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Fathers, Daughters and the Second Shift
The Huffington Post: The phrase "the second shift" entered the popular lexicon a quarter century ago, when sociologist Arlie Hochschild and Anne Machung published a popular book by that name. Based on in-depth interviews and in-home observations of working couples, the book revealed that, despite entering the labor market and pursuing careers in record numbers, women were still taking care of most of the routine household and childcare responsibilities. The authors documented the toll that balancing career and unpaid domestic labor was taking on families, and women in particular -- in stress, marital tension, exhaustion and guilt.
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The new SAT: Aptitude testing for college admissions falls out of favor
The Washington Post: There’s a reason the College Board scrubbed “aptitude” from the name of its big admission test two decades ago. The idea of a Scholastic Aptitude Test left the organization open to criticism that it believed some people were born to go to college and some weren’t. The latest version of what is now simply called the SAT drops questions about arcane vocabulary, continuing a long move away from testing for aptitude as the College Board seeks to tie the exam more closely to what students learn in the classroom. Previous revisions had dropped antonym, analogy and quantitative-comparison questions that were also seen as detached from the nation’s school curriculum. ...
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Why We Keep Losing Our Keys
The Wall Street Journal: You've put your keys somewhere and now they appear to be nowhere, certainly not in the basket by the door they're supposed to go in and now you're 20 minutes late for work. Kitchen counter, night stand, book shelf, work bag: Wait, finally, there they are under the mail you brought in last night. Losing things is irritating and yet we are a forgetful people. The average person misplaces up to nine items a day, and one-third of respondents in a poll said they spend an average of 15 minutes each day searching for items—cellphones, keys and paperwork top the list, according to an online survey of 3,000 people published in 2012 by a British insurance company.
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‘Like Little Language Vacuum Cleaners,’ Kids Suck Up Swear Words
NPR: Most parents are pretty concerned about their kids using foul language. Dr. Timothy Jay, a psychologist and expert in swearing, says parents worried about bad words might be fighting a losing battle. "As soon as kids start talking, they pick up this kind of language," Jay says. "They're like little language vacuum cleaners, so they repeat what they hear." They pick it up from parents, as much as they may try to hide it, from siblings and peers and from entertainment. Jay, a professor at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, examines when and why children incorporate taboo language into their lexicons in a recent paper in the American Journal of Psychology.
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ADHD Drug May Help Preserve Our Self-Control Resources
Methylphenidate, also known as Ritalin, may prevent the depletion of self-control, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Self-control can be difficult -- sticking with a diet or trying to focus attention on a boring textbook are hard things to do. Considerable research suggests one potential explanation for this difficulty: Exerting self-control for a long period seems to “deplete” our ability to exert self-control effectively on subsequent tasks. “It is as if self-control is a limited resource that ‘runs out’ if it is used too much,” says lead researcher Chandra Sripada of the University of Michigan.
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Creative Hobbies Linked With Job Performance
At some point or other, most of us probably feel like our work lives are gobbling up our personal lives, leaving little time for hobbies. But new research indicates that people who spend time on
