Sorry, Brother, Sisters Are Good for You

Novelist refutes magazine, says it was a bad reaction to sleeping pill

(NEWSER) - Philip Roth isn't happy with the Atlantic: A recent piece in the magazine said he suffered from "a 'crack-up' in his mid-50s," and the novelist says that's simply "not true." The Atlantic Wire points out that the episode, "whatever you call it," has been widely discussed in past articles and interviews, but the novelist rejects the term "crack-up." The truth, says Roth, is that he suffered an "adverse reaction" to a sleeping pill called Halcion in the 1980s. More»

Three theories

(NEWSER) - You share a set of genes. You grew up in the same place, around the same family. So why aren’t you and your siblings at all alike? Researchers have long puzzled over the question of why brothers and sisters can wind up so different, and NPR tracks down three theories:

• The Darwin Theory: Evolution was driven, some theorize, by competition, with organisms specializing so they didn’t compete directly. Siblings may do the same thing, taking on different roles to less directly compete for their parents time and attention.

Boys who stay close with mom avoid unhealthy stereotypes

(NEWSER) - Being what Time describes as a "mama's boy" is good for you, a new study suggests. An Arizona State professor followed 426 boys through middle school to find out when and to what extent they embraced stereotypically male qualities like emotional reserve and physical toughness. He found that boys who shun hyper-masculine behavior have better mental health. And "mother support and closeness was the most predictive of boys' ability to resist stereotypes," the professor says. More»

Kids stress us out—but we still find them rewarding

(NEWSER) - Ask parents if their children make them happy and they’ll likely say yes. So why does almost every study on the subject show that having children tends to make people less happy—and that, in fact, many parents love their kids but hate parenting? In an extensive New York article , Jennifer Senior explores how parenting, and Americans’ reasons for having children, have changed over the decades. More»

Psych specialists lost five in shooting by fellow psychiatrist

(NEWSER) - The unit of psychiatric specialists who were among those fired on by rogue psychiatrist Nadal Malik Hasan Nov. 5th, seeing five comrades killed and 17 wounded, left for Afghanistan yesterday, right on schedule, reports the Washington Post. "This promises to be the most challenging year of our lives, though we have already faced our first battleground,” said a colonel in the detachment, which lost its major, staff sergeant, and sergeant. More»