Column Facts are facts.

This week, we’re taking a look at the business end of the sex-by-numbers game. It’s all babies, all the time – eat your heart out, Blue Ivy.

Number of births in the United States, 2007: 4.3 million

Number of births in the United States, 2010: 4 million

Average cost of raising a child born in 2007 to age 18, as estimated by the USDA: $269,040

Average cost of raising a child born in 2010 to age 18, as estimated by the USDA: $286,860

13 million to one: odds of giving birth to identical quadruplets without IVF

1 in 53: American twin birth rate in 1980

1 in 30: American twin birth rate in 2009, an increase of over 75%

43: Percentage of women in a recent poll who said they would put off starting a family until after the recession

30: Percentage of American workers who have less than $1000 in savings

4000: Dollars a day to stay in Mt. Sinai’s Central-Park-adjacent luxury maternity suite

Number of incarcerated women in the U.S. who were pregnant or had given birth in the year of their arrest: 1 in 4

Number of royal births in 2011: 4

Image: rkramer62

Nope, not like in the innocent ’50s and ’60s when the biggest thing to fear was the Boogie Man and The Blob. Not even like the ’70s, when middle class parents let their brood stay out on bikes in the ‘burbs until dark.

But was it really safer back then? If you buy into recent statistics, kids are actually as safe or safer now. A recent study by CCRC (Crimes Against Children Research Center) tells us sexual assault, bullying and other violence against children went down substantially between 2003 and 2008. Crime against grown ups is down too, although no one is quite sure why. Though experts are baffled and cannot put a finger on it, they can assert that media coverage is distorting our reality.

News programming must fill time. Thus, the media has a feeding frenzy with random acts of horror – Columbine bully revenge, abuse cases, molestation, neglect and the recent Tuscon, Arizona shooting spree that killed six people, including 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green. As someone who has worked for a 24-hour news network, I can tell you the goal is brainstorming as many angles as possible.

The images we are bombarded with create a chilling effect, aptly addressed in the book Free- Range Kids by syndicated columnist, Lenore Skenazy. She preaches that walking kids home from bus stops and forcing them indoors out of fear of imminent stranger danger is not only harmful to their psyches but does nothing to protect them from the most common offenders – people the kids know and trust. Instead of draconian sex offender registries, she says we are ahead of the game when we train children to protect themselves.

“David Finkelhor, the head of CCRC, reminds us that by constantly focusing on strangers, we are looking in the wrong direction,” Skenazy tells me. “If you want to keep kids safe, teach them starting at age three to discern good and bad touches, that they don’t have to do something an adult says if it feels weird or creepy, and that you won’t be mad if they tell you that something happened.”

Skenazy shared in her book about letting her own 10-year-old ride the Long Island Rail by himself, and took flack from observers like Dr. Laura – the same kind of bad mommy flack Ayelet Waldman took for confessing she loved her husband more than her kids, or Amy Chua for her recent Tiger Mom tales of raising highly restricted yet successful Chinese kids. But Skenazy sticks to her guns, insisting the crime rate today is equal to what it was back in 1970 and it is a bigger danger to strip children of freedom to roam the range.

“If you were a child in the ’70s or the ’80s and were allowed to go visit your friend down the block, or ride your bike to the library, or play in the park without your parents accompanying you, your children are no less safe than you were,” she says. “But it feels so completely different, and we’re told that it’s completely different, and frankly, when I tell people that it’s the same, nobody believes me. We’re living in really safe times, and it’s hard to believe.”

So hard to believe, the author and blogger says her book isn’t selling as well as one that might hype stranger danger and the abductions and killings that might result. In terms of hyping, she points to the recent boom in baby snatching hysteria over the hospital crime involving a North Carolina woman who turned herself in after taking a baby from a New York hospital more than two decades ago.

“Now there are specials on television telling us how to protect ourselves from this terrible fate and what galls me is the fact some four million babies are born in hospitals and one is taken, so the tips they are giving us are erroneous,” complains Skenazy. “CNN keeps harping on the fact babies are usually taken when mothers are in the bathroom, but there is no usually. As a result, new mothers – no matter how tired or weak they are – must grab the baby into the bathroom, otherwise they are not being a good mom and protecting their child.”

The safeguarding now extends to the internet which is considered by many to be the most threatening modern day crime spot for minors, one that literally brings pornographers and predators into our homes. Schools too, try to take a bite out of slime by offering internet safety as part of parent education, reacting to programs like the Today Show which told us danger lurks just click away.

Does it mean the filters we install just aren’t working, or is it that, just as in the mall or at the bus stop, kids must be taught how to ignore the weirdos who cross their path?

“With increased access to and depth of the virtual world, the potential dangers change rather than getting simply safer or not,” points out David Abusch-Magder, head of Middle School at Brandeis Hillel Day School in San Francisco. “No one is going to get run over by a computer or shot by a stray bullet coming from the computer, so it’s really about educating and working with students to build a common vocabulary to understand the dangers and to monitor their use.”

Skenazy insists the web is just another avenue used by society to make children deathly afraid of all strangers, while the reality is the web is no different from other public places where informed kids should know how to avoid being taken in by someone they don’t know.

“Studies show the places kids are in danger on the web are the equivalent of the red light districts in real life, sexually oriented chat rooms and you are putting yourself in a comprising place by going there,” says Skenazy. “Just X out or ignore the freaks. I tell my kids the same things as in real life -you can talk to people but you can’t go with anyone you meet; you can give someone directions but you never go with them in their car.”

Our kids are also in danger when they ride with us in our cars – in fact, car crashes are the number one way kids are killed in the United States. But as Skenazy points out, we don’t go through paroxysms of self doubt when we drive them to the dentist.

“The fear becomes a template of all of our parenting,” she says. “The danger may be remote but we are bad parents, incredibly negligent if now protecting them every second of the day. That is what makes us crazy about letting our kids do anything.”

In fact, the Blessing of the Skinned Knee theory argues not coddling kids and giving them more freedom early on allows them to function once they flee the nest, something past generations enjoyed much more than our own children. There will always be crime but we can believe the statistics on random incidents of violence and overcome our template of fear. By doing so, our kids might be able to tell their own children stories about hanging out at the neighborhood park and riding bikes until dark.

Images: Cia de Foto, Jezblog

Infertility is a major bitch. It can seem like an almost endless font of emotions, misconceptions, fears, and at times complete and utter despair for the women and men who suffer through it. For women of a certain age who are not yet even trying for babies, it can swing like a scythe out of nowhere. For women (and yes, men) who are on the path to babies and facing road block after road block, it can be one of the hardest roads to travel in life.

The good news? Infertility is a bitch who almost always gets made over into a happy stork. Of the many strong women and men I know who have been down this road, they all have children now – be they biologically-derived or of another mother. And all of them feel with the depth of their souls that they have the children they were “meant” to have. Some confide they would not even change the path that got them to parenthood, as stressful as it was at times.

Still, for our sisters and brothers still on this road, one of the most painful things about it can be the misconceptions of others. People in the midst of infertility may know the technical ins and outs almost as well as some doctors. But the same doesn’t go for the aunt at Thanksgiving dinner who loudly asks three times in one evening if you’re pregnant and haven’t you been trying for years? (Because you got knocked up in the ten minutes since the first time she asked, right?) For the nosy aunts and well-meaning friends out there, here’s a look at some of the common misunderstandings about fertility that are better left unsaid.

It’s all in your head. It’s not all in your head. As Parents Magazine points out, some may tell men and women struggling with infertility that “if you’d stop worrying so much, you’d get pregnant.” Dr. John Zhang is the director of New Hope Fertility Center in New York. As he told New York Family, your relaxed mental state is important while trying to conceive. But he points out that “It’s also not [the case] that you can just relax and everything will be fine.”

Isn’t it easy for women to get pregnant? Shows like 16 & Pregnant make it seem like a case of wine coolers is all you need to be with child. But the CDC reports that 7.3 million women in the United States have “impaired fecundity.” This is 11.3 percent of all women and by some estimate, one in every 10 couples. The struggle to get pregnant is more common than people think.

She had twins, so she must have used fertility treatments. Yes, with the rise of IVF, the rate of twin births has risen. One in 32 births are now twins, a rate that has gone up 65 percent since 1980 due to fertility treatments. But that doesn’t mean that every twin birth is from using fertility drugs or procedures, as one in 89 women still have fraternal twins and one in 250 women give birth to identical babies. More over, is it really a nosy aunt’s business how you conceived?

You’re healthy and look so young, so why are you having trouble? As a woman ages, her chances for conceiving a baby decrease no matter what. And while healthy choices are important on the road to baby, ultimately it is just about the joining of a viable egg and viable sperm. Further, infertility can strike men and women of any age.

Well, at least you have each other. To insinuate that a childless couple can’t have a happy or fulfilled life without babies insinuates that all people need parenthood as the lasting key to fulfillment. Life has disappointments. And if adoption and/or fertility treatments fail, people move on.

Genetics are everything. No, they aren’t. As Dr. Cooperman pointed out to New York Family, there is “no correlation between your mother’s infertility and your ability to conceive.” So if your mother or sister had trouble, that doesn’t mean you will.

It’s the woman’s fault. Sadly, CDC points out that 7.5 percent of all sexually-experienced men have sought treatment at some point for fertility issues. This comes to 3.3 to 4.7 million men. Couples who are trying for children are in this together. And as for the rest of us? We’re there for support.

Images: Vivian Chen, e3000

When President Obama outlined his administration’s plans to curb the ongoing BP oil spill in his national address last night, he mentioned the “wrenching anxiety” that local fishers feel at the potential loss of their livelihoods. But Obama failed to mention another cause of disquiet: the fact that the oil and its chemical dispersants may cause major complications for pregnant women and their unborn children living along the Gulf Coast.

According to Lucinda Marshall at Truthout, young children and babies in utero are at a major risk of chemical poisoning after oil spills because their immune systems are not fully developed, leaving them incapacitated to fight off dangerous compounds. While the National Institutes of Health have provided information on the way endocrine disrupters – common in both the oil and the substances used to clean it up – scientists aren’t clear on the effects of the chemicals, in part because until very recently, they had no idea which chemicals were being disseminated.

Now, without first telling Nalco Holding Co., the manufacturer of the dispersants that BP is using, the Environmental Protection Agency has released a list of ingredients used to break down the oil. And – shocker – the news isn’t pretty. One of the ingredients, 2-butoxyethanol, caused major health problems among cleanup workers on the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill. That, plus the oil itself, could spell major risks to pregnant women and their fetuses.

According to Dr. Gina Solomon, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, “Some of the volatile chemicals in oil have been linked to miscarriage, preterm birth, and low birth weight, so it is a good idea for pregnant women to avoid the areas where there are elevated levels of VOCs [Volatile Organic Compounds] in the air. These are areas that include noticeable smells of oil or visible oil and also any areas where the EPA monitoring system detects elevated levels. The EPA air monitoring results are being updated regularly at www.epa.gov/bpspill. To be cautious, pregnant women may choose to avoid any areas directly along the waterfront and beachfront, even when oil is not visible.”

That’s easy enough advice to follow for would-be Gulf Coast vacationers (as if there are any this season). But for pregnant women living near the spill zone – where oil and dispersants reenter the atmosphere after being burned off the water – avoiding chemical exposure is akin to turning a blind eye to the disaster itself.

Image: Hello Turkey Toe

My husband used to station a video camera near our gurgling baby, capturing an hour or so of what I considered excessive b-roll of her discovering her hand, exploring the texture of newspapers on a shelf with her tongue and fingers, or looking around with a glazed- over grimace from the over taxation of her developing brain and then whimpering for some attention.

These weren’t pastel-coated Kodak moments like taking those first steps, blowing out a Disney princess cake, or the splashy footage of a swim lesson. Nonetheless, my deeper half was fascinated with the mundane because it conveyed the anthropological human experience. This is where is all starts. And we are usually too busy to notice.

Apparently, this fascination and a desire for universal connection also drove French filmmaker, Thomas Balmes, whose documentary Babies offers a simultaneous bird’s eye (and sometimes fly’s eye) view of early child birthing and rearing among four cultures. Two of the women featured live close to nature in a tribal village in Namibia and a grassy plain in Mongolia and have experienced motherhood, while two from industrialized countries of Japan and the U.S. welcome their first children into the world.

The latter are hands-on mommies supported by their spouses, while we rarely see glimpses of the fathers in the third world settings – either because they refused to be filmed or because they are mostly out hunting and doing other manly things (i.e. napping and yapping) – while the matriarchy gathers, milks and nurtures the young. All of the families except for the African one have pet cats that seem to fill in for any nanny or grandparent, by lounging with or on the baby while the mother is otherwise occupied. Got to love cats.

In following these babies from birth to their first steps, the documentary attempts to redefine the nonfiction art form while linking humanity in the stages of life that are universal to all of us, namely the earliest yearnings stemming from innate survival instincts: food, shelter, warmth and love. There are no words spoken (à la Winged Migration) but the language is wholly familiar. Often, it speaks volumes about boredom.

Ponijao, who lives with her family near Opuwo, Namibia, spends a great deal of time sitting around with other babies, flies swarming her face, nothing to play with but a found bone or a playmate’s body parts. In one scene on a walk with other women and kids, her mother soothes her discontentment by simply bending down and extending an exposed boob for the baby to suck. Hey, it worked great for me, and it works great for her. Breast milk: the new mother’s helper!

Bayar lives with  his family in Mongolia and is closer to nature than most, as cows graze and meander around him as he crawls around the plain, often left to his own devices when he isn’t being tormented by a jealous and also bored older brother. We root for the helpless, tightly swaddled infant who will never visit a Gymboree class or pull plastic treasures from a toy bin, but is somehow contented with what he knows. Like the other babies, he seems relatively well off with enough to eat and a warm place to sleep. His working mom is tough, his brother is mean, and his dad drove him home after birth strapped to his mom on the back of a crude motorcycle. No baby seat available, officers. But somehow you just know he will persevere and join his clan, working the herds in no time. Like many of us, if Bayar can survive a sadistic older brother, he can survive anything.

Mari, who lives with her family in Tokyo, Japan, is the epitome of the yuppie Beverly Hills baby, dressed to the nines in designer rompers and leg warmers and adored by her gentle parents who live in a typical Toyko high rise tower. Nothing here is lost in translation. She is escorted to Mommy and Me classes and caressed by her cat, and only appears distressed in one scene when frustrated by her inability to fit a peg block through a whole. That sort of challenge would excite my husband to no end, providing reels and reels of tape.

Hattie from San Francisco holds up a mirror to modern parents. While her mother seems the stereotypical Marin County hippie to a comical degree (naked hot tub soaking and Indian tribal songs at baby group bonding), this setting – like the Toyko apartment – makes us modern mommies wonder if we offered too much stimulus, creating humans that want and need endlessly to be happy. While the documentary makes no judgments about less is best, we come away understanding why our parents have a bone to pick with the “things” we have bought to entertain our children, and the schedules we have managed to fill their time. It all leaves little room for self discovery.

Perhaps that is why so many industrialized children need shrinks later on. “I never asked for all of that; I just wanted my parents to love me.” In some parts of our world, love is the only option. In all parts of the world, there is no substitute. Man cannot survive on Disney alone.

Images: Courtesy of Focus Features

Researchers at U.C. Davis are trying to connect the dots leading to 10 autism clusters in California. One theory is that those parents are using certain hazardous household products, exposing their kids to dangers linked to the neuro-developmental disorder that usually surfaces by the time a child turns three.

According to the Contra Costa Times and other news sources reporting the findings, the study authors don’t attribute the cases to a toxic waste plant or other widespread polluter, but rather to household items like cleaners or landscaping products.

The report released by the University this week says the clusters show autism rates nearly twice the amount of ones in surrounding areas, including three in the Bay Area: Parts of Redwood City, San Carlos and Belmong; Parts of Santa Clara and Sunnyvale; Western San Francisco. No clusters were found in the East Bay.

Other clusters are in Southern California and the Central Valley. And one San Diego cluster was found to have rates of 61.2 per 10,000 births, compared with 27.1 per 10,000 births in the surrounding region. The researchers said the study is the first one looking at the geography of autism births in the state to learn of local sections of elevated environmental risk.

In producing the study, which was published online in the journal Autism Research, the scientists looked at nearly all of the 2.5 million births recorded in California from 1996 to 2000. The report says some 10,000 children born during that period were later diagnosed with autism.

The scientists who conducted the study are now conducting two additional studies examining the environmental causes of autism, and plan to collect dust samples from the homes of 1,300 families to see if common chemicals are the culprits.

Main Image: Mercury News

Perhaps it’s the fact the yard is covered with green grass, which is a water no-no in my world, yet a feature imposed by our homeowner association regulations. How we’d love to replace it with artichokes and succulents.

Maybe it’s because my garage is in the back of the house and leads to the backdoor entrance. That sure makes it convenient for unloading backpacks and groceries.

I suppose both of these excuses keep me from perching on the brick steps out front, except once in a blue moon, like on the magical night of Halloween, when hundreds of candy-crazed strangers travel to our “safe” suburban neighborhood to trick-or-treat up and down the tree-lined streets.

Yes, my front yard has practically become a stranger to me, nearly a decade after the baby-rearing years when my girls ran wild with the Bernsteins, the Murphys and the Ritters, the sidewalks their playgrounds for colorful chalk graffiti and clunky, three-wheel vehicles.

It’s kind of eerie how people don’t venture out front anymore.

The children in those other families have gone off to college. They’re the same children that showed up at my front door when my first daughter was born, asking “Can we see the baby, Mrs. Bradley?” Before going away, they had graduated from a variety of private schools in the city. When I was growing up, every kid on my block went to the same public school.

Our pediatrician, who lives in the hood, came over when both daughters were born and delivered hand-knit sweaters she had made for them in her spare time. We no longer go to her house for annual neighborhood Christmas parties. We just see her face when the girls contract a bug, break an arm or crush a finger in a door.

Sure, once in a while, I park at the curb or a soccer mom picks the girls up out front, and I wave to Mrs. Bernstein across the street. But on most days, I shuttle them through the back.

Once inside the back door, my daughters quickly become shut-ins, burdened with hours of homework, entertained after with hours of FarmVille or shows like NCIS. When I was growing up, everyone ran out front after homework, playing ball in the street, climbing trees and doing cartwheels or just shooting the breeze on the curb.

What has changed for me and my family?

Is it having personal computers that lure us into a false sense of “community connection” that actually keeps us from having a real one in our very own neighborhoods? Is it the security issue which gives parents a false sense of panic over children being abducted on their lawns by a stranger? Calming that hysteria is the subject of the eye-opening book, Free Range Kids.

I know it’s not just a city thing because last Friday night, on our way to a friend’s home for dinner, we drove down a thoroughly urban street where parents with toddlers were hanging out on their stoop, the children playing and the dad pouring his wife a glass of red wine.

I felt envious. Here I live in one of the most coveted neighborhoods of San Francisco, and I’m lacking all that I truly desire on a Friday evening: the family outside taking in the sunset, sipping organic wine, moving to the rhythm of a glider, and waving hello to other families doing the same. I guess you could say I need to move to the country. But, then again, think of that couple on their stoop on Divisadero Street.

The concept of the country can and should always be in our minds. It is that concept that keeps neighbor connected with neighbor, every night, not just that one October night when we venture out to the stoop.

This is the latest entry in Luanne Bradley’s column, Life in the Green Lane.

Images: tomask, Luanne Bradley

A for Apple, B is for Beluga, C is for Chullo. Pretty baby!

Parents on planet Hollywood and elsewhere are headed in that fruity, foamy and woolly direction in declaring devotion to Mama Earth via naming their young.

In the roaring Nineties, when real estate and dot comers were soaring, we saw a return to the Old Testament with the names  Sarah, Jacob, Rachel and Eli in vogue.

“Eve and Adam, please leave the great room until Mommy is finished closing her Genentech deal.”

Now that resources are scarcer than ever, green is the rule for everything cool. Nature-bound moms and dads can reference all good things from fiber foods and soothing teas to fair trade crafts and endangered species in getting that family branding just right.

Here is an A-to-Z reference guide on the eco-friendliest labels for your bouncing baby Gore:

Acai (boy) Agate (girl)

Boho (boy) Bark (girl)

Corky (boy) Coral (girl)

Deepak (boy) Dibbler (girl)

Energy (boy) Etsy (girl)

Free (boy) Flax (girl)

Gore (boy) Glacier (girl)

Hemp (boy) Henna (girl)

Indri (boy) Ivory (girl)

Jungle (boy) Jute (girl)

Kale (boy) Kharma (girl)

Leonardo (boy) Laurie David (girl)

Marsh (boy) Mauritius (girl)

Nash (boy) Nectar (girl)

Otter (boy) Oolong (girl)

Prius (boy) Polar (girl)

Quince (boy) Quantum (girl)

Rooibos (boy) Rummage (girl)

Stevia (boy) Sprig (girl)

Tiger (boy) Teak (girl)

Urban (boy) Urial (girl)

Vegan (boy)  VivaTerra (girl)

Wolf (boy) Watson (girl)

Xeri (boy, girl)

Yosemite (boy) Yurt (girl)

Zen (boy) Zona (girl)

*For catchy middle names with eco associations, we at EcoSalon suggest: Bradley, Sara, Amy, Tina, Irani, Vanessa, Barrington, Derby, Fitzsimmons, Chaityn or Lewis.

Share with us what you have namestormed!

Image: Will Foster