The XX Factor: What women really think.

Are Class Wars in Britain Comparable to Race Clashes in America?

Is Kate Middleton Britain’s Henry Louis Gates? That is to say: Is she a public figure whose personal upheaval has lately sparked a national conversation over deeply ingrained prejudices? That’s the theory bubbling beneath this Washington Post piece parsing the recent uproar over Middleton’s uncle, Gary Goldsmith, who was caught on tape prepping cocaine for consumption at the Ibizan villa he’s dubbed La Maison de Bang-Bang ... (Read more in Double X.)

Drag Me to Hell's Heroine is Punished for Being Born Poor

We're All Helicopter Parents, Now

Emily's post about whom we write for when we write about parenting raises always-worth-asking questions. But I'm not convinced that poorer parents and more affluent ones always have different concerns (I know she wasn't implying this) or even different styles of parenting.

Six years ago, when my children were younger and I wrote about them with some regularity—I still do, but not as often, since they are, in theory, old enough to write letters to the editor denying my assertions and correcting my anecdotes—I did a piece about what I realize, now, was helicopter parenting. I was looking at the way in which mothers are absent from so much children's literature and wondering whether that's because children can never have interesting adventures unless mom is out of the way.

In reporting out the heli-parenting phenomenon a bit, I talked to Kristin Moore, a researcher with the organization Child Trends. I had the notion that maybe affluent kids were the ones bottled up in houses, now, and sent to classes and constantly watched, and that poorer kids were the ones with the freedom to wander. That seems to be pretty much what Annette Lareau found, as summarized in that NYT piece by Paul Tough—that kids from poor and working-class families experience "natural growth" childhoods in which they still get to ride bikes with friends and invent games in the neighborhood. But Moore's research suggested that all parents, now, share some of the same anxieties and that all children share some of the same restrictions; she found that poor children are actually more likely to be supervised and contained. "Low-income parents are very concerned about safety, and place a lot of restrictions on their children," she said.

At that time, her research showed that 17 percent of kids aged 6-12 from families with incomes over $35,000 are latchkey kids—nobody there when they get home from school—compared with just 12 percent of kids from families whose incomes are lower. I have to say that Moore's comments rang true to me, based on anecdotal reporting experience. I'm not convinced there are many kids of any socioeconomic level out riding bikes and building forts and walking to school anymore. One of my colleagues has a relative who, when her 12-year-old was riding her bike, actually followed behind in her car.