Sociologist Amy Schalet was born in the United States, but she grew up in the Netherlands. When she returned to U.S. for college, she was surprised to learn that most of her American-reared peers had never discussed sex with their parents. Most of her Dutch friends had open, long-running discussions with their parents on the topic. This discovery shaped Professor Schalet's research through graduate school and beyond. She's published her findings in a new book, "Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens and the Culture of Sex."  

Later this morning, The Takeaway will speak with sociologist Amy Schalet about her new book, "Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex." Schalet compares American and Dutch families, and their attitudes about teenage sex. Beth Brotz, a parent in California, was thrilled to learn about Schalet's work. She talks about how she and her husband handled her teenage daughter's confession that she was sexually active with her boyfriend, and how their openness made them closer as a family.

Babies start to smile at around five weeks old; an ability that can influence many things they'll do for the rest of their lives. Social psychology research finds that the way we smile seriously affects how we're perceived by others. Jurors are more likely to believe smiling defendants. Smiling waiters get more tips. And parents are likely to pay more attention to smiling children.

Father's Day is coming up on Sunday. We've talked a lot about dads this week, about the best fictional fathers and about single dads who are raising their kids on their own. Today we'll hear about an inspirational father, a man who encouraged not only his son, but many of us across the nation. Former Congressman Patrick Kennedy decided not to seek reelection last year. He has focused his life after politics on a new organization called One Mind for Research, a brain research organization inspired by his father, the late Senator Ted Kennedy.

Father’s Day is this weekend, and in honor of the big day, we’re looking at a kind of father that doesn’t always get a lot of attention: single dads. One recent calculation using 2010 Census data found the number of single father families nationwide jumped 27 percent in the past decade and nearly doubled since 1990.

Author, mother, and law professor Amy Chua is creating a firestorm with an essay published in this past weekend’s Wall Street Journal titled, "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior.” The essay, which was given its title by the Journal, included excerpts from her new book “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.” Both showcases Chua's strict parenting style — from forcing her daughters to practice the piano well into the night without bathroom breaks, to forbidding them to attend sleepovers.

On Monday's show, we'll be talking with Cheryl Kilodavis, author of the new children's book, "My Princess Boy." Cheryl wrote the book after she noticed her young son's preference for dressing up in girls' clothing. When has your child behaved in a way that made you reevaluate your beliefs or the way you parent? How did you react?

Post your comments below or leave us a message at 877-8-MY-TAKE.

Check out a video of Cheryl and her "princess boy," Dyson, after the jump.

Andre Agassi talked to us this morning, and while I generally have little or no interest in what memoir-hawking celebrities have to say, he talked about something that surprised me. Yes, his life story is all about his tough father and the agony of being a tennis prodigy urged on by an ambitious parent. He told a great story about how his dad put 9-year-old Andre up to a game against sports legend Jim Brown years ago on a ten thousand dollar bet, the family’s life savings.  

I asked Agassi whether the frustration over his own life has parallels with grown up golf prodigy Tiger Wood’s current struggles. Agassi guardedly said that he understood how living in a bubble created by stardom can lead to bad choices. Then a few moments later, while talking about the boarding school he created in his hometown of Las Vegas, he said that the most important thing in life is choices. “Education is about choices,” Andre Agassi told us and he openly wished he had made more conscious choices in his own life. It made me think about my goals as a parent.

We're continuing our summer reading series with a look at modern parenthood and childcare. Mona Simpson's new book, "My Hollywood," looks at the relationship between modern parents and the nannies they hire to take care of their kids. 

Last week, Dr. Richard Friedman wrote an article for The New York Times called “Accepting That Good Parents May Plant Bad Seeds.” It suggested that good parents who have bad kids sometimes just can’t help it.

In other words: Just as some kids are wired to be smarter or shorter, some are wired to be meaner and naughtier, regardless of how good or bad their parents are.

On Monday, we heard the case that a one-child family is the best decision in these tough economic times. But our listeners shared personal accounts from every side of this complex issue. Some of you sang the praises of your larger families, while others gave reasons of natural resources and money to argue that family size should be limited.

Seth from Hoboken called in to say:

I am an only child and I think it's a great thing for parents to decide to have only one kid, because right now we've got too many people with not enough food and not enough water and too many people using oil. So if every two people makes one person, the world will just have less people and there'll be more resources to go around.

Over the course of modern American history, economics have played a role in the number of children parents choose to have. During the Great Depression, for example, 23 percent of families had only one child. And in our current economic recession, 64 percent of women polled by the Guttmacher Institute said they did not plan on having a child now, because they couldn’t afford to. Aside from economics, what are the benefits and drawbacks of limiting family size?

Most people know Michael Chabon as the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.”

And most people know his wife Ayelet Waldman as the controversial essayist who once ruffled feathers by claiming she was more in love with her husband than her kids.

But behind Chabon and Waldman’s high profile writing careers is a very real family, consisting of two parents, four kids, and – as Ayelet writes in her book, “Bad Mother ” - her own mental illness.

How do you raise a child who's going to grow up to be wildly successful? (And maybe even a centibillionaire?) That's a version of the question every parent asks themselves. Every parent wants their kids to be successful, to be wise, to be decent people. Very few, when their children are born, think, “I want my kid to be the world’s first centibillionaire.”

Takeaway co-host Celeste Headlee will be getting married this summer and, in the process, she'll be taking on the role of stepmother, as her husband-to-be brings a new son into the household. At the same time, her son will get a new stepfather. She's not alone: 65 percent of remarriages involve children from a previous marriage, so we look at the challenges of blended families.

A quadriplegic mother is at risk of losing her five-month-old son in a custody battle with the baby's father, who cites her quadriplegia as a reason to deny her custody. Should the courts be involved in such cases? If so, where does ADA regulation end and family law begin? Lisa Belkin introduces us to various custody cases involving parents with disabilities, and Dr. Corinne Vinopol, president of the Institute for Disabilities Research and Training and a hearing officer in disability disputes, shares her insights about parenting, disabilities, and the law. 

Follow along with New York Times' readers at Lisa Belkin's blog post on this story.

Recent studies have shown that parents with young kids can put a solid marriage on the rocks.  So what happens when you add a national economic crisis to the mix?  Yale psychology professor Susan Nolen-Hoeksema and Lamar Tyler, blogger at the parenting website BlackandMarriedwithKids.com, say that it's particularly hard for loving married couples to connect when times are tough.

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.

Are there parenting lessons to learn from Spike Jonze's new movie, "Where the Wild Things Are?" New York Times blogger Lisa Belkin says Jonze's film, and the classic children's book that inspired it, could serve as guides for the parents of so-called wild boys. She joins Anthony Rao, child psychologist and author of "The Way of Boys: Raising Healthy Boys in a Challenging and Complex World," along with his co-author Michelle Seaton, to find the parenting lessons in Sendak's tale and Jonze's movie.

Read a chapter from Rao and Seaton's book in The New York Times' 'Motherlode' Blog: "When Time-Outs Don't Work."