Best-selling author Michael Lewis, father of three, talks about life as a dad when a dad’s role is up for grabs.

How the rough economy is hitting American kids. Their hopes, their dreams, their fears for mom and dad.

The April 3rd raid on the Yearning for Zion ranch in West Texas made big headlines. Texas authorities stormed the polygamist sect ranch, and scooped up more than 460 children after a caller claimed she was a 16-year-old girl being sexually abused there by a 49-year-old “spiritual husband.”
Officials soon announced that 31 of 53 girls [...]

William Damon is one of the world’s leading scholars on adolescence and human development. And when he looks around the world, he sees a growing problem.
It’s not just that young adults don’t know what they want to be when they grow up. It’s not simply that they won’t leave home. No, it’s that and more: [...]

A big sister’s nailpolish and eyeshadow. Mom’s high heels. Rites of passage–and good fun–for many young girls.
But these days, girls are digging deep into their piggybanks and hitting the malls. Glitter products, pedicures, mini-makeovers.
These tweens, as they’re called, are now spending $51 billion of their own pocket money. And marketers, sponsoring birthday parties and sleepovers, [...]

One in five children in America today is a child of immigrants. And those numbers are only rising.
Yet as the immigration debate rages, the real lives of those children are too often invisible. Transplanted to a new country, they struggle to master a new language — and a new culture. Some will thrive in school. [...]

It’s not new but it’s truer than ever — more and more young American couples are waiting later and later to start a family and have their first baby.
Fifty-two percent of college graduate first-time mothers are now thirty or older — not just out of high school, not just out of college, but well into [...]

Every parent knows kids need a good night’s sleep to be at their best. And still, young Americans from elementary school age through high school, are sleeping significantly less today than they did thirty years ago.
With homework and TV and the Internet and video games and parents getting home later from work, it’s easy to [...]