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."

This Takeout comes from our listeners: We spoke yesterday about daughters overcoming difficult relationships with their mothers, and vice-versa. After we got off the air, 75-year-old Dolores from Oklahoma called us to talk about her relationship with her mother. We also got many responses here on the website, one from a woman describing taking care of her mother with Alzheimer's.

For our family segment, we take a look at a recent government report that shows a 30 percent increase in the number of women arrested for drinking and driving in the past ten years. This report comes out amidst a vigorous discussion in the blogosphere about mothers who drink. Are mothers more stressed out than they used to be, or has the feminist movement made it more socially acceptable to drink than a couple of generations ago?

To discuss this we speak to Lisa Belkin, writer of the New York Times' MotherLode blog; and Tara Trower, assistant features editor at the Austin American Statesman and writer for the Statesman's Mama Drama blog.

High school sports are often viewed not only as a chance for kids to get exercise, but also to teach them how to be team players and team leaders. But some recent studies show that children whose parents and coaches push them hard to perform can sometimes wind up developing negative personality traits. For more, The Takeaway talks to Kate Dailey, who writes the "Human Condition" blog for Newsweek, Mark Hyman, author of the book "Until It Hurts: America's Obsession with Youth Sports and How It Harms Our Kids," and Takeaway Sports Contributor Ibrahim Abdul-Matin.

Ibrahim weighs in further with a story about his own father

It's back to school time, which means that while parents head to stores to outfit their kids for a new school year, schools need to refresh their supplies as well. Some economists say that the recession is easing, but both schools and parents are still feeling the financial squeeze. With us today to talk about how the retail market is doing is Louise Story, finance reporter for The New York Times, along with friend of The Takeaway Mary Elizabeth Williams, culture critic for Salon.com.

The world's oldest mother died last week. She was a Spanish woman who gave birth to twins when she was 67. But cancer took her life just three years after giving birth. This week's family segment will explore the issue of starting a family later in life. Joining The Takeaway is Lisa Belkin, who wrote about the issue in The New York Times blog Motherlode: Adventures in Parenting. Also joining us is journalist Karen Day, a 56-year-old mother of a three-year-old, who also has three other children.

Read an article that Karen Day wrote Why Have a Baby After 50?

Every Monday, The Takeaway focuses on the family. Today, author Jeremy Adam Smith joins us to talk about his young son and discuss the provocative question of whether parents unconsciously raise kids to be racists. He is the author of “Daddy Shift: How Stay-at-Home Dads, Breadwinning Moms, and Shared Parenting Are Transforming the American Family."

Click through for a transcript of this interview.

You might think that the image of the bumbling father is as old as parenthood itself, but just in time for Father’s Day, The Takeaway talks to one father who says differently. Jeremy Adam Smith is the author of The Daddy Shift: How Stay-at-Home Dads, Breadwinning Moms, and Shared Parenting AreTransforming the American Family. Jeremy also writes the blog Daddy Dialectic. Also joining the conversation is one very important Dad, Don Lanpher, father of our very own Katherine.

In July, the American Academy of Pediatrics will come out with a new statement on how to prevent childhood bullying. They suggest that schools adopt a program in which children are encouraged to reach out to victims and isolate bullies. Can schools really make bullying uncool? Dr. Robert Sege, one of the lead authors on the policy, joins The Takeaway with his big ideas.

For parents and teachers looking for advice on how to deal with bullying, head to today's New York Times to read Perri Klass's article, At Last, Facing Down Bullies (and Their Enablers).

When you're done listening to Dr. Sege, check out The Takeaway's past coverage on childhood bullying and teen psychosis.

Tell the truth about having kids. In the often frustrating, sleep-deprived role of parent, what advice can you pass on? Share your strategies and stories of parenting with us.

What's your take? Leave a comment below or record your story at 1-877-8-MY-TAKE.   "The toughest thing is being honest with your child all the time." (6/3/2009)

  "There are three things you cannot make a baby do..." (6/3/2009)

WE LANDED AT Charles de Gaulle Airport a couple of days before Christmas. One dog, one infant, nine books on how to get along with the French, and eleven pieces of luggage, three of which had already gone missing. We drove for ninety minutes in heavy traffic, the baby howling, the wife attempting to hide her exposed nursing bosom from the driver, and the dog scratching her bottom across the floor of the minivan. At length we arrived at our new home on the Left Bank, which we’d never actually seen, except in photographs. It was a small cluster of room-sized houses in a tiny garden tucked away at the back of a courtyard of an old apartment building. We piled out of the car and rushed to the front door, a small teeming peristaltic bundle of needs and hopes and anticipations. The door failed to open. The key mailed to us by the landlord did not fit the lock.

For the next thirty minutes, we sat in the cold, dark Paris courtyard and waited, mainly because we couldn’t think what else to do. We were being punished for our sins; we had wanted to dance, now we were paying the fiddler. It had been fun, when people asked us where we lived, to say, "Well, that’s hard to say, since at the end of the year we’re moving to Paris." They were all envious, or pretended to be, which was just as gratifying. For the past six months we had been playing our new role: People Who Are About to Live in Paris. Now here we were, in Paris itself. We knew no one. We spoke so little French that it was better to claim we spoke none. We had no purpose. And that, I should have reminded myself, was the point. ... (more)

Not many parents would publicly admit that they thought about throwing their sleep-deprivation-inducing newborn off a balcony. But writer Michael Lewis decided that it was important to tell the ugly truth about the development of parental love. In his book "Home Game," he talks about learning to be a father to his three children. Lewis talks to The Takeaway about the joys and travails of being a dad.
Read an excerpt from his book, Home Game.

Are modern parents adopting the idea of the child as a noble savage? Slow parenting, free-range parenting, I-don't-give-a-darn parenting -- this new approach is gaining popularity in reaction to the hovering of so-called "helicopter" parents. The basic premise is to leave your kids alone and let them develop at their own pace. Are parents taking pride now in being labeled a bad parent? Lisa Belkin is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and she writes about this new trend in parenting in this weekend's issue.

Want to hear more? Listen to our interviews with Ayelet Waldman and Heather B. Armstrong.

A recent British study suggests that babies who face forward in their stroller are much less likely to talk, laugh, and interact with their parents. It’s just that kind of interaction that stimulates brain development. Liz Attenborough, who manages the Talk to Your Baby campaign at Britain’s National Literacy Trust, joins John to explain.

Read the New York Times op-ed piece on this discussion, One Ride Forward, Two Steps Back by M. Suzanne Zeedyk.

"I Kissed A Girl" isn't just for clubbing anymore, lots of parents are using it for putting their baby to sleep. The sound of the lullaby is changing.