Parenting Research Abstracts

[naomikritzer]

Two years or so ago, I started saying to people that what I really wanted to subscribe to, the magazine that was desperately needed for parents today, would be a magazine where educated people would search the research literature for information on studies of interest to parents and provide little summaries of findings, along with some evaluation of methodology and what the study does and doesn't say. (Correlation, after all, is not causation, and when you read about studies in newspapers the coverage nearly always skips that minor detail.)

Everyone agreed that this would be extremely useful. None of us had the time or money to get it started, though one friend suggested that grants might be available if someone could find time to write up a proposal... I did some preliminary looking-into-what-it-would-take and quickly decided that I did not have the time.

I saw an ad today in a magazine called Brain, Child (essays about parenting -- I highly recommend it) for The Thinking Parent: A Research Newsletter. From what I can tell it is exactly, to the letter, what I was telling my friends I wanted. Even the name -- someone had suggested that "The Thinking Parent" would make a good name for a magazine like this.

I am planning to subscribe as soon as I can remember to bring my credit card upstairs to the computer. Oh, and Universe, if you're listening, I've got a long list of other things I think the world really needs -- I'll be back with it later.