Amid a New Baby Boom, a Jump in Adult Unwed Mothers

Somewhere Dan Quayle is clenching his fists. Two decades after the then-vice president bemoaned single motherhood — calling out the sitcom Murphy Brown for having its eponymous main character choose to have a child on her own — the latest data on U.S. births show that a full 40% of babies are now born to unmarried mothers

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The Children of the Cellar

The boys knew the world only through television and the little that their mother remembered. And so now, Stefan Fritzl, 18, and his little brother Felix, 5, are getting used to sunlight. After spending their entire lives imprisoned in a cramped, windowless cellar deep underground along with their mother, Elisabeth, they are now being cared for in a special wing of a clinic near Amstetten, Austria.

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TV for Babies: Does It Help or Hurt?

Early parenting choices are never clear-cut, and deciding whether to allow your infant to watch television or DVDs ranks as one of the more perplexing. Thanks to marketing claims for TV shows and DVDs created for babies, many parents believe that watching educational programming will stimulate infants’ brains and actually promote learning. It’s a seductive line of reasoning

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Philippines debates government promotion of contraception

A debate is stirring in the predominantly Roman Catholic country of the Philippines: should the government provide contraceptives to the public? More than 100 members of the House of Representatives have co-authored a bill that would allow government funds to be used to promote artificial contraceptives — which is now prohibited in the Southeast Asian nation. “The bill is not about religion

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