The poor economy wasn’t the only thing making headlines. Here’s the latest in work-and-family news:

HEALTH AND FAMILY

• MORE ON AUTISM AND VACCINES A special court ruled Thursday that vaccines aren’t to blame for autism. And a British investigation said that the author of the original study linking autism to a popular infant vaccine fixed his data.

• WHEN TO KEEP YOUR SICK CHILD AT HOME For one, don’t bring your child to school if there’s a fever. Also, a look at new risks, such as the rise of household spray cleaners, that could possibly explain the rise in childhood asthma rates.

• NEW DEVICES TRACK WANDERING KIDS AND SENIORS A look at a slew of new people-trackers, which can be useful for family members with special needs. Also, new sensor technologies help keep elderly family members at home, rather than in long-term-care facilities.

• SCHOOL PERFORMANCE IS ABOUT CONFIDENCE An interesting look at how psychology can really affect school achievement.

• LARGE FAMILIES FEEL UNDER ATTACK In the wake of the octuplets brouhaha, a look at other very large families.

• SALMA HAYEK’S JUGGLE: ACTRESS, MOM AND WET-NURSE The actress breastfed a sickly child she met on a trip abroad.

CAREERS AND ECONOMY

• RECESSION HURTING SPECIAL-NEEDS KIDS Schools are generally required to supply intervention programs for children with autism or other developmental disorders. But increasingly, parents are finding their children on waiting lists, thanks to state budget problems. Some parents are resorting to savings to pay for therapy themselves – or they are even moving to states where there’s more money.

• STRUGGLING ON $500,000 A YEAR How some Manhattan families must now get used to doing without their limo drivers and designer ball gowns. Meanwhile, parents of children in elite private schools tell all.

• HOW TO GO GREEN IN A TOUGH ECONOMY Ten ways to help the environment—and save cash. Meanwhile, appliance makers are marketing the potential cost-savings of energy-efficient products. And homebuyers are seeking energy-efficient houses as a way to cut costs on power bills.

• GENDER-DIVERSITY CAN IMPROVE DECISION-MAKING Research suggests that gender-balanced boardrooms, for example, could improve corporate decision-making.

• VOLUNTEER POSITIONS FOR BUSY JUGGLERS A comparison of volunteer-matching programs aimed at time-strapped professionals.

• RECRUITING DROPS AT B-SCHOOLS Tough times to be a business-school student.

• A LESSON FOR YOUNG INVESTORS A mom tries to teach her kids how to invest and encounters obstacles.

Note: The Juggle writers will be off on Mon. Feb. 16 for President’s Day. Have a great weekend!

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Here it is: a long-awaited laundry post!

Throughout my 20-year juggle, there’s been one ball I could never quite keep in the air: The laundry.

With help or without it, I could usually manage to fix dinner, clean up, bathe the kids, process the stuff in their backpacks, help with homework, plan the next day’s clothing and read the kids to sleep. All too often, though, I’d turn around at 10 or 11 p.m., after finishing all that, and see a looming mass of unwashed or unfolded laundry still clumped on the counter.

Many of you have asked for a post on doing the laundry. For a start, I’ve collected a few laundry tips, all from better household managers than I:

–Get the kids involved: Bucking the trend toward excusing children from housework, some families teach children that doing laundry is an act of love, teamwork or both. One family installed low shelving in the laundry room so their elementary-school kids could fold their own clothes. Another mom paid her kids a penny for every pair of socks they turned right-side-out before depositing them in the laundry basket. Still another assigned different-colored laundry baskets to her children and docked their allowances if they didn’t take care of their clothes.

–Improve your processing system: Some families buy laundry baskets with compartments for sorting dirty dark, white and delicate laundry up-front. Others set aside specific days for certain items – towels on Tuesdays and shirts on Saturdays, for example. With admirable discipline, still others put in a load of laundry before sitting down to dinner, dry it while cleaning up and fold it before going to bed. Another gadget some families like is the “sock clip.” This gizmo keeps individual socks from losing their partners and defeats what my family calls the Bermuda Triangle of Socks that lurks in many laundry rooms.

–Impose natural consequences: When kids allow worn clothing to stack up in their bedrooms, some parents just leave it – eventually forcing the child to wear dirty clothes to school, something most teens will only do once. Another mother, after impressing upon her kids that emptying their pockets was their duty, washed jackets, pants and shirts without looking; the children had to deal with the ruined papers and laundered cash that resulted.

–Buy more underwear: A single father of three student-athletes bought the entire family enough underwear to last two weeks – just in case his schedule got out of control.

Readers, what tips do you have on getting the laundry done?

Note: The Juggle writers will be off on Mon. Feb. 16 for President’s Day. Have a great weekend!

Associated Press

Has Cupid struck at your office?

The office has surpassed all other venues as the No. 1 place for meeting your mate, as I’ve reported in the “Work & Family” column. A new online survey of 8,038 employees for CareerBuilder.com finds 40% of workers have dated a co-worker, and a significant minority of them have gone on to marry their office lovers.

The breakdown of old walls between love and work also has opened the door to office romance’s low-rent cousin — sexual talk and behavior at work. This has sparked heated debates over whether casual sexual talk and joking in the workplace makes work more fun (a viewpoint more common among men) – or merely more threatening and annoying (an argument made more often by women). In a study of 1,242 workers published recently in the Journal of Applied Psychology, researchers set out to learn how many employees actually do enjoy it.

They found sexual behavior at the office is common, with 40% to 58% of workers in two samples saying they’d been exposed to it within the past year or two. Researchers defined sexual behavior as drawing co-workers into talk of sexual matters, telling sexual stories or jokes, giving sexual attention to a co-worker or displaying sexual materials.

Not surprisingly, workers were sharply divided over whether they liked or disliked such behaviors; in one of two samples in the study, comprised of manufacturing and social-service workers, more than one-fourth found it fun or flattering, but slightly more found it stressful or bothersome. The rest said they didn’t care much either way. Among employees who enjoyed exposure to sexual behaviors, men far outnumbered women, say the researchers, Jennifer Berdahl of the University of Toronto, and Karl Aquino of the University of British Columbia. And among those who found it offensive, most were women.

Regardless of how employees felt about it, however, sexual behavior had an interesting side effect: It was linked to worse attitudes toward work. The more employees experienced sexual behavior at work – whether they said they liked it or not — the more they felt like neglecting their jobs and thought about quitting, the study found. Also, exposure to more sexual behavior was linked to more depression and psychological problems. Thus while some may derive “a fun sense of risk or rebellion, or a positive social identity” from workplace sexual behavior, it also tends to create “a culture of unprofessionalism,” the study says.

We’ve written before about office romances here and here. Readers, has the breakdown of walls between work and sexual or romantic matters eroded the quality of your workplace? Or has it been an improvement? What do you think are the appropriate boundaries at work?

Note: The Juggle writers will be off on Mon. Feb. 16 for President’s Day. Have a great weekend!

Associated Press

Headlines from the 1978 birth of the first “test-tube” baby

Have we entered the age of designer babies?

Today my colleague Gautam Naik has an interesting story in the Journal about a fertility clinic that says it will soon help couples select both gender and physical traits in a baby when they undergo fertility treatment.

The procedure is based on a technique called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD, which has a medical purpose of avoiding life-threatening diseases in children. But according to the article, the technique has now been developed so that it could potentially be used to help parents choose, say, a daughter with blond hair, green eyes and pale skin.

The Los Angeles fertility clinic, Fertility Institutes, announced on its Web site that couples who signed up for embryo screening would soon be able to make “a pre-selected choice of gender, eye color, hair color and complexion, along with screening for potentially lethal diseases.” The clinic says it has received at least “half a dozen” requests for the service.

Not surprisingly, the service has unleashed a slew of controversy from other doctors who oppose tailor-making children. One scientist, for instance, said that such a practice could “decrease human diversity, and that’s dangerous.”

Here at the Juggle, we’ve discussed techniques for determining the gender of your child and whether you’d even want to find out ahead of time. Information about the baby’s health and gender could potentially simplify the juggle, because it means easier advanced planning and fewer surprises. For instance, being able to actually choose the gender, rather than having it be left up to chance, could make things easier for some families. If a family, say, already had a boy and lived in a small house, they might want to make sure they had another boy so the kids could share the same room and use the same clothes.

But just because scientists may have now cracked the door open to tailoring certain traits ahead of time doesn’t mean that we should necessarily do so. What do you think of such procedures to choose gender or other physical traits?

Associated Press

Is running a B&B your Plan B?

We just posted on how many people tie their personal identities to their professional lives. Now, a large number of people are being forced to come up with alternative plans–“Plan Bs”– if they lose their jobs, as reported here and here.

Many are flocking back to school, either to retrain themselves with new skills or to pursue a long-held academic interest. Others are putting up their own shingles, working as consultants, freelancers or entrepreneurs.

Most unemployed people, of course, are spending most of their waking hours pounding the pavement (or the Web) searching for new work. But in this tough job market, it can take months, or sometimes even years, to find suitable work.

So some folks are taking a long-needed break. If they can afford it, they’re volunteering, traveling, getting fit or pursuing hobbies or passions, such as photography or music.

I’ve often thought about what I’d do if I were to lose my job. It may sound odd, but it doesn’t keep me up at night. Maybe it’s because I’ve been doing what I’m doing for more than a decade so the idea of a change of pace is kind of exhilarating. My husband and I have been diligent about saving and have a decent cushion that could last us for a spell. (I’d be far more concerned if my husband lost his job, since we rely on his employer for health insurance and he is our primary breadwinner.)

I’d probably be a stay-at-home mom for a while, enjoying more time spent with my son, while saving childcare expenses. Or I might try freelancing, although I’m not very good at the hustle and self-promotion that entails. Or perhaps, if I could afford it, I’d go back to school; I’ve long harbored fantasies of a mid-career stint as a librarian, archivist or historian.

What’s your Plan B if you were to lose your job?

Associated Press

Earlier this week, my colleague Kevin Helliker wrote an interesting column about how many of us strongly tie our identities to our occupations, accomplishments and professional status. While that can lead to high levels of achievement, such ties can also lead to panic about becoming unemployed or psychological distress when laid off.

Said one long-time reporter who was forced to take a buyout last summer: “Suddenly you’re not the same person you used to be. You look in the mirror. Who are you?”

Psychologists recommend several exercises for people who overly identify with their professional achievements. One is to recall memories of earlier, simpler times before being too caught up in the rat race, such as impoverished grad-school days. Another tip is to spend more time with people who don’t share the view that professional status is the end-all be-all. Therapists also recommend emphasizing those traits that can’t be taken away in a layoff, such as integrity, honesty and generosity.

And sometimes changing careers can be liberating. Mr. Helliker interviewed one veteran foreign correspondent who took a buyout in 2006. “I really wondered how it would feel to sever that link,” the ex-reporter said. But he found a new occupation: managing a high-end strip club. “[Cutting that professional tie] has been easier than I thought. I feel lucky,” he said.

Many jugglers, of course, have strong, multiple identities as parents, spouses and partners. Still, I know that many people first identify me as “Rachel, Wall Street Journal reporter,” rather than, say, “Rachel, mom of Sam,” and I do little to correct that impression. When people ask me what I do–a question asked in most social gatherings–I usually talk about my career as a journalist, rather than my time spent playing with my son, even though I am equally passionate about both. Maybe it’s because being a mom is still relatively new to me (my son is just a year old) and I’ve been developing my professional chops for more than a decade.

How strongly tied are you to your professional identity? If you’ve gone through a job change or layoff, has it been tough to readjust that identity?

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If there was any confusion about whether a pregnant woman can legally be laid off, the events of the past few months have erased it, as demonstrated by reports here and here.

Tens of thousands of pregnant women have likely lost their jobs in the past year’s blizzard of layoffs, based on my back-of-the-envelope estimate derived from last year’s layoff count, the government’s tallies of annual births and the Census Bureau’s estimates of the proportion of new mothers who are in the workforce.

That doesn’t mean expectant mothers are without protections. Based on our mail at the Juggle and the “Work & Family” column, many women are wondering about this issue, so here are the basics:

While pregnant women can be swept up in a reduction-in-force just like anyone else, an employer can’t make up a layoff-of-one just to target an expectant mom, says Kimberlie Ryan, a Denver employment attorney. She cites a case in which a Denver human-resources manager was laid off and told she was part of a reduction-in-force. But after it became clear that the RIF totaled one person – the pregnant woman – the employer settled bias charges for a generous sum, Ms. Ryan says.

Employers can’t justify layoffs based on stereotypes or assumptions about working mothers – such as the notion that women’s job performance always hits the skids after having a child, or that women can’t be both good mothers and good workers. The EEOC has issued guidelines saying such remarks alone may serve as evidence of illegal bias.

And in general, employers can’t single out pregnant workers for worse treatment than other workers receive. If adverse action is taken against a pregnant women, the employer should be holding men to the same standards or treating them in a comparable way. And if a woman is fired for performance problems, she shouldn’t be hearing about the problems for the first time while she’s pregnant or on maternity leave; performance complaints should be documented in advance.

Readers, have you seen pregnant workers get the axe? How well was it handled? And how fairly — or poorly — do you feel layoffs in general have been handled at your workplace?

Associated Press

A Papillon at the 133rd annual Westminster Kennel Club dog show.

This week is the Westminster Kennel Club dog show, when type-A dog owners show off their pampered pooches to a panel of judges.

Some pet owners can actually get company-blessed time off for pet-related matters, in what are dubbed “peternity” leaves, according to the Sloan Work and Family Research Network blog.

Virgin Mobile in Australia recently announced that it now offers peternity leaves for employees with new puppies or kittens under 10 weeks old. Such employees, who must have worked for the company for more than two years, can get five unpaid days off. (Owners of other animals, such as birds, fish or hamsters, can’t take advantage of the policy, alas.) Several U.K. and Canadian companies, including the Bank of Scotland, also offer time off to care for new or sick pets or for pet bereavement.

The trend doesn’t seem to have caught on yet among U.S. businesses, although some companies, such as Google, do allow workers to bring pets to work. (From Google’s Dog Policy, printed in its code of conduct: “Google’s affection for our canine friends is an integral facet of our corporate culture. We like cats, but we’re a dog company, so as a general rule we feel cats visiting our offices would be fairly stressed out.”) Most pet owners, however, have to take personal days or lunch breaks to care for a new pet or to deal with a sick or dying animal. (In this week’s episode of “The Office,” there was a subplot about taking time off for cat-care.) And, of course, being able to take any company-sanctioned leave to care for an animal is a luxury in this tough job market.

Several years ago, when my husband and I adopted our shelter dog, Bosco, as an eight-month old, we sure could have used some more time off. Our dog was skittish, shy and unresponsive to commands. We squeezed in sessions with our trainer during lunch breaks, but could have used more time off for naps, since we were up half the night from Bosco’s barks and whimpers.

Readers, have you had to take time off from work to care for a pet? How pet-friendly is your employer?

Best in Show: See photos from the Westmister Dog Show

Associated Press

In my household, we can live without plenty of foods. Out of cheerios? No problem–we have other cereals. No more kid-size granola bars? A quick cry, but we’ll be OK. But if I were to tell my 3-year-old son that we’d run out of peanut butter, I’d face a total meltdown. Tears, sadness, possibly even a hunger strike.

While many toddlers are allergic to nuts, my toddler’s staple food these days is peanut butter (on whole wheat bread and with his favorite Trader Joe’s preserves). If we can’t get dinner on the table at a reasonable hour, we’ll offer him an alternative and he always asks for a PB&J. He eats the same for breakfast at least three mornings a week. On weekends, peanut butter on crackers is a regular after-nap snack.

So, the salmonella scare that seems to never end has really put our family on edge. Despite the promises that the jarred peanut butter we eat is safe and not from a tainted plant, we worry about the one food we can’t seem to live without being off the menu. We once tried fresh-ground as an alternative and it was rejected after two bites as “not a peanut butter sandwich” and tossed aside with a flip of the plate to our waiting labrador.

My husband and I have also been pretty outraged over the idea that the food producer knew about the tainted food but sent it to customers — including schools — without regard for safety. The number of recalled peanut butter products seems to grow longer every day. Some parents are simply eliminating peanut butter altogether.

It might seem a trivial concern in the wake of job losses and people worried about simply putting food on the table. But as working parents, routine, nutrition and a staple food a semi-picky 3-year-old will eat equals peace of mind. I’ve heard other parents say they can’t live without cheerios or a stash of sliced apples or a waiting box of a certain cracker.

How has the peanut butter scare affected you? Has your family changed peanut butter buying or eating habits?

Associated Press

Many adults have trouble finding time for play amid the pressures we face to achieve. Now, small children are facing the same pressures, as playtime is all-but-eliminated from the kindergarten classroom, a new study shows.

In a finding termed alarming by early-childhood researchers, kindergarteners are spending only a half-hour or less in playtime during the six-hour school day, based on a study of 254 kindergarten teachers in New York City and Los Angeles. Although educators have noted the trend, the study, set for release later this month, helps quantify the shrinkage in playtime.

Edward Miller, program director for the Alliance for Childhood, the College Park, Md., nonprofit that sponsored the study, says it shows “something has really gone terribly wrong” in schools.

Playtime is crucial in helping children develop creativity, imagination, dexterity, sharing, problem-solving, leadership, exploration and decision-making skills, the American Academy of Pediatrics says in a clinical report on the issue.

Educators blame its near-disappearance on the drive for accountability in schools and the related emphasis on standardized testing. Advocates of accountability, including the No Child Left Behind law, say measuring children’s progress against set goals is essential to leveling the playing field for students from disadvantaged areas, and to ensuring that school problems get fixed.

However, the drive has spilled down into kindergarten and preschool in the form of more time spent on teacher-directed lessons, scripted number and letter drills, and on standardized tests to measure progress. Teachers in the study spent two to three hours a day on such lessons – four to six times more than was devoted to play, says the Alliance study, which was conducted by researchers at Long Island University, New York University and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Momentum is building to put more play back into the schoolday, Education Week reported recently. As a working mother, I counted on my kids’ preschool and kindergarten teachers to inject playtime into their days. Yet I see many conscientious parents today moving in the opposite direction, introducing flash cards and numbers drills to their toddlers and preschoolers.

Readers, has the emphasis on accountability re-shaped your child’s school day? Would you like to see more playtime? Or do you prefer that teachers stress reading and pre-math lessons, with more measurable results?