A few weeks ago, I was supposed to take my sons to an outdoor activity that ended up getting canceled due to weather. We found out about the cancellation when we were halfway there. Before I turned around, I texted my husband that we would be heading home and never got a text back. This wasn’t unusual, as he usually puts his phone on “do not disturb” while he’s working. When we got home, I opened the door to find my husband and his best friend, “Ryan,” completely naked, and having fairly rough sex on our dining room table. They had music blaring, so they didn’t hear us come in, and my sons and I were all in shock and just stood there for a good 30 to 60 seconds before I was able to shut the music off, and they realized what was going on and could cover up. Obviously, this is a bit of a chaotic situation.

Ryan is like an uncle to my kids, has dinner at our house several times a week, has occasionally lived with us, and he and my husband actually work together. My husband and I are planning on staying together and are still trying to figure a lot of things out. Here’s the problem: My younger son (6) is pretty oblivious and thought Uncle Ryan was wrestling with his dad. My middle son (9) is very confused about the mechanics of what we saw (we’ve had the sex talk with him, but in hindsight, we made the mistake of only talking about heterosexual sex). My older son (12) is having a very difficult time. My middle son has a lot of questions that I’m not really sure how to answer, and I’m not sure how much detail I should be going into, and who should be leading this conversation (me? my husband? a doctor?). I’ve been getting phone calls home from my older son’s school. Ever since the incident, he has apparently been making derogatory remarks about gay people, using slurs, and is also refusing to speak to his father (they were previously pretty close). The school is threatening to expel him. We’re on the waitlist for individual and family therapy, but I was wondering if you guys had any advice about what to do with my two older sons?

—What Now?

Q. My husband’s “Likes”: We have close family friends with a beautiful and charming 19-year-old daughter. She is like a niece to us. My husband has made her uncomfortable twice by remarking, “Mmm! Look at Kelly!” when she’s entered a room dressed up for an outing or work. (The “Mmm!” being the sort of sound one makes in appreciation of a delicious-looking food, for example.) Her discomfort was clear—she turned red and exited the room both times.

He now is following her on Instagram and “likes” EVERY single post she puts up. (And she posts frequently!) I’ve spoken to him about not commenting on her appearance, especially with the loud, “Mmm!” noise. He seemed slightly mortified. Do I need to suggest he stop with all the Instagram attention? It seems kinda creepy to me, but perhaps I am seeing something that isn’t even an issue. I remember receiving unwanted attention from middle-aged men in my teen years, so I could be projecting here.

Dear Amy:

Recently, I noticed that the 13-year-old daughter of some close friends has been posting sexually provocative photos of herself on Instagram.

This is a public account, and strange men make sexual comments on her posts and she responds with lewd remarks that couldn’t be printed in a family newspaper.

I find it alarming, and so I notified the girl’s mother (who’s not on social media) and she thanked me for speaking up, but she also gave an excuse along the lines of “she’s just precocious.”

Meanwhile, the content continues. I think this is dangerous for the girl, but I also feel like it’s in the parents’ hands now. Is it right to continue to stay silent, once I’ve said my piece?

For years, scientific studies have warned pregnant women about the possible effects of toxoplasmosis (a disease found in kitty litter) on their unborn child.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention says that toxoplasmosis can lead to serious illnesses such as blindness, hearing loss, mental disabilities, and psychosis.

Most children do not show symptoms of toxoplasmosis. If they show any symptoms, they usually include swollen lymph glands, fatigue, and muscle aches.

In teens, it can cause chorioretinitis, which is a rare symptom that consists of blurred vision and dark spots floating in front of your child's eyes.

The two-part assignment was given to seniors in an English class at W.T. White High School, the Dallas Independent School District (ISD) confirmed to CNN.

The first part of the assignment asked students to write a half-page biography for six people, among them 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse.

The others on the list were Mahatma Gandhi, Cesar Chavez, Malcolm X, George Floyd and Joseph Rosenbaum, one of the victims of the Kenosha shooting. The names of Gandhi and Malcolm X were misspelled, according to a photo of the assignment obtained by CNN affiliate KTVT.

In the second part of the assignment, students were then asked to write a one-page essay on which of those six people they believed best demonstrated the concept of a hero.

A mother's depression and anxiety from conception through the first year of the baby's life is associated with negative developmental outcomes through adolescence, according to a study published Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

That could affect a lot of women: About 15% to 23% of women worldwide experience anxiety during pregnancy, while 15% deal with anxiety after childbirth. Depression through pregnancy is estimated to affect 10% of women, and 15% face postpartum depression. The burden is greater for women who are experiencing poverty or are teen parents, according to Postpartum Support International.

For the baby, the perinatal stage — which is defined as the time from conception through pregnancy (antenatal), birth and the first year of the baby's life (postnatal) — is "a time of unprecedented growth and sensitivity," the study said. That's when exposures and early life experiences may modify development starting from when he or she is in the womb to that critical first year as a growing child and onward.

A mother experiencing depression and anxiety before and after birth was moderately linked with her child's deficits in language and cognitive and motor development in infancy.

Dear Care and Feeding,

Last weekend, my wife’s and my mutual friend had a pool party for her 16-year-old daughter’s birthday party (at our condo pool). The birthday girl invited male and female schoolmates to the party, all around 15-to-17-year-olds. My wife started to put on her one-piece swimsuit to join the swimming until I stopped her. I felt like it was inappropriate for her to consider swimming with a bunch of teenagers, since she is a teacher at that school. She stated that it was a one piece and only one kid there was a student of hers. Plus, this was outside of school. I still didn’t agree with it, and she decided not to do it, for me. Was I wrong on this?

P.S. There were just three adults. Our friend, my wife, and me. The friend would have swam if my wife got in also, but our friend isn’t a teacher at the school.

—Teacher in a Swimsuit

How things are set up makes it an utterly shit gig for women. The last time I even considered marrying was 14 years ago. I’d been dating a guy for a few months (who had three kids I’d been cooking for). One day I found myself in his bathroom cleaning the toilet. It was like being slapped awake. How did I get here? I called him into the bathroom and he laughed, genuinely delighted, and said: I knew if I let it get nasty enough you’d clean it! He was serious. It was in that moment I realized what the marriage/kids gig really was: ceaseless servitude. – Kay, North Carolina

Over the years, I have been amazed at the outright rude comments made about my choice. A nurse once told me directly that my marriage would never be a real family because I had no children. People who have traveled a traditional path often seem to feel so threatened by those who choose a different route. Why would they care about my choice, when I certainly don’t care about theirs? – Marie, Tennessee

I was eight years old when I made the decision that I was never going to have children. As a mixed-ethnicity person in a predominantly white town I had just been racially abused, and right there I made the decision I would never bring a child into this world to face that abuse. – Natalie, England

A sign at the entrance of a metal-cutting shop in Kentwood, a suburb of Grand Rapids, asks customers to “remove your mask or raise both hands high” to avoid being mistaken as a robber.

The sign in front of Tubergen Cutting Tools Inc. reads “In responce [sic] to Gretch, attention: This facility is protected by armed employees for your safety! Remove your mask or raise both hands high and keep um up! Don’t be mistaken as a robber! Thank you, management. Open carry still welcome.”

A teenager is earning plenty of praise after creating clips criticizing the seemingly contradictory ways some parents enforce household rules.

The clips, shared on TikTok by a user named Myah Elliott, are part of a series she calls “Things Parents Need To Understand.” In her videos, the 19-year-old shares her experience navigating common clashes kids have with their parents — ranging from bedroom privacy and curfews to eating your vegetables.

One particularly popular video, which has earned more than 650,000 views, features Elliott complaining about her parents’ apparently hypocritical stance on household chores.

Melissa Pintor Carnagey’s puberty workshops still feature the same genital anatomy models and quizzes around body care, but these days she looks out on a virtual classroom of adolescents sitting at home alongside a parent. A few weeks ago, she took her in-person classes to Zoom, where familiar exercises have gotten a technological update: a software program allows students to text her their associations with puberty. A colorful on-screen collage of words like “pimples,” “breasts,” “hair,” “acne,” and “sex” show up on the screen, each growing in size relative to the number of students who submit it.

Since Carnagey’s puberty workshops went online, they continually sell out within 48 hours of open registration. “We’ve definitely seen an influx in families seeking out resources for sex ed,” said Carnagey, founder of the organization Sex Positive Families. “Parents are very hungry for access to these conversations, the information, and the resources.”

Hello, lost generation.

The Millennials entered the workforce during the worst downturn since the Great Depression. Saddled with debt, unable to accumulate wealth, and stuck in low-benefit, dead-end jobs, they never gained the financial security that their parents, grandparents, or even older siblings enjoyed. They are now entering their peak earning years in the midst of an economic cataclysm more severe than the Great Recession, near guaranteeing that they will be the first generation in modern American history to end up poorer than their parents.

Recessions are not good for anyone, from infants to the elderly. Nor are pandemics. Americans born during this calamity will be more likely to have low birth weights and to be in poor health generally, with lifelong effects. Children will not just endure this trauma—manifested in lost months of schooling, skipped meals, housing volatility, and increased abuse—but will carry it with them. Zoomers graduating into the recession will die sooner because of it, suffering increased incidence of heart disease, lung cancer, liver disease, and drug overdoses in the coming decades; they will also earn less over the course of their lives. The elderly are likely to be the most economically insulated group but are facing the most terrifying health consequences.

Among adults the news isn’t good, either. And particularly not for those youngish-but-no-longer-young adults who came into this crisis already vulnerable, already fragile, already over-indebted and underpaid. The Millennials were left with scars during the Great Recession that never quite healed, and inherited an economy structured to manufacture precarity for the young and the poor and black and brown, and to perpetuate wealth for the old and the rich and white.

Shocking allegations in a new federal lawsuit accuse the Transportation Safety Authority (TSA) of refusing to allow a transgender 16-year-old girl to board her flight unless she showed an officer her genitals.

Jamii Erway and her mother Kimberly were prevented from boarding their flight out of Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina in May 2019. The mother and daughter sued earlier this week.

The lawsuit says that when Erway went through the scanner, it set off a false positive. When the teen explained that she is transgender and if they changed the gender marker on the machine everything would be fine, they refused. Instead, the agent called a supervisor.

“Notwithstanding, and for reasons still unknown to plaintiffs, [the supervisor] advised Jamii that she would need to accompany her to a private room, expose herself, and allow [the supervisor] to ‘feel up in there,’ i.e., touch her genitals,” the complaint alleges.

When I was in high school, there was no bigger rite of passage than being able to drive. But today, there's a trend of teens not getting their license when they come of age. With ride sharing apps as a convenient way to get around, coupled with rising costs of owning a car and an eye on the environment, many teens don't feel the push to get their licenses.

In fact, only about a quarter of 16-year-olds had a driver's license in 2014, a sharp decline from nearly half in 1983, according to a study by Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute.

As a parent of teen on the cusp of getting his license in these uncertain times, I often wonder if driving is a life skill that should be encouraged even if teens don't see the need for a license. Here's what the experts have to say.

Spit guards should be carried by all frontline police to protect officers from thugs spitting and coughing at them during the coronavirus pandemic, a senior figure has demanded.

Sergeant Simon Kempton, the operational lead for Covid-19 at the Police Federation, told MPs the virus was being 'weaponised' by criminals after dozens of such assaults in recent weeks.

He said: 'Now more than ever, while Covid-19 is being weaponised, we need those spit guards in the pocket of every single police officer, not just in custody, on the street as well.'