SOCIETY
Family meal a ticket to good behaviour

a family that eats together stays together and the children are more stable and emotionally anchored. Families are being urged to switch off television and their cell phones and enjoy a good converstion with their kuids. that here is much more to a family eating together than merely connecting with each other. So a family dinner is not only just that. For adolescents and teens it could well be a ticket to good behaviour.

Every dinner adds up to more emotional and behavioural stability. It is the ritual that makes them look forward to it and stay connected with the family by spending time with them. The research, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, is based on the study of 26,069 Canadian kids in the age group of 11 to 15 and reinforces the results of a previous study.

A professor of social science from the University of Minnesota, William Doherty said, "Family meals are the strongest factor that we have come across in any activity that families do. It tops them all as a predictor and contributor of a wide range of positive behaviours". Doherty advises parents to introduce one meal per week, preferably on a Saturday to share and talk to the children.

Dogs to aid kids with autism

Quebec researchers have found that service dogs could help children with autism and related disorders. MIRA, an organisation training dogs to aid people with limited motor functions or kids with autism, released the findings of this study. The stress levels of kids with autism were taken from before and after the study and kids with dogs as companions were found to have relatively lower stress. Not just the kids but also the families benefited from the changed behaviour of the children who became more relaxed. To enable the benefits to be available to more families, they plan to train many more service dogs.

Hankering for life beyond work

Women from premier undergraduate institutes are more likely to work lesser hours than women from other institutions, a recent study by the University of Vanderbilt has found.

An increasing number of women are leaving their cushy full time jobs to work flexible timings or not have a job at all. More than other women, MBAs have a greater chance of opting out of working full time, especially when they have children.

The difference between working women from elite colleges and those from other colleges is about 8 per cent. Not just less representation of the fairer sex but also wastage of money spent on such an education, make it a worrying trend.

Impact of social media on news

A survey by the Pew Research Centre on nearly 2000 US adults has found a direct connection between how people follow up news in relation to how they receive it from friends and family.

News that they received from their near and dear ones over the electronic media is followed up more readily than the news received during conversation. While almost three-quarters of news is received during the course of conversation, about 15 per cent get this news from social media sites and 7 per cent via e-mails.

Most of the people getting news from electronic media were likely to follow up the news item further at just a click on a link as opposed to going through a newspaper.

— Compiled by Aditi Garg

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