Parents' News: 11 April 2002
In the news this week...
Fat seems to be in the news this week; you may
have seen Food Junkies on BBC2 last night (first in a series) while
the Observer last Sunday reported on a link between weight gain in babies
and later obesity.
Childhood lasts 30 years
... official! A retired Italian professor
has been told by a judge that he must continue to pay £460 monthly maintenance
to his son - aged 30. The child, a qualified lawyer, has turned down several
jobs, according to the Independent, but the judge said that the son was
entitled to refuse jobs that did not correspond to his training and interests.
The father had already bought his son an apartment. Full-nest syndrome
is more common in Italy, with 70% of 29-year-old males still living at
home, and 50% of females.
Cloned baby mystery
It's all happening in Italy? Controversial
fertility specialist Dr Severino Antonori claims that a woman is 8 weeks
pregnant with a cloned baby. He has refused further comment, but a journalist
friend of the doctor said that the baby belongs to an important figure…
with limitless cash. Speculation about the possibility of cloning humans
has been rife since the birth of Dolly the sheep, but concerns have been
raised about defects and premature ageing in cloned animals.
Designer disability?
A lesbian couple in the US, both of whom
are deaf, are believed to have designed a deaf family. They have 2 deaf
children, conceived after they sought out a deaf sperm donor. They had
been refused 'deaf sperm' from a Washington sperm bank. Nancy Rarus, of
the US National Association of the Deaf, said 'I can't understand why
anybody would want to bring a disabled child into the world'. But
the couple argue that they do not view deafness as a disability.
Crime in class
A large survey of 14,000 secondary schoolchildren
in the UK shows alarming attitudes to crime and drinking. In a confidential
questionnaire administered by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, almost half
of the schoolchildren aged 11-17 had committed a crime and 4 out of 10
students in year 10 had binged on drink. One in 5 boys aged 15 to 16 admitted
having attacked someone with intent to commit serious harm and 1 in 10
boys aged 11 and 12 admitted carrying a knife or weapon in the past year.
Researchers identified several risk factors for problem behaviour such
as poor parental supervision, bullying, and low-income background.
Things can only get better
People are happiest between the ages
of 65 to 74, according to a survey by Boots the chemist. Satisfaction
with relationships and self was lowest between 18 and 21. Women's wellbeing
reached a plateau between 30 and 64, while men's dipped during the same
period. Happiness, measured using 5 key factors such as optimism, health,
satisfaction with looks, social life and sense of control. The only factor
lacking for the retired was sex.
MMR - latest opinion
An expert on autism has joined the government
in denying any link between the developmental disorder and the MMR jab.
Dr Paul Gringas, a consultant in paediatric neuro-disability, told a science
conference in Edinburgh that any apparent increase in autism is more likely
to be due to better diagnosis and a broader definition of autism - including
Asperger's syndrome (or 'high-functioning autism') in the spectrum. He
said that in 'regressive autism' (about 30% of autistic cases) it was
natural to look for causes, but regressive autism has been documented
for 20 years before the MMR was used.
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