National Post

‘For the love of God do something’: Rehtaeh Parsons’ father issues emotional call to action after daughter killed by ‘disappointment’
Rehtaeh Parsons’s heart was so big, sometimes it scared her dad.

A defender of the downtrodden, Parsons was quick to hand out spare change and stand up for neglected animals.

Glen Canning prepared for the worst for his daughter after she was allegedly raped, but hoped he’d never have to face it.

Amid the angry noise generated by thousands of people around the world seeking justice for a Nova Scotia teenager, who was removed from life support on Sunday after attempting suicide a few days earlier, is the voice of a father in agony over the loss of his child.

In a heartbreaking entry posted to his personal website, Canning remembers his daughter and lambasts the justice system he says failed to help her.

“The worst nightmare of my life has just begun. I loved my beautiful baby with all my heart,” Canning writes. “She meant everything to me. I felt her heart beating in my soul from the moment she was born until the moment she died. We were a team. We were best pals.”

Canning explains how he watched his daughter suffer from repeated disappointment.

“My daughter wasn’t bullied to death, she was disappointed to death. Disappointed in people she thought she could trust, her school, and the police,” he writes. (GlenCanning.com)

nparts:

Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are going to name their son North. As in North West. Har har, Kimye. Read about the long tradition of oddly named celebrity babies the pair will be joining once they welcome their son later this year: natpo.st/13qOO47

Ontario schoolgirl uses secret code word to outwit potential abductor in ‘textbook example’ of street proofing
A 10-year-old girl who outwitted two potential abductors by asking them for a secret code word has been praised by police for her quick thinking.

The girl was approached on Monday outside Applecroft Public School in Ajax, Ont., by a strange man trying to lure her into his car. The man, who was accompanied by a woman sitting in the passenger seat, claimed the girl’s mother had sent him to pick her up.

The girl and her family had established a secret password to be used as proof a person was really sent by her parents.

“She asked this person what the code word was and obviously they got it wrong,” Dave Mason of Durham Regional Police told CTV. “She told them ‘You got the code word wrong’ and that person left.”

npostlife:

Are babies born bullies? Not exactly. But they may understand the concept
A new UBC study suggests that infants as young as nine months respond to a puppet they prefer teasing a puppet they don’t like. Does that make a baby a bully? Maybe not, but the implications for studying social development are myriad.
[Photo credit: 20th Century Fox]

npostlife:

Should children be wearing high heels to feel better about their height?
Parents and doctors are swinging back at the trend towards high heels, as high as two inches, hidden in sneakers being marketed to kids as young as four years old. What’s your take?
[Ted Rhodes/Postmedia News files]

npostlife:

Does not being breastfed set a child back in body or mind?
What exactly is the role that breastfeeding plays in an infant’s psychological development: That’s the question our columnist started wondering about after she found out she wasn’t breastfed as a child. These are her findings …
[Handout/Postmedia News files]

Jeannie Marshall: The pervasiveness of junk food advertising to children
In an excerpt from Outside The Box, Jeannie Marshall describes her efforts to shield her son from the lure of ‘packaged cakes, chocolate bars, cookies, yogurt-like products and ice cream’:

We have to be on guard to protect our children against so many potentially destructive intrusions into their lives, yet food marketing that goes directly to children often slips in at their level, where we don’t even see it. Even when we do see it, it’s astonishing how little we can do about it. If a well-dressed man in the park persistently offered sweets to your child, ignoring your requests for him to stop, I’m sure you would scoop up your child and leave the park. I’m fairly certain everyone in the park would run the man out. Yet there are men and women offering candy and food products to our children all day long. We let them into our houses through the television, radio, Internet and DVDs we let our children watch instead of commercial TV. They beckon our children to follow them, they offer them sweet and savoury delights and they promise never to say no the way that grouchy old parents do. (Illustration by Andrew Barr)

Lego’s ‘pink ghetto’ draws fire over gender-specific marketing
The Lego backlash was perhaps inevitable. When the maker of countless little coloured bricks sold all over the world decided to create a line of products designed specifically with girls in mind, it was broaching a delicate subject.

Sure enough, as Lego Friends was being rolled out this month, sets in which the girls of Heartlake City can do things like visit the vet and hang out at an ice cream café, criticism descended upon the Danish toy giant.

“Lego’s pink ghetto,” read one headline. An advocacy group compiled 50,000 signatures on a petition that decried Lego for implying that “girls are not interested in their products unless they’re pink, cute, or romantic.” Among the thousands of critical messages on social media rallying around the “LiberateLego” hashtag was a typical post: “There’s already a type of Lego for girls. It’s called LEGO!!!”

Mess with the gender-neutral bull, you get the horns.

Breastfeeding mom takes on Facebook nudity policy
Facebook and breastfeeding activists are engaged in a battle over the posting of photographs that show mothers feeding their babies.

The latest incident happened Saturday, when she was sent a written warning that a photo of her and her two-year-old daughter Chloe, who was breastfeeding at the time, was considered “sexually explicit.”

Facebook has a strict nudity policy.

Later that day, a two-year-old photo of her feeding her now four-year-old daughter, Sophie, was also deleted. Kwasnica was then banned from the site for three days.

“Facebook should just leave breastfeeding photos alone,” Kwasnica said. “(Breastfeeding is) not pornographic. It’s not obscene. It’s a normal human function.” (Photo: Bryanna Bradley/Montreal Gazette)

Bad baby name could leave your child sadder, dumber: study
A poorly chosen baby name can lead to a lifetime of neglect, reduced relationship opportunities, lower self-esteem, a higher likelihood of smoking and diminished education prospects, according to a new study of nearly 12,000 people.

The research, which appears in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, is thought to offer the firmest conclusions to date that “unfortunate” first names evoke negative reactions from strangers, which in turn influence life outcomes for the worse.

“There seems to be prejudice based on name valence [or associations],” says study co-author Wiebke Neberich, previously of the International Max Planck Research School.

“It’s a mostly unconscious process where all the associations we have with a particular name will pop up: [associations] from the newspapers, from stories and, of course, from our own history.”

In one of the researchers’ experiments, online daters whose names carried the most positive valence (Alexander) received 102% more profile visits, relative to opportunity, than daters whose names carried the worst valence (Kevin). (Photo: Sebastian Kahnert/AFP/Getty Images)

Canada’s top baby names range from ditches all the way to heaven
The top baby names of 2011 were released Tuesday by Canada Vital Statistics. While names like William and Jacob and Olivia and Maya topped the list, some newer names proved popular too. The National Post’s Ian Vandaelle dissects the trends:

Special K:
Several girls names shed their traditional “C” for a new look — including Khloe (at #7, if you include all the variant spellings), Kameron (#54) and Karson (#85).

Man, I feel like a woman:
Traditional boy names know no gender in this year’s list, as Addison, literally “son of Adam,” Laurence and Charlie made the girls list, at #30, #55 and #66, respectively

Blast from the past:
Names that haven’t been widely used in the last 50 years have made a strong resurgence in recent years and have found their way into the top 100. Names like Maude (#85), Nolan (#94) and Beatrice (#74) have found their way onto the list. (Photo: Fotolia)

nationalpostsports:

Joe O’Connor: As girls’ hockey booms, are our attitudes stuck in the past?
Cassie Campbell used to cringe when she heard the word: “fun.” As in, girls’ minor hockey is all about going out and having some “fun.”

Not going out and competing. Not scoring goals. Not battling for pucks. Not making the perfect pass. Not taking a slap shot. Not honing your skills. Not winning.

But having fun.

Fun was a part of it, of course, an important part, and the former captain of the Canadian women’s team and two-time Olympic gold medalist understands that. What she didn’t understand, and didn’t want to accept, was how expectations were different for boys and girls at the hockey arena. (Photo: CJ Gunter for National Post)

Canadians want children of own gender to carry on legacy: study
Despite a cultural push to be neutral or even indifferent about the sex of their babies, university-educated Canadians overwhelmingly prefer to have a child of their own gender as they unconsciously try to create a “meme” of themselves to live on after they die, a new study suggests.

Fifty or even 20 years ago, the same study of evolutionary biology might have veered heavily in favour of boys — the traditional breadwinners, deemed to be physiologically stronger and with a greater capacity to produce more children and grandchildren. It’s a value that still exists in many parts of the world.

But the major strides made by women in modern Western society have meant there’s never been a better time to be born a girl —and women are keenly aware of it, said Lonnie Aarssen, a Queen’s University biology professor who co-authored the study with former undergraduate student Michael Higginson.

“It’s interesting to see this emergence just in my lifetime of opportunities for women to break free from that patriarchal subjugation,” he said. “And it’s being expressed as a flip now to actually favouring offspring that have potential to represent copies of themselves because they’re the same gender.”

This is particularly linked to women seeing themselves as able to leave some kind of role model legacy for their daughters because they see greater opportunities for them today, Dr. Aarssen added. (Photo: foltolia)

Only planet: Why one child is often enough
For about 30 years, social psychologist Susan Newman has been smashing down the stereotypes people lob at only children. They’re spoiled, lonely, bossy — they even talk funny, apparently. In her new book, The Case for the Only Child: Your Essential Guide, Newman reviews more than a century’s worth of research on only children. Speaking by phone from her New Jersey home, Newman says many people don’t realize how consistent the findings are: “We’ve been brainwashed to believe that every child needs a sibling. And the research shows that that’s just not true. Only children turn out just as well, or develop just as well, as other children.” (Illustration by Steve Murray)