child

18May

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

IMPACT, TOP FOUR

Child Labor – Some Chocolate Has A Dark Side To It

Chocolate makes for a perfect gift, a comforting snack and even a health food, thanks to its plentiful antioxidants. Rumor has it that it might even work as an aphrodisiac. It is no surprise, then, that the chocolate industry garners billions of dollars each year. However, there is also a dark side to chocolate. As a cultural anthropologist who has done years of research on food and drink in Europe and North America, I have come to understand the close relationship between culinary traditions and social inequality. In a course I teach on the anthropology of food, chocolate is among the numerous food commodities that I cover in the course as an index for understanding social class relations locally and globally, including human trafficking. Exploitative labor, especially child labor, is...

Everything You Need To Know To Claim The Child Tax Credit This Tax Filing Season

5Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

MONEY

Everything You Need To Know To Claim The Child Tax Credit This Tax Filing Season

The monthly child tax credit payments may be over, but families now face a new hurdle: Filing for the remaining portion they’re owed. An estimated 40 million households will be applying for the benefit this tax filing season, which, thanks to a bevy of coronavirus-related claims, is already expected to come with significant challenges and delays. The child tax credit, which was expanded to more people and for a larger amount in early 2021, was designed to arrive in two chunks in 2021 to nearly all families with children. The first payments were in six monthly increments. The second would come with families’ tax returns in 2022 — if they know how to get it. “There’s a huge, huge knowledge gap here,” said Jen Burdick, a lawyer at Community Legal Services of Philadelphia who has been helpi...

Without The Child Tax Credit Expansion Many Families Could Be Left Without Enough Food On The Table

21Jan

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19

Without The Child Tax Credit Expansion Many Families Could Be Left Without Enough Food On The Table

The discontinuation of the Biden administration’s monthly payments of the child tax credit could leave millions of American families without enough food on the table, according to our new study in JAMA Network Open. The first missed payment on Jan. 15, 2022, left families that had come to rely on them wondering how they would make ends meet, according to many news reports. The American Rescue Plan Act, a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package passed in March 2021, made significant changes to the existing child tax credit. It increased the size of the credit by 50% or more, depending on a child’s age, to either $3,000 or $3,600 per year. It also made more low-income families eligible and paid half of this money out as a monthly “advance” payment. Biden’s Build Back Better plan calls for a ...

Child Care Workers Are Going Hungry – About 1 In 3

21Jan

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

EDUCATION

Child Care Workers Are Going Hungry – About 1 In 3

Of the nearly 1 million child care workers in the United States, in a recent white paper, my colleagues and I found that 31.2% – basically 1 out of every 3 – experienced food insecurity in 2020, the latest year for which we analyzed data. Food insecurity means there is a lack of consistent access to enough food. This rate of food insecurity is anywhere from 8 to 20 percentage points higher than the national average. CC BY-ND. In Washington state and Texas, one study found 42% of child care workers experienced food insecurity, with 20% of child care workers experiencing very high food insecurity. High food insecurity is when a person reports reduced quality and variety of diet. Very high food insecurity occurs when a person reports disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake. Anothe...

Borrowing Parents Taking Out A Student Loan For Their Child Worry More About Finances

17Dec

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

EDUCATION

Borrowing Parents Taking Out A Student Loan For Their Child Worry More About Finances

When people take out student loans for themselves, certain risks are involved. The debt can negatively affect a person’s mental, emotional and even physical well-being. It can also harm a person’s financial well-being. But when taking out a student loan for one’s child, the risk is even higher that the loan could be associated with lower financial well-being. This is what economics scholar Charlene Kalenkoski and I found published in the Journal of Personal Finance. The study – which used a nationally representative federal dataset on household economics and decision-making – involved nearly 12,500 American adults ages 18 and over, with an average age of 48. It is not known whether the parents had taken out private or government loans for their children. By lower financial well-being, w...

New Research Shows Apple’s Child Safety Feature Warnings Can Increase Risky Sharing

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

TECHNOLOGY, VIDEO REELS

New Research Shows Apple’s Child Safety Feature Warnings Can Increase Risky Sharing

Bennett Bertenthal, Indiana University; Apu Kapadia, Indiana University, and Kurt Hugenberg, Indiana University Apple’s plan to roll out tools to limit the spread of child sexual abuse material has drawn praise from some privacy and security experts as well as by child protection advocacy groups. There has also been an outcry about invasions of privacy. These concerns have obscured another even more troublesome problem that has received very little attention: Apple’s new feature uses design elements shown by research to backfire. One of these new features adds a parental control option to Messages that blocks the viewing of sexually explicit pictures. The expectation is that parental surveillance of the child’s behavior will decrease the viewing or sending of sexually explicit photos, b...

If The Company Keeps Its Promises – Apple Can Scan Your Photos For Child Abuse And Still Protect Your Privacy

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

IN OTHER NEWS, TECHNOLOGY

If The Company Keeps Its Promises – Apple Can Scan Your Photos For Child Abuse And Still Protect Your Privacy

Mayank Varia, Boston University The proliferation of child sexual abuse material on the internet is harrowing and sobering. Technology companies send tens of millions of reports per year of these images to the nonprofit National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The way companies that provide cloud storage for your images usually detect child abuse material leaves you vulnerable to privacy violations by the companies – and hackers who break into their computers. On Aug. 5, 2021, Apple announced a new way to detect this material that promises to better protect your privacy. As a computer scientist who studies cryptography, I can explain how Apple’s system works, why it’s an improvement, and why Apple needs to do more. Who holds the key? Digital files can be protected in a sort o...

Cost For Child Care And Preschool – US Parents Pay Nearly Double The ‘Affordable’ Cost

12May

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SOCIAL JUSTICE

Cost For Child Care And Preschool – US Parents Pay Nearly Double The ‘Affordable’ Cost

President Joe Biden wants to make child care more affordable across the U.S. Under his American Families Plan, proposed in April 2021, the federal government would subsidize the costs of child care to the tune of US$225 billion annually. Lower-income families could access child care free of charge, while middle-class families would pay no more than 7% of their income. CC BY-ND Additionally, the plan seeks to make free, high-quality preschool available for all 3- and 4-year-olds. Almost 60% of parents say preschool and day care expenses are a financial strain. Currently, child care eats up 14% of the incomes of middle-class working families – for example, those with a household income of $50,000-$100,000 for a family of four – according to the Center for American Progress, a prog...

4 Essential Reads – How Do You Talk To Your Child About Violence?

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

Journalism

4 Essential Reads – How Do You Talk To Your Child About Violence?

Children are exposed to images of violence almost every day, whether through the media or in real life. Consumption of violent imagery can take a harmful toll on a child’s mental and emotional well-being, research shows. Parents, especially those with young children, may be asking themselves how to talk about violence with their kids. Here are four articles from The Conversation U.S. that offer insight into how to have hard conversations with children about violence. 1. Teach children to be resilient Vanessa LoBlue, an assistant professor of psychology at Rutgers University-Newark, writes about ways parents can foster a supportive environment to help children develop resilience in stressful situations. Genuinely listening to children talk about how they feel not only shows care and acc...

Infrastructure That Has Long Been Devalued – Women-Dominated Child And Home Care Work Is Critical

10May

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

LIFESTYLE

Infrastructure That Has Long Been Devalued – Women-Dominated Child And Home Care Work Is Critical

A fiery debate has erupted over the definition of “infrastructure.” Does it mean roads, broadband and other physical structures included in the traditional meaning of infrastructure? Or should it have a broader definition that includes other important parts of the economy, such as workers who care for children, older adults and people with disabilities? President Joe Biden prefers the latter meaning and wants to use nearly one-fifth of the US$2.25 trillion of spending in his jobs and infrastructure plan to expand and strengthen child care and home-based long-term care. As a sociologist who has studied the paid-care workforce for over 15 years, I know how critical it is to the U.S. economy – as the COVID-19 pandemic has made quite plain. The problem is, these workers have long been under...