New research suggests that the myth of the “evil” stepparent treating the stepchildren different that bio-kids is largely unfounded. Professionals often have a skewed perspective and see only the worst situations. I’ve found that most of these similar myths are unfounded and, for example, most foster parents are truly loving and appropriate, step-parents love all their kids, and that most adoptions are wonderfully successful.

Contrary to common belief, parents do not generally treat their stepchildren less favourably than their own. Until now, many researchers believed in the so-called “Cinderella effect.” It states that it is biologically inevitable that parents care less for stepchildren because they do not spread their genes. However, researchers have discovered an important exception. If there is a reasonable chance of increasing wealth in the parents’ environment then no difference is made between one’s own children and stepchildren. Thus, parental care depends on more than just the biological relationship.

This is the result of a study published by Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research researcher Kai Willführ together with Alain Gagnon from the University of Montreal in the scientific journal Biodemography and Social Biology. “We are now able to prove that the Cinderella effect is not an inevitable reflex of stepparents,” says Kai Willführ. The scientists investigated if and how strongly parents neglected their stepchildren by looking at the mortality of children in historic patchwork families from the 17th to 19th century. They compared the Krummhörn region of East Frisia (Germany), which was a densely populated area with little space for demographic development, and the growing Canadian settlements in Québec. For both areas they calculated how the children’s chances of survival changed when a stepmother moved in.

The conclusions showed that only in Krummhörn, which offered fewer opportunities for demographic growth, the stepmother had a negative influence. In Krummhörn children from a father’s first marriage died more often before the age of 15 if a stepmother moved in. This effect was not seen in Québec, even though the tragedy of Aurore Gagnon, a young girl who died from wounds inflicted by her stepmother and her father in 1920, is still fresh in Quebec’s collective memory . The “Cinderella effect,” therefore, does not inevitably seem to occur. The stepmothers must have treated their children in East Frisia and Canada completely differently.

The extent of this effect is striking: if a Krummhörn girl lost her mother early, the likelihood of her dying before the age of 15 more than doubled compared to a girl whose mother did not die. If the father remarried and the stepmother joined the family, mortality doubled again. Thus, the arrival of a stepmother affected the girls in East Frisia as much as the death of their own mother. In Québec, however, the risk of dying young barely changed when the new mother moved in.

“The stepmothers in Québec seemed to understand that the offspring from their husband’s first marriage were not competition for their own children with their new husband,” says researcher Kai Willführ. “Families in Quebec during this time were comparatively huge,” explained Professor Alain Gagnon. “French-Canadian families in the 17th to 19th centuries grew to fill the empty land, and more hands meant greater food security or even wealth. Children from a previous marriage could often help the step-parent care and educate their younger brothers and sisters.” On the contrary, according to the “Cinderella effect”, stepparents would always consider “foreign” children to be competitors to their own children and could thus neglect them.

Care for children is strategy

But that only happened in Krummhörn, where siblings competed for basic needs. “We assume that stepmothers neglected, exploited or even abused the children from their husband’s first marriage,” says socio-biologist Willführ. The fact that this only happened in East Frisia shows that the context in which patchwork families are living – whether there is room for economic development or not – strongly influences how parents allocate their affection to their own children and stepchildren. “The difference is due to the scarcity of resources. It wouldn’t be going too far to say that we could talk about a difference between the New World and the Old, between Europe and North America,” demographer Gagnon said. “Our popular culture is constantly looking for Cinderella’s Evil Stepmother, but cases such as reported in the movie “Little Aurore’s Tragedy” here in Quebec were the exception rather than the rule.” Although the scientists used historic data, their results have fundamentally challenged the veracity of the “Cinderella effect. “It is therefore also true today, that stepparents are not always evil,” says researcher Kai Willführ.

Connection between neural hyper-connections and Autism; very interesting finding:

The brains of children with autism show more connections than the brains of typically developing children do. What’s more, the brains of individuals with the most severe social symptoms are also the most hyper-connected. The findings reported in two independent studies published in the Cell Press journal Cell Reports challenge the prevailing notion in the field that autistic brains are lacking in neural connections.

The findings could lead to new treatment strategies and new ways to detect autism early, the researchers say. Autism spectrum disorder is a neurodevelopmental condition affecting nearly 1 in 88 children.

“Our study addresses one of the hottest open questions in autism research,” said Kaustubh Supekar of Stanford University School of Medicine of his and his colleague Vinod Menon’s study aimed at characterizing whole-brain connectivity in children. “Using one of the largest and most heterogeneous pediatric functional neuroimaging datasets to date, we demonstrate that the brains of children with autism are hyper-connected in ways that are related to the severity of social impairment exhibited by these children.”

In the second Cell Reports study, Ralph-Axel Müller and colleagues at San Diego State University focused specifically on neighboring brain regions to find an atypical increase in connections in adolescents with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. That over-connection, which his team observed particularly in the regions of the brain that control vision, was also linked to symptom severity.

“Our findings support the special status of the visual system in children with heavier symptom load,” Müller said, noting that all of the participants in his study were considered “high-functioning” with IQs above 70. He says measures of local connectivity in the cortex might be used as an aid to diagnosis, which today is based purely on behavioral criteria.

For Supekar and Menon, these new views of the autistic brain raise the intriguing possibility that epilepsydrugs might be used to treat autism.

“Our findings suggest that the imbalance of excitation and inhibition in the local brain circuits could engender cognitive and behavioral deficits observed in autism,” Menon said. That imbalance is a hallmark of epilepsy as well, which might explain why children with autism so often suffer with epilepsy too.

“Drawing from these observations, it might not be too far fetched to speculate that the existing drugs used to treat epilepsy may be potentially useful in treating autism,” Supekar said.

Tracking Devices Program for children with Autism. Definitely a good idea, not sure how it would be funded:

Suppose even Bert and the Cookie Monster aren’t immune to stress and anxiety. Check this out, it’s kinda funny:

By Joe Smydo / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

From childhood, Drake Munger was a loner who flinched at loud noises and didn’t like to be touched.

Today, the 19-year-old is in Washington County Jail on $100,000 straight cash bond — still struggling to cope with life around him and, his mother said, an example of what can happen when mental illness and autism collide with the justice system.

“He looks like a skeleton right now,” Caroline Drury said of her son, estimating he has lost about 25 pounds since he was jailed Aug. 8 for what she called misunderstandings and police called a bicycle theft and attempt to smuggle a shank into a courtroom.

As mental hospitals across the country have closed, jails and prisons have grappled with an influx of mentally ill offenders, and the justice system has struggled to balance treatment and punishment — issues explored last month in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s series “After Mayview.” Mr. Munger’s case underscores those challenges, with a twist.

Ms. Drury of Donora said her son’s schizophrenia and other mental illnesses are compounded by mental retardation and autism, a brain disorder often characterized by repetitive behaviors and difficulties with social interaction. Already, Ms. Drury said, her son’s constant pacing has gotten him into disciplinary problems at the jail.

She hopes her son’s charges will be transferred from regular criminal court to the county’s mental health court, which emphasizes treatment over incarceration for defendants whose offenses stem at least partly from their psychiatric disorders.

She said jail is no place for her son, who has an IQ of less than 70, had been accused of retail theft as a juvenile and is so fascinated with werewolves that he has been known to sharpen his fingernails into points. She has pressed the issue with the public defender’s office, which represents her son.

Chief public defender Glenn Alterio declined to discuss the case. Ms. Drury said she’s trying to raise money for a private attorney.

Counties nationwide are embracing mental health courts, which Washington County Common Pleas President Judge Debbie O’Dell Seneca launched in her county with the support of other officials in 2008. Defendants may be admitted to mental health court, over which Judge O’Dell Seneca presides, or to similar diversionary programs operated by the county’s district judges.

Common Pleas Judge Katherine B. Emery on Oct. 9. postponed a bond-reduction hearing for Mr. Munger while officials decide whether he would be a candidate for mental health court. Ms. Drury said an error in judgment already cost her son an opportunity to be admitted to the program by a district judge.

On July 5, according to police records, Mr. Munger called 911 and said he was detaining a person who had been breaking into vehicles at a Monongahela park.

In court records, Officer Kevin Harris said he arrived to find Mr. Munger with two juveniles, one of whom he accused of the break-ins. “When I asked him how he knew this, Munger stated that he was told by one of his own family members.”

One juvenile said Mr. Munger took out a knife and slashed his bicycle tire to keep him from leaving the park, and the other said Mr. Munger had stolen the bicycle he rode to the park. According to the officer’s report, Mr. Munger said he got the bike a couple of days earlier from a friend but didn’t know the friend’s name.

Officer Harris charged Mr. Munger with various offenses, including unlawful restraint, false imprisonment and receiving stolen property. Mr. Munger found himself in more trouble Aug. 8, when, Ms. Drury said, he might have been entered into a diversionary program during a hearing before District Judge Mark Wilson.

According to court records, a state trooper noticed that Mr. Munger had slipped something into the waistband of his pants outside Judge Wilson’s office. Police described it as a 7-inch wooden shank; Ms. Drury said it was one of her tomato stakes, which her son cut off and may have taken with him for a suicide attempt.

“He talks about suicide all the time,” she said.

Police charged Mr. Munger with carrying a weapon, and Judge Wilson set a $100,000 straight cash bond.

Mr. Munger’s father, Joseph Munger of Monongahela, also was charged that day with attempting to intimidate one of the juveniles involved in the case. He denied wrongdoing.

Ms. Drury, who is raising two other children, Caleb, 3, and Dakota, 1, said she cannot afford to get her son out of jail.

With limited social and coping skills, a person with autism would have a difficult time adjusting to the stress of jail or prison, said John Carosso, a licensed psychologist and executive director of the Autism Center of Pittsburgh. He said some manifestations of autism, such as fast or constant speech, could annoy other inmates. Kristin Gallagher, the center’s director of family support, said Mr. Munger’s illnesses could make him a target of abuse or exploitation by other inmates.

Depending on his condition, Mr. Munger should not be “in a regular jail” but a treatment facility that can meet his medical needs while his case unfolds, said Daniel Torisky, president and co-founder of the Autism Society of Pittsburgh, which has recommendations for how the justice system should treat offenders with autism. Mr. Torisky said he’s willing to provide advocacy services to Mr. Munger and his family.

At a hearing Sept. 19, officials withdrew the unlawful restraint and false imprisonment charges, and Mr. Munger waived other charges to court. A court-monitored mental health treatment program could be a great benefit to Mr. Munger and his family, Ms. Drury said, asserting it has been difficult to find the right combination of therapy and medication for him.

Judge O’Dell Seneca, who did not discuss specific cases in an interview last week, said a county assessment team reviews candidates for mental health court. Eligible defendants voluntarily commit to a customized regimen of treatment and monitoring. The judge said she believes the defendants’ consent to treatment often yields better results than a court-ordered treatment plan.

Defendants “enter into a contract with me personally. It’s couple of pages long. … They buy into this,” Judge O’Dell Seneca said.