children more harm than good.

Do Confident Kids Have More Future Career Success?

"Admiring our children may temporarily lift our sense of self-esteem but it isn't doing much for a child's sense of self," he told the British newspaper The Sunday Times. "Empty praise is as bad as thoughtless criticism — it expresses indifference to the child's feelings and thoughts."

But parenting experts agree that avoiding praise altogether isn't the answer.

Find out more after the break.

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Young people are racking up far more credit card debt than their parents ever did, a new study shows, and economic experts are worrying that Generation Y — people born in the early 1980s — will end up dying without ever paying off their credit card bills.

Related: A 5-Step Plan to Paying Off Your Credit Cards

"Credit is more readily available now, and there have been changes in interest rates and less stigma attached to having credit-card debt, which may all make younger people today more willing to go into debt," Ohio State University economics professor Lucia Dunn, a co-author of the study, told Business News Daily.

The research, which Dunn co-authored with Capital One Financial credit manager Sarah Jiang, was published in the January issue of the journal Economic Inquiry. It suggests that, not only are Millennials using more credit than previous generations, they're paying it off far more slowly as well.

Keep reading to find out if we will ever be debt-free.

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We've all heard plenty of warnings about the dangers of fast food and how it's at least partly to blame for our childhood obesity epidemic. But a new international study shows that kids who eat fast food three or more times per week are at risk for more than just a little extra weight: Those chicken nuggets and cheeseburgers have now been linked to higher rates of asthma and eczema in kids.

Related: The Five Worst "Healthy" Fast Food Meals for Kids

The study, published Monday in the medical journal Thorax, used data from more than 319,000 13- and 14-year-olds in 51 countries, along with 181,000 6- to 7-year-olds from 31 countries. All of the participants were also involved in the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood, a collaborative research project made up of nearly 2 million children from 100 countries.

WATCH: Human Guinea Pigs Paid Thousands to Eat Fast Food Every Day

The participants' parents were asked about whether their kids experienced wheezing, rough or patchy skin, and rhinoconjunctivitis (a combination of stuffy or running nose with itchy and watery eyes) in the past 12 months. They were also asked about how frequently their kids ate certain foods, including meat, fruits, vegetables, bread, rice, nuts, milk, eggs, and commercially prepared fast food.

Learn more about the potential relation between fast food and asthma after the jump.

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Kids born during the economic recessions of the 1980s had a higher chance of substance abuse and arrest as teenagers, a new study has found, leading researchers to wonder if babies born in recent years could face a similar fate.

"The mechanisms involved may be different in intensity and severity, (but) based on the study it seems like there would be some effects," Dr. Seethalakshmi Ramanathan, a researcher at State University of New York Upstate Medical University and the lead author of the study told Reuters.

Related: Things You Need to Do While You're Unemployed

The study, which was published online this week in JAMA Psychiatry, used data from 8,984 people born between January 1, 1980, and December 31, 1984, who had participated in the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, when they were 12 to 17 years old. There were two recessions in the 1980s, from 1980 to 1981 and then another in 1982.

Related: Are We Regulating Ourselves Back Into Recession?

The BLS' survey included questions about education, income, attitudes, expectations, thefts, arrests, drug use, alcohol use, gun use, and cigarette use, among other things. Ramanathan and her team found that certain destructive and delinquent behaviors were more common among kids who were born in areas affected by high unemployment rates. (A recession is defined as a general slowdown in economic activity with drops in Gross Domestic Product levels, incomes, business profits, and inflation while unemployment and bankruptcy rates rise; measuring the unemployment rate is one way to judge the severity of a recession in a given area.)

Find out if recession babies grow up to be troubled teens after the break.

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Hudson Kroenig: remember that name. He's fashion's rising runway star. He's also four.

On Tuesday night, Hudson walked his third Chanel runway show, at the annual Chanel Metiers d'Art collection in Scotland. Dressed like Little Lord Fauntleroy in a bowed blouse, knickers, kilt, and a velvet beret, it was the kind of outfit that would prompt most kids his age to throw a tantrum. But Hudson is a professional.

Related: Christy Turlington's 8-year-old models

At age one, he was photographed for German Vogue. By two he was taking Paris' fashion week by storm, walking for Chanel hand in hand with his father Brad. By four he had two campaigns (Fendi, Dolce&Gabbana), and several glossy photo shoots (W, Harper's Bazaar, Pirelli Calendar) under his belt.

Hudson was born into the industry. The 32-year-old Brad Kroenig is one of the leading male supermodels in the industry. After rising the ranks from Abercrombie poster-boy to the face of Chanel, Brad became close with Karl Lagerfeld, the iconic brand's creative lead. When Hudson was born in 2008, he named the eccentric designer as his son's godfather.

Read on to learn more about Karl's cutest and smallest muse.

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We scoffed earlier this year when we heard that "The Rules" — the 1995 dating guide that encouraged women to be passive and pleasing and play hard-to-get — was making a comeback. But new research shows that the rules may be right after all: playing hard-to-get actually works.

Related: Study Shows Men and Women Can't Just Be Friends

Published in the European Journal of Personality, the data from hundreds of people in four different experiments showed that college-age men and women who played hard to get ended up with a higher-quality partner.

"We all would want honesty in dating, but this is never going to happen," the study's author, Peter Jonason, who teaches psychology at the University of Western Sydney in Australia, told NBC. "We are not overtly lying, but we're always trying to marry up."

A little skeptical? Read on to find out why playing hard to get might actually work.