SUMMARY: With marijuana legal in some form in 26 states and the District of Columbia, the old script for talking to your children about pot is changing. Behavioral scientist Elizabeth D'Amico, who has researched drug and alcohol use among teens for more than 20 years, giver her humble opinion about what kids need to know.
SUMMARY: As communities around the nation grapple with questions of race and police brutality, a New York Times short documentary asks parents of African-American boys what they say to their sons about how to respond if stopped by police.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Finally tonight, a special contribution to our series Race Today, where we have been exploring how different generations see the issues making headlines.
The conversation is a short film from the Op-Docs team at The New York Times.
Directors Geeta Gandbhir and Blair Foster spoke to parents of African-American boys about the conversation they have with their sons on how to respond when stopped by the police.
MAN: There’s this unspoken code of white — of racism and white supremacy that says that my life doesn’t matter.
WOMAN: You can put your hands up and say — and cooperate and say that I’m choking and still be killed and then there’s no repercussions.
WOMAN: It’s maddening. I get so frustrated and angry about having to prepare my kids for something that they’re not responsible for.
WOMAN: And these are conversations that people of other races do not have to have with their children.
MAN: The conversation with him was really just, look, you’re a beautiful young boy.
WOMAN: Being African-American is a wonderful thing, it’s a wonderful blessing, you have come from great people, but it’s also a hard thing.
MAN: In America, because of your skin color, as a black boy and as a black man, we are going to be dealing with a lot of danger.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): As the new school year approaches, teachers have come to expect that many of their students will have forgotten some of what they learned earlier. It’s called summer learning loss, and some teachers believe it’s inevitable. Are they right?
Special correspondent for education John Merrow of Learning Matters reports.
SARAH PISANO, Springboard Teacher: Everyone, turn to page three, please.
JOHN MERROW: The traditional educator’s remedy for summer learning loss is more of the same, more hours and more days of classes and, of course, summer school.
SARAH PISANO: Now we’re on page four.
JOHN MERROW: But suppose there is another solution.
SARAH PISANO: Good morning, Springboard families. Please sign in.
JOHN MERROW: What if schools enlisted family members as partners to help teach the children? That’s what’s happening here at Russell Byers Charter School in Philadelphia. For five weeks this summer, Sarah Pisano helps 6- and 7-year-olds get better at reading.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Back in 1989, a little more than a million fathers stayed at home with their children for a variety of reasons. More than two decades later, that number has doubled. In a recent report, the Pew Research Center said it grew to its highest point, 2.2 million in the U.S. in 2010, just after the official end of the great recession.
The number has dipped since then, but there are still more dads at home than has traditionally been the case. In fact, fathers now account for 16 percent of all stay-at-home parents.
The reasons for this are a complex mix.
We explore that with two people, Kim Parker who is with the Pew Research Center, and Scott Coltrane, a provost at the University of Oregon who has long studied this very subject. He recently spoke at a recent White House summit on working dads.
So, Kim, let me start with you. What’s the reason behind this surge in the last 20 years?
KIM PARKER, Pew Research Center: Well, there’s a variety of reasons.
You alluded to the end of the recession and how we saw that number spike to 2.2 million in 2010, and clearly what was going on there in part was increases in unemployment, and men having difficulty, fathers having difficulty finding jobs.
But the biggest factor in the long-term growth in the number of stay-at-home dads is the growing share of dads who say that they’re at home primarily to care for their family and for their children. And so that’s what’s been driving this long-term trend from 1989 to the present.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): ..... How we watch over our children and whether the balance has tipped.
It’s the last installment in our series on Parenting Now. Throughout the week, we have looked at a wide variety of issues that mothers and fathers contend with, including their changing roles, the way we raise kids, and the costs of child care.
Judy taped this conversation earlier in the week about how we deal with risks and safety concerns when it comes to our children.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): A generation ago, children walked to school by themselves and enjoyed hours of unsupervised play. Well, times have changed considerably, and so have attitudes about the way we raise our children.
Journalist and author Hanna Rosin explored these issues in a recent cover story for “The Atlantic,” “The Overprotected Kid.” It has sparked a wide conversation about how we keep our children safe, perhaps too safe.
And Hanna joins me.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): The cost and affordability of good child care is the focus of the next installment in our series Parenting Now.
It’s a major concern for families throughout the country. And in different ways, it cuts across lines of class and income.
The NewsHour’s economics correspondent, Paul Solman, has the story, part of his reporting Making Sense of financial news.
DANIELLE SPIRO: Where’s mommy? There she is.
PAUL SOLMAN (NewsHour): When Baltimore teacher Danielle Spiro gave birth to her daughter Eva last year, she had to quit her job.
DANIELLE SPIRO: There was no way I was going to be to be able to ever afford day care.
PAUL SOLMAN: Tiffany Beroid worked at Wal-Mart in Laurel, Maryland, where she had her second daughter.
TIFFANY BEROID: I made $12,000 for the whole year, and day care was costing, I want to say $275 to $300 a week just for the newborn.
PAUL SOLMAN: That’s more than she was earning.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): Next, we turn to the latest in our series Parenting Now.
Last night, we focused on concerns about raising girls and the ways our culture shapes their identity.
Tonight, we turn to questions about that challenge of raising boys.
In the classroom, it has long been a given that girls perform better than boys, but that academic achievement gap has now widened beyond elementary school level, to high school and college, where experts are increasingly concerned that boys are falling behind.
When it comes to test scores, girls have essentially closed the math gap with boys. But boys have not closed the reading gap with girls. Reading scores show girls seven points ahead by fourth grade, a difference that grows to 10 points by eighth grade, and remains there through high school.
Boys also lag when it comes to grade point averages, and in every state, they drop out of school at a slightly higher rate. By the time they get to college, 57 percent of all bachelor’s degrees are being awarded to women.
For boys who are poor and of color, the situation can be profoundly worse. Black boys in public schools score almost 30 points lower on reading and math than white boys by fourth grade. They account for one-fifth of all school expulsions. And dropout rates for Latino and African-American boys are substantially worse.
T’Roya Jackson, who dropped out of high school in Washington, D.C., is raising a 2-year-old son. She says she realizes that education must be a higher priority for her child.
T’ROYA JACKSON: I’m very concerned for him, especially in this day and age, especially for him being an African-American male, and just today, period. It’s crazy.
GWEN IFILL: Statistics are only part of the story. Educators, psychologists and child welfare experts are also concerned about the messages that boys get about masculinity.
