Society's ChildS


People 2

More mothers are staying at home to care for families, reversing decades long decline

Laura Meckler
The Wall Street Journal
Tue, 08 Apr 2014 10:58 UTC
stay at home mom graph
After decades of decline, the share of mothers who stay home with their children has steadily risen over the last several years, a new report has found.

In 2012, 29% of all mothers with children under age 18 stayed at home, a figure that has steadily risen since 1999 when 23% of mothers were stay-at-home, the Pew Research Center reported Tuesday. The share of stay-at-home moms had been dropping since 1967, when about half of all moms stayed home.

Pew attributed the rise of stay-at-home mothers to a mix of demographic, economic and societal factors. The vast majority of married stay-at-home mothers, 85%, say they are doing so by choice in order to care for their families. That rate is much lower for single stay-at-home mothers, at 41%, and cohabitating mothers, at 64%.

The report also found a drop in women working because of the recession, a trend that has lingered as the economy recovers. Pew cited an increase in immigrant families, for whom it is more common to have a mother stay at home with her children, and an increase in the number of women who said they were disabled and unable to work.
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Arrow Down

Drone owned by film company strikes triathlete in the head during race

Jon David Kahn
Breitbart
Sun, 06 Apr 2014 00:00 UTC
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During Sunday's Endure Batavia Triathlon held in Western Australia, a female competitor was taken to the hospital after a being struck in the head by an Unmanned Aerial Vehichle (UAV). The injured athlete, Raija Ogden from Perth, was struck by the drone as she began her second lap and subsequently fell to the ground.

The drone is owned and operated by local videographers New Era Photography and Film, who were covering the event. But according to one report, owner Warren Abrams, suggested Ogden was never actually struck by the drone and simply fell to the ground because she was "frightened" by the proximity of the machine. Citing footage taken just moments before the incident, Abrams said, "She looks over her shoulder and gets frightened, falling to the ground and bumping her head, but the drone didn't actually strike her."
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Play

What happens when a female student in a hot pink top walks through Cairo University?

Jack Gevertz
The Independent
Tue, 25 Mar 2014 20:02 UTC
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© Independent
A shocking video shows a female student being sexually harassed as she walks through her campus at Cairo University in Egypt.

Wearing a pink top and tight jeans, the young woman is whistled and shouted at as she makes her way through the site amongst a growing group of men following her.

University guards are seen in the clip, which has gone viral on social media, escorting her off the premises after she hid in a toilet to escape the group, who were allegedly trying to remove her clothes.

The Dean of the Cairo University Law School, Gaber Nasser, has since sparked anger after he appeared to blame the girl by saying her outfit was "a bit unconventional". He told Egyptian channel ONTV: "This girl entered the university wearing an abaya [a loose cloak] and then took it off in the faculty, and appeared with those clothes, that caused, in reality - but this doesn't justify at all [the incident]."
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Map

Americans who can't find Ukraine on map are more in favor of military intervention

Kyle Dropp, Joshua D. Kertzer and Thomas Zeitzoff
Washington Post
Mon, 07 Apr 2014 09:18 UTC
Since Russian troops first entered the Crimean peninsula in early March, a series of media polling outlets have asked Americans how they want the U.S. to respond to the ongoing situation. Although two-thirds of Americans have reported following the situation at least "somewhat closely," most Americans actually know very little about events on the ground - or even where the ground is.

On March 28-31, 2014, we asked a national sample of 2,066 Americans (fielded via Survey Sampling International Inc. (SSI), what action they wanted the U.S. to take in Ukraine, but with a twist: In addition to measuring standard demographic characteristics and general foreign policy attitudes, we also asked our survey respondents to locate Ukraine on a map as part of a larger, ongoing project to study foreign policy knowledge. We wanted to see where Americans think Ukraine is and to learn if this knowledge (or lack thereof) is related to their foreign policy views. We found that only one out of six Americans can find Ukraine on a map, and that this lack of knowledge is related to preferences: The farther their guesses were from Ukraine's actual location, the more they wanted the U.S. to intervene with military force.
map
© Thomas Zeitzoff/The Monkey CageWhere’s Ukraine? Each dot depicts the location where a U.S. survey respondent situated Ukraine; the dots are colored based on how far removed they are from the actual country, with the most accurate responses in red and the least accurate ones in blue
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Mr. Potato

Parliament punch-up: Ukrainian nationalists slammed by opposition for inspiring crisis in southeast


RT.com
Tue, 08 Apr 2014 16:00 UTC

A brawl broke out in the Ukrainian parliament after the leader of the Communist Party blamed right-wing nationalists for fomenting the split of the country by failing to address the concerns of southeast regions and "eliminating" their independence.

Fistfights in Ukraine's parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, have been a common sight in recent years, certainly before the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovich. A return to brawling on the parliament floor, instead of in the streets outside, might be a sign that the situation in the country is finally stabilizing. On Tuesday, the scuffle occurred toward the end of a speech by Communist Party leader Pyotr Simonenko, who blamed the current crisis on the nationalists.
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Red Flag

Mom sues psychiatric prison, alleges son isolated for 6,300 hours, shackled to bed

Susan Donaldson James
ABC News
Tue, 01 Apr 2014 15:48 UTC
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© Joanne MinichJoanne Minich, left, and her son Peter, right, who has schizophrenia, in 2009.
When Joanne Minich recently visited son Peter, 31, at Bridgewater State Hospital in Massachusetts, prison guards brought her to a locked cell that inmates call the "bird cage," where he was shackled at the hands, waist and bare feet, she says.

For the past 14 months, Peter Minich has been legally committed to a legendary facility once called the state hospital "for the criminally insane" but, according to his Brookline, Mass., mother, he has never been convicted of a crime - only diagnosed with a mental illness.

Minich says her son has suffered from paranoid schizophrenia since his late teens and a court sent him to Bridgewater in January 2013, after staff members at another psychiatric hospital filed assault misdemeanor criminal charges against him. Her son had no previous criminal record or history of violent behavior, she says.
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Magnify

Have a look at what employment in America really looks like

Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse
Sun, 06 Apr 2014 15:15 UTC
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Author Michael Snyder
The level of employment in the United States has been declining since the year 2000. There have been moments when things have appeared to have been getting better for a short period of time, and then the decline has resumed. Thanks to the offshoring of millions of jobs, the replacement of millions of workers with technology and the overall weakness of the U.S. economy, the percentage of Americans that are actually working is significantly lower than it was when this century began. And even though things have stabilized at a reduced level over the past few years, it is only a matter of time until the next major wave of the economic collapse strikes and the employment level goes even lower. And the truth is that more good jobs are being lost every single day in America. For example, as you will read about below, Warren Buffett is shutting down a Fruit of the Loom factory in Kentucky and moving it to Honduras just so that he can make a little bit more money. We see this kind of betrayal over and over again, and it is absolutely ripping the middle class of America to shreds.

Below I have posted a chart that you never hear any of our politicians talk about. It is a chart that shows how the percentage of working age Americans with a job has steadily declined since the turn of the century. Just before the last recession, we were sitting at about 63 percent, but now we have been below 59 percent since the end of 2009...

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Info

Americans seem to think their dogs deserve better food than they do

Roberto A. Ferdman
Quartz
Tue, 08 Apr 2014 11:09 UTC
Dog Restaurant
© Reuters/Brendan McDermidTable manners to come.

Difficult times may have forced Americans to scale back on a few expenses, but dog food doesn't appear to be one of them. Not the fancy stuff, anyway.

Dog food sales have just about doubled in the US since 2000. Americans spent a record $14 billion feeding its pet canines last year, and that number is expected to climb another 19% to nearly $17 billion by 2018, according to data from Euromonitor. But no dog food is selling quite like fancy dog food.

The market for premium dog food - the most expensive kinds, including pricey organic offerings and never-frozen meals - has grown by nearly 170% over the past 15 years. It now accounts for a bigger chunk of the market than medium- and low-priced varieties combined. Far more, in fact. So much so, that the most expensive chow now accounts for some 57% of the overall dog food market, compared to the 36% share it held back in 1999.

Americans are spending more overall on dog food because they're buying more dogs. There are now more than 83 million dogs in the US. Some 57% of American households now own a dog, according to a 2013 survey by the American Pet Products Association.
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Che Guevara

Protesters descend on Albuquerque City Hall calling for police reform


RT
Tue, 08 Apr 2014 10:39 UTC
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Downtown Albuquerque is on high alert as tensions between police state and civilians boil over
Protesters filled Albuquerque City Hall on Monday evening, forcing the city council to clear its legislative agenda and turn the podium over to citizens furious with police over a spiking number of fatal shootings.

City Council President Ken Sanchez told the Albuquerque Journal that more police officers would be assigned to make sure the meeting was peaceful, and that the meeting would be adjourned if tempers flared, but said the council is mulling legislation that would create more oversight over the department.

"We need to make some dramatic changes," he said. "We're confronting a crisis situation at this time."

Tensions have been building between police and the public for years. Wynema and Michael Gonzagowski told Cindy Carcamo of the Los Angeles Times that, upon moving to Albuquerque, friends warned them to avoid the police. They did not take those warnings seriously until they watched police fatally shoot their neighbor, Alfred Lionel Redwine on March 25.

"I've never been scared of cops, but out here, the cops terrify me," said Michael, age 39. "They treat you like you're out looking to cause trouble every time they talk to you."

Comment: See also:

U.S. cops out of control: Albuquerque Police Department crack down on peaceful protest against police murder of yet another unarmed civilian just trying to live his life

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Stock Down

Hungry in America - U.S. children rely on free food handouts to survive

Tom Parmenter
Sky News
Sun, 28 Jul 2013 00:36 UTC
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Children tuck into some food on the Lunch Box bus
Summer feeding programmes tackling hunger across America say they are seeing unprecedented demand for free food.

Millions of meals are served every week to children who do not eat properly during the school holidays.

Tennessee is one of many states that has various schemes designed to help youngsters get through the summer.

The Lunch Box is one of them, an old yellow school bus which now doubles as a cafe on wheels, touring around the small town of Rogersville.

Volunteer driver Paul Beckner told Sky News: "Oh yes the need is here - we have kids that come on and that say they don't have any food in the house.

"We have other kids who come who, regardless of what we give them, eat every bite and are glad to get it - so the need is definitely here."
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