Jeremy DeSilva is awesome - even NPR thinks so!

Dr. Jeremy Silva of Boston University was interviewed on today's Morning Edition to talk about his recent PNAS paper. Robert Martin of the Field Museum and C. Owen Lovejoy of Kent State University are also interviewed.

Working moms on the tenure track - yeah, it's hard

Study from the AAUP corroborates what many women already know: trying to attain tenure and be a mother is really difficult, largely because institutional support is insufficient, but also because of internal pressure and guilt and interpersonal gender dynamics. The study reports that becoming a father does not have the same deleterious effect on male faculty.

Read the original study here.

Parenting Blog for Science Nerds

Big props to the ever-dashing Pablo Nepomnaschy for bringing to my attention one of the most awesome websites I've seen in a long time. Gwen Dewar, a fellow biological anthropologist with degrees from Berkeley and University of Michigan, is also a parent. She weds the two brilliantly on her site ParentingScience.com, the tagline of which is "Evidence-based information for the thinking parent." Nice.

From Dr. Dewar's homepage:
"No folk theories. No preachy advice. No authoritarian pronouncements or pseudoscientific political dogma. Instead, you’ll find something pretty rare among popular resources for parents: In-depth analysis with fully referenced citations from the scientific and medical literature.

I’ve got opinions. But who cares? What’s really important is critical thinking. Parents deserve to be treated like intelligent, rational beings. You may be a scientist, physician, or teacher. Maybe you’re an educated, skeptical layperson who loves science. Whatever the case, you don’t need dogma. You need evidence. You can draw your own conclusions."

In addition to being helpful to academic parents, I see this site being useful in anthropology courses on human sexuality, life history, parenting, evolutionary medicine,evolutionary psychology, etc. Please check it out!