Tag: immediate family
DNA Tests Are Uncovering the True Prevalence of Incest
When Steve Edsel was a boy, his adoptive parents kept a scrapbook of newspaper clippings in their bedroom closet. He would ask for it sometimes, poring over the headlines about his birth. Headlines like this: “Mother Deserts Son, Flees From Hospital,” Winston-Salem Journal, December 30, 1973.
The mother in question was 14 years old, “5 feet 6 with reddish brown hair,” and she had come to the hospital early one morning with her own parents. They gave names that all
The Ripple Effects of Japanese American Reparations
In 1990, the U.S. government began mailing out envelopes, each containing a presidential letter of apology and a $20,000 check from the Treasury, to more than 82,000 Japanese Americans who, during World War II, were robbed of their homes, jobs, and rights, and incarcerated in camps. This effort, which took a decade to complete, remains a rare attempt to make reparations to a group of Americans harmed by force of law. We know how some recipients used their
How the Pandemic Has Shaped Babies’ Development
Two years is a long time in any child’s life. It’s half of high school and most of middle school, time enough for a grade schooler to notch several inches on the kitchen doorframe and for toddlers to leap from first words to conversations. For the babies born in March 2020, just as the pandemic was declared, two years make up their whole lives.
From the minute these children were born in empty maternity wards to now—as their parents are