The Great: I have be one to support parents adopting past views of child rearing; the parents who don’t care sanitizer on their belt and who tell their kids to go play outside rather than watch Baby Einstein. So today makes me happy because I came across two stories that show this traditional method of child care is good for children after all. The first story is based out of the University of California, Bereley. Researchers there studied about 20,000 children and asked their parents about the various interactions they had had with other children. The researchers found that children who were in daycare or play groups regularly were less likely to contract leukemia. The risk is about 30% lower for these social children, and the researchers believe that this could be due to their exposure to minor ailments through their interactions with other children.

In another wonderful study, researchers from the National Research Center for Environmental Health in Munich, Germany found that having a pet is a good thing for children. Scientists found that having a pet during childhood helps the immune system to develop to fight harder in the future. The researchers said dogs especially brought in the right amount of pollen and dirt to help children’s immune systems fight asthma, eczema, and hay fever. Another victory for the anti-hand sanitizers!

The Not So Great: “Blended” families (families with step and half children) are growing in numbers in the United States. That being said, surveys taken by researchers at Florida State University found that children living in blended families are more likely to have lower grades in school. While we could speculate forever why the results are what they are, the research has found that there is a serious connection between academics and family make up. The children who were the best off in this blended family situation are those teens who live in a family with both half and stepsiblings. Those who were the worst off were boys living with either half or stepsiblings. Boys average a quarter of a letter grade lower when they are in situations with half and stepsiblings living with them. This was the largest difference in the study, with girls having a much smaller discrepancy. So what does this mean? Parents need to be extremely careful before they make the decision to get married again and make sure that serial monogamy is really in the child’s best interest.