Ever wonder how a story on The Takeaway evolves? Our stories can start with everything from a tweet to a listener response phoned in during the morning's show, and move forward over the next hours as we interact with guests, put together radio segments, and blog on the subject at hand. This week, one of our stories began with a paper about student performance being impacted by unemployment rates. In the visual element below, you can see first hand how the story progressed, from our initial tweet and listener responses to a blog from Takeaway contributor Beth Kobliner. 

Gone are the days of the "Washington wife." As the 112th Congress opens, most members of Congress have left their spouses and children at home. For an article released this week, Newsweek spoke with 46 of the 107 new members of Congress and only one of them — Republican Senator Mike Lee, of Utah — is moving to Washington with his family. What does this mean for the culture in Washington?

What would you do if a child sincerely asked you for something impossible? That's the situation Santa (and helpers) faces every year, as well as many parents. It's sometimes hard for parents to meet the most extreme requests for gifts... but it's always hard to disappoint one's kids. We get a personal story from Kim Hamilton, Takeaway listener from Lubbock, Texas, and mother of a four-year-old boy with high Christmas gift hopes.

Recent studies highlight all kinds of benefits from having an affectionate sister. According to researchers, sisters have been found to protect their adolescent siblings from numerous problems, including loneliness and depression. So, what’s so special about sisters? The Takeaway explores some of the latest ideas.

When Child Protective Services investigates a household where a child may have been abused, that family has a small chance of seeing improvements, according to a new study out of the University of Utah, set to be published in the October issue of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

An emerging field of science known as fetal origins claims that conditions in the womb before birth can have far-reaching and long-lasting consequences for the health and well-being of the adults those fetuses become. The latest scientific research suggests that prenatal influences — including a woman’s exposure to environmental toxins during her pregnancy, her stress levels and diet — can affect the health of future generations.

To most children, summer vacation means sun, fun and a long break from school. But for many parents, each summer brings with it the same difficult question: what to do with the kids? Working parents often grapple with leaving children unattended during the workdays, and childcare can take a toll on the pocketbook. How young is too young for a child to be left home alone?

Over the past week, we have been talking to current and former servicemen and women. We reached nearly two dozen, and we asked them all the same question: Who are you remembering this Memorial Day?

We expected that no two answers would be the same. But in fact, two of them were. 

Are you and your family suffering from the winter stir-crazies? Are you hungry? Why not cook together? Romilly Newman, an 11-year-old chef who hosts her own Youtube cooking show, "Little Girl in the Kitchen," insists that it’s easy. And Alyssa Volland, founder and president of the Mini Chef culinary institute for kids, says it can improve everything from your family’s diet to your kids’ math skills.  

I try to teach kids that that feta cheese can taste good. —Romilly Newman

Dr. Susan Clancy believes that for young children, sex abuse is oftentimes more confusing than it is traumatic at the moment that it’s happening. In her new book "The Trauma Myth: The Truth About Sexual Abuse of Children — And Its Aftermath," she argues that more victims would come forward if we stopped framing sex abuse as terrifying and violent, and instead acknowledged that child victims often love and want to please their perpetrators.

Kids often feel scared and powerless when a disaster – like the Haiti earthquake – hits. But there are constructive ways to talk with them about traumatic world events, and to channel their anxieties into positive outcomes.

On Mondays we take a few minutes to take stock of our family lives.  It’s also the Monday after Christmas, only a few days away from New Year's Eve. We're joined by our family contributor Ylonda Caviness, longtime family and parenting journalist and mother of three, along with Andrea Price, mother of two; both discuss meaningful New Year's resolutions (or "goals," as Price likes to call them) we can make for our family.

Thanksgiving is all about spending time with family. As college-age kids return home, however, it can be difficult for parents and children to figure out how the rules have changed. Takeaway contributor Lisa Belkin, who writes the family and parenting blog Motherlode for The New York Times, says the time can be highly stressful for families. We're also joined by Chris Shea of Towson, Md., a father, and 21-year-old Cortez Riley, a student from the University of Minnesota who is about to head home to his mom for Thanksgiving break. The three give us some tips on how to make the break less stressful and more harmonious.

We talk to Amanda Lee, whose husband is stationed at Fort Hood in Texas. She gives us an insider's view on how the story of this tragic shooting is being heard by military families.

Voters in Maine voted yesterday to revoke gay marriage in the state. Opponents of gay marriage frequently bring up the hypothetical effects of gay parenting on kids as a reason to deny gay couples the right to marry. At this point we don't have to rely on hypotheticals, however: We now have a generation of kids who have grown up with gay parents and can speak for themselves. One of those kids, Becca Lazarus, tells us about her life with two gay dads, while New York Times Motherlode writer Lisa Belkin explains the results of recent research.

Everyone knows that it's better for families if dads are involved in the parenting process, but some researchers say moms might be making it harder for them to get involved and stay involved. We're joined by Takeaway contributor Lisa Belkin, who writes The New York Times family and parenting blog Motherlode, and psychologists Marsha Pruett and Kyle Pruett. They say recent research shows that women could be more supportive of how their husbands act as parents.

For our family segment today we look at some recent studies on housework: kids doing chores at home as their parents work more hours, and gender differences in how much parents pay their kids for helping out around the house. Joining us is Takeaway contributor Lisa Belkin, who writes the parenting and family blog “Motherlode” for our partner The New York Times, and Bob Elston, father of four, who believes chores are an important tool in raising kids.

Parents have a lot to worry about: what their kids eat, where to send them to school and how to rear them, just for starters. Compounding the mysteries of parenting is the debate over whether there are innate differences between raising a boy and raising a girl. Modern parents often try to be gender neutral, offering primary colors instead of pink or blue, and finger paints instead of trucks or dolls. But as many parents will attest, it seems that some boys are predisposed toward fire trucks and football, while girls want tutus and princesses no matter how you raise them. Should we change our parenting depending on our kids' gender? To help answer this question, we checked in with friends, contributors and listeners for their stories on how they were raised…and what they do with their own kids.

A heated debate has emerged in parenting circles: Should kids be allowed to walk to school? In 1969, nearly 50% of kids walked. Today, that number has dropped to 13%, with many parents arguing that it’s just too dangerous nowadays to let kids walk. Are they right? The Takeaway's correspondent, Andrea Bernstein, was at the Walk21 NYC conference yesterday in New York to talk with people about urban planning strategies for city walking. We also talk to Gina Lovasi, from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, about the health implications. Jeremiah Weintraub, a fifth-grader from West Virginia who's been riding his bike to school for over two years, joins us with his thoughts on the matter.

The H1N1 vaccine is being slowly distributed around the country. We talk to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute on Allergy and Infectious Disease, about when the vaccine will hit doctors' offices nationwide. Then, we turn to two practitioners who are also parents: Dr. Sandra Arnold, a pediatric specialist in infectious diseases at the University of Tennessee in Memphis, who was one of the first in the nation to get the vaccine. We also talk with Dr. Matthew Davis, a pediatrician and internal medicine doctor at the University of Michigan Medical Center, who just conducted a poll on whether parents will be vaccinating their kids. It turns out that less than half of parents polled are convinced that the vaccine is necessary for their kids.