Texting and Parenting Harm Baby Development?

The latest issue of Brookings and Princeton’s “The Future of Children” adds to the growing number of studies documenting that childhood disability rates are not only unexplainably increasing, but also that the way disabilities manifest is significantly changing. Where the poster child of disability in the 1960s was on crutches, the new face is a child with autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or other problems that affect the developing brain.
Growing rates and shifting patterns of childhood disability challenge notions that U.S. children are generally healthy and suggest substantial changes in the risks children encounter. While disabilities are more common in children from lower-income households, a lack of family resources, education or other forms of social deprivation don’t explain all of what’s going on.
Some risk-hunting epidemiologists are considering whether any of the thousands of new chemicals in our environment are to blame, while others are examining the role that toxic stresses may play in jolting developing nervous systems onto an aberrant path.