lilSugar -- Mommy's little helper.

Study Shows More Women in Their 40s Are Childless

babysugar — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 13:00:58 -0700

It may be all babies and children all the time here on lilsugar, but a new Census Bureau report on fertility shows that 20 percent of women ages 40 to 44 were childless in 2006. That's twice as high as the level 30 years earlier. The report on Fertility of American Women: 2006 also found:

The majority of women with a recent birth (57 percent) were in the labor force.
Of the 4.2 million women who had a birth in the previous 12 months, 36 percent were separated, widowed, divorced, or never married at the time of the survey. Of these 1.5 million unmarried mothers, 190,000 were living with an unmarried partner.
The highest levels of current fertility (67 births in the year prior to the survey per 1,000 women) were among those with a graduate or professional degrees.

The report is the first from the Census Bureau and included state-by-state comparisons of fertility characteristics. To find out more of the statistics,

Did You Eat Nuts While Pregnant?

babysugar — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 06:00:50 -0700

A new Dutch study found that pregnant women consuming any sort of nut product on a daily basis may be putting their unborn child at risk for developing asthma. Published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, the study followed more than 4,000 pregnant women, tracked their eating habits, and the diets of the children from birth until age eight. Epidemiologist at Utrecht University, Saskia Willers said: Children whose mothers ate as little as one peanut butter sandwich a day had a far higher risk of asthma. . . If you eat moderately, it is probably not a problem. It is only if you eat nuts or nut products on a daily basis.

Did you eat nuts when you were pregnant? Source

Did You Eat Nuts While Pregnant?

Yes — I didn't think twice about it.

On ocassion.

No — I stayed away from them.

Other — I'll tell you in the comments.

Mommies Get Buzzed with a Cheeky Grin

babysugar — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 07:00:55 -0700

New moms may not crave the buzz that a margarita allows as they've got a natural upper on their hands. A study conducted by the Baylor College of Medicine reveals that mothers often experience a "high" when seeing their child smile.

MSNBC reports:

Assistant professor of pediatrics at Baylor and and Texas Children's Hospital, Lane Strathearn and his team studied the brain reactions of 28-first time moms. They used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan the mothers' brain reactions to photographs of their 5-month to 10-month-old babies and those of others in three emotional states: happy, neutral and sad.

As expected, the sight of their happy babies sent blood rushing to the moms’ brain regions associated with dopamine, a neurotransmitter that plays an important role in addiction. The spike rewarded the mothers with a neural kick that prompted them to want to take action to care for their babies.

To see how the mommies responded to their children's sad faces,

Study Says Children Are Naturally Empathetic

lilsugar — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:01:00 -0700

When children see others in pain their brains respond as if it were happening to them, according to a new US study.

The response has also been proven in adults, but suggests that healthy children may be naturally prone to empathy. The researchers showed 17 children aged seven to 12 images that included accidents, such as a heavy bowl falling on a pair of hands, and situations in which pain was inflicted on purpose, such as someone slamming a car door on a person's hand, and monitored their brain response. When the pain was accidental, brain circuits involved in processing pain first-hand came into play. Here's more:

"What it shows us is that we have this inborn capacity to resonate with the pain of others. That's probably a very important step toward empathy," said Jean Decety of the University of Chicago, whose study appears in the journal Neuropsychologia. "The children were looking for a reason. If you watch someone being hurt, you want to know why."

As a parent raising two conscientious and caring children these results make complete sense. It also sheds some light on why one crying child might start a chain reaction around him.

Could Your Baby's Eyes Help Diagnose Autism?

lilsugar — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:00:42 -0700

Autism is difficult to detect in infants and toddlers, but treating it at an early age can improve a child's language and IQ scores.

Researchers from Yale and Canada's McMaster University are studying eye movement in young children with the hope of learning more about diagnosing the disease, according to the Wall Street Journal. They want to figure out how to diagnose and treat autism earlier and believe learning more about what interests and motivates the autistic mind will help them do so.

This amazing video shows how the researchers go about tracking how a baby looks at a human face. Researchers suspect autistic infants and toddlers may have different scanning patterns than those without it.

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One in 50 US Babies Abused and Neglected Each Year

lilsugar — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 14:00:03 -0700

A recent study found one in 50 infants in the US suffer nonfatal child abuse or neglect each year. The study, which is believed to be the first of its kind in that age group, is particularly disturbing considering infants are so vulnerable and voiceless.

Child welfare officials define neglect as a "failure to meet a child's basic needs including housing, clothing, feeding and access to medical care." Here's more:

The study focused on children younger than one year, and found nearly a third were one week old or younger when the abuse or neglect occurred.
The researchers counted more than 91,000 infant victims of abuse and neglect in the period October 1, 2005 to September 30, 2006.
About 30,000 of the cases involved infants aged one week or younger. About 68 percent of those cases were attributed to neglect.

I can't help but have a guttural reaction to these findings and the idea that such a high percentage of infants aren't being properly cared for. Do you think the numbers are accurate?

Source