"Breastfeeding might affect the way babies with a certain genetic makeup perceive other people's emotions, according to a new study."

"Today offers a do-over, my friends. Let’s not waste it, shall we?"

I'm a classically trained singer. Before becoming a mother, I worked a number of various part-time, "day jobs" while also teaching out of my home and singing professionally in a few choruses and at a church. My vision for balancing work and motherhood was that I'd quit all the "day jobs" and only work as a musician.

API Leader and mother of 1, Megan Bell shares her story on API's blog of how she is striving to balance her toddler's attachment needs and her work in order to provide consistent, loving care while also continuing her career.

Employed at the birth of your child? Tell us your story about your leave...

"Adolescents today face temptations that teens of earlier eras, not to mention primates or rodents, couldn’t have dreamed of. In a sense, they live in a world in which all the water bottles are spiked. And so, as Jensen and Steinberg observe, they run into trouble time and time again."

Parenting, in a nutshell, is giving your children the tools to succeed in life. Here are ten parenting tips that I have tried to teach our children and have used in my medical practice during the past 40 years.

It may not come as a shock to working moms in the U.S., but a new comparative study finds that America’s work-family welfare policies leave much to be desired. “The conversation is no longer about whether women should work, because today it is often economically necessary for families to have two incomes to stay afloat,” said study author Caitlyn Collins, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. “The conversation today is about the conditions in which families are best able to manage earning an income while caring for their members that does

"Paid parental leave frees mothers and fathers from choosing between their careers and time with their infants. For women, still most often the primary caregivers of young children, this results in higher employment rates, which in turn translates to lower poverty rates among mothers and their children."

"No one likes to lose a friend, especially adolescents. But why do friendships end? Researchers in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science at Florida Atlantic University sought to answer this question with a study examining whether adolescent friendships end because of undesirable characteristics of friends, because of differences between friends, or both."

"In this way, we begin to instill important life lessons. We have established a principle of self-discipline. Kids learn that they can have all the benefits of screens -- entertainment, ready access to information, and social sharing -- with less urgent need for immediate gratification, a crucial nutrient for their future emotional health."

"Parents who want their kids to succeed have been known to play Mozart in the nursery and quiz their preschoolers with flash cards. A new study suggests these parents might want to go back to the basics by teaching children to share and take turns."

Raising a moral child means teaching your child to live by the Golden Rule. Before your child can “treat others like you want others to treat you,” he has to learn how to empathize, to be able to think through an action before doing it and to judge how the consequences of his action will affect himself and others. Therein lies the basis of a moral person.

“He was still nursing,” Lynn explains. “But the courts didn’t seem to think that was a valid reason for me to have custody of my son.” Lynn spent the rest of her summer working full time, pumping while working, interviewing potential attorneys, going to court and transporting her son to and from day care. During this time, A started having three-hour visits one weekend day a month, which eventually became overnight visits from Friday to Sunday before Brian turned 2."

"A new study provides compelling evidence that growing up in poverty can lead to long-term negative consequences on a child’s brain development, emotional health, and academic achievement.

An emotionally nurturing environment, however, is able to mitigate many of poverty’s negative effects on the developing brain."

Video explaining toxic stress and attachment from the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services:

• "Attachment is intrinsic and “in the brain”, largely in the emotional (limbic) brain.
• Attachment is dependent on time and experience.
• Attachment is hard to measure but shows up in patterns of behavior.
• Attachment is necessary for life and for healthy functioning.
• Attachment is protective against many things including addiction, depression, and stress.
• Attachment is therapeutic for many mental health disorders."