All the Jewish parenting news you probably didn’t have time to read this week.
– Standardized tests helped level the playing field for our parents and grandparents, enabling their admission to top schools and their entrance into the professional class. These days, though, that same brand of testing favors the most privileged among us, writes Marjorie Ingall on Tablet. Ingall argues that Jews have a responsibility to save public education from standardized testing. (Tablet)
– As we approach the 10th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on American soil, “On Parenting” blogger Janice D’Arcy tells us about one textbook publisher’s attempt to teach September 11 to the estimated 60 million American children too young to remember that frightful day. But are the images included in the new online lesson plans too violent? (The Washington Post)
– A bill that looks likely to pass the California state senate would guarantee domestic workers, such as babysitters, nannies and housekeepers, the right to overtime pay, workers’ compensation benefits and breaks every few hours; it would also give workers who live in their employers’ home or sign on for 24-hour shifts, as baby nurses frequently do, the right to eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. That the proposed law would extend workplace protections to “the teenager you hire to come watch your kids so you can catch dinner once a month at a restaurant that doesn’t offer crayons with its menus,” as Slate’s Rachel Larimore put it, has some parents outraged. (Slate)
– Meet Allie Sakowicz, a 17-year-old doula who specializes in helping pregnant teenagers through labor and delivery. (TodayMoms)
– 150 Kids and Counting: One sperm donor is known to have fathered some 150 children, and that has some parents and bioethicists calling for limits on the number of offspring a single donor can produce. (The New York Times)
– ‘What Not To Wear’ on Halloween (or Purim)? Babble has a list of the “10 Most Questionable Halloween Choices for Kids” — among them pimp and suicide bomber(!) costumes. (Babble)
– The Times’ Style section wants to make it clear: All of those microderm facials and hours in the Pilates studio might make you look a decade younger; they don’t, however, make you any more fertile. (The New York Times)
– Working mom and stay-at-home dad pairs are having their moment (onscreen, at least): Kid-Dish regular Sarah Jessica Parker stars with Greg Kinnear in “I Don’t Know How She Does It,” the film adaptation of the Allison Pearson’s 2002 novel of the same name; it’s in theaters on September 16. And Christina Applegate and Will Arnett star alongside Maya Rudolph in television comedy series “Up All Night,” which premieres September 14 on NBC.
