144 Fun Facts About Parent

Which bird lays its eggs in other species' nests, leaving the hosts to raise its chicks?

The common cuckoo is a brood parasite: the female lays an egg in a host nest, often a reed warbler's, and the hatchling evicts the host's eggs so the foster parents raise it alone.

Which psychologist's research defined three classic parenting styles, among them the 'permissive' parent?

Diana Baumrind defined three styles; Maccoby and Martin later sorted parents on two scales, how demanding and how responsive they are, which made room for a fourth style, the neglectful parent.

Which land animal has the longest pregnancy of any mammal, lasting up to 22 months?

Elephant mothers carry a calf for up to 22 months and then wait years for the next one: a cow's calves arrive at least three or four years apart.

What adoption arrangement has no contact between birth parents and adoptive family?

A closed adoption seals the records: the child's original birth certificate is locked away and an amended one names the new parents; the practice peaked in the decades after the Second World War.

In 'Centuries of Childhood' (1960), Philippe Ariès argued medieval Europeans saw children as what?

Ariès read medieval paintings of small, adult-dressed figures as evidence that children were seen as little adults and childhood was not a separate stage; historians such as Nicholas Orme have since challenged that reading.

In the original Star Wars trilogy, who is revealed to be Luke Skywalker's biological father?

Darth Vader's reveal was guarded so closely that the actor inside the suit was fed a false line on set; only director Irvin Kershner, the producers and Mark Hamill knew the real one.

How many chromosomes does a typical human body cell hold?

46 chromosomes come as 23 pairs, one of each pair from the egg and one from the sperm; the other great apes have 24 pairs, because two ancestral chromosomes fused into our chromosome 2.

What is the name for the grief and loneliness parents may feel when their children move out of the family home?

Empty nest syndrome is not a clinical diagnosis but a normal life transition, and it has an upside: parents can use the quieter house to renew their own relationship and interests.

In which animal does the female deposit her eggs into the male's brood pouch, leaving him to carry them until they hatch?

Seahorse fathers carry the eggs for 9 to 45 days, then push out the fully formed young with muscular contractions, and can take a fresh batch of eggs the next morning.

Which of Freud's psychosexual stages falls between early childhood and puberty?

Latency is when Freud thought sexual drives lie dormant, so a child's energy turns to school, friendships and hobbies instead.

Which type of DNA does a child inherit almost entirely from its mother?

Mitochondrial DNA comes with the egg, because the sperm's few mitochondria are usually destroyed after fertilisation; that is why it can trace one unbroken maternal line back to 'Mitochondrial Eve'.

Which hormone is called the 'love hormone' for its role in parent-infant attachment and social bonding?

Oxytocin does physical work too: it drives the contractions of labour, and a baby's suckling triggers its release so that milk is 'let down' to the nipple.

Who developed attachment theory, stressing early bonds between child and caregiver?

John Bowlby knew early separation at first hand: he was sent to boarding school at seven and later said he would not send a dog away at that age.

Which Confucian virtue is the duty of love, respect and care that children owe their parents?

Filial piety, xiao, is written with the character for 'old' set above the character for 'son'; a child may plead with a mistaken parent, but open defiance is never approved.

Which Greek city-state took boys from their families at seven to be raised by the state?

Sparta kept boys in its training programme, the agoge, from the age of seven; they were probably underfed on purpose so they would learn to steal food, and those caught were beaten.

Who is the mother of Bart, Lisa, and Maggie Simpson in the animated TV series 'The Simpsons'?

Marge is named after creator Matt Groening's own mother, Margaret, who said she bears little resemblance to the character; he named Homer, Lisa and Maggie after his father and sisters too.

Which Nordic country led the world in 1974 by replacing maternity leave with leave either parent could take?

Sweden's gender-neutral parental leave of 1974 was a world first, and Iceland, Denmark and Finland soon followed; by the 2020s Swedish fathers were taking about 30 per cent of the paid days.

Which duck-billed dinosaur, found beside nests of its young, has a name meaning 'good mother lizard'?

Maiasaura was named in 1979 after nests showed the adults had fed their young there, the first sign that dinosaurs cared for their babies and did not simply lay eggs and leave.

Which psychologist's eight psychosocial stages begin with 'trust versus mistrust' in infancy?

Erik Erikson was never told who his own father was; raised under his stepfather's surname, Homburger, he later replaced it with a name of his own invention.

In Greek mythology, who were the parents of the Olympian gods Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades?

Cronus and Rhea had six children, and Cronus swallowed each at birth until Rhea hid the newborn Zeus and handed her husband a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes.

What is the antibody-rich first milk a mother produces after childbirth called?

Colostrum is thick, yellowish and rich in antibodies, and it acts as a mild laxative, helping the newborn pass its first stool and so clear the bilirubin behind jaundice.

Which parenting style combines high demands with high responsiveness?

Authoritative parents are warm but firm: they set clear standards yet let children reason things out for themselves, a mix linked to more independent, self-reliant children.

Who wrote the influential book 'The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care,' first published in 1946?

Dr. Benjamin Spock told parents 'You know more than you think you do', and the book sold 500,000 copies in its first six months and some 50 million by his death in 1998.

Which houseplant from Madagascar lines its leaf edges with tiny plantlets?

Mother of thousands, a kalanchoe also called the alligator plant, lets each plantlet grow its own roots and leaves on the leaf, then drops it to start a new plant.

In Virgil's Aeneid, which Roman goddess is the mother of the Trojan hero Aeneas?

Venus bore Aeneas to the mortal Anchises, and Julius Caesar's family claimed descent from her through him; in 46 BC Caesar dedicated a temple to Venus Genetrix, 'Venus the Mother'.

Which term describes animals whose embryos are nourished directly by the mother and born live?

Viviparous animals are not only mammals: some sharks, snakes and even scorpions also nourish their embryos inside the body and give birth to live young.

Which scientist had ten children with his wife Emma Wedgwood?

Charles Darwin married his first cousin, and whenever their children fell ill he feared inbreeding was to blame; three of the ten died young, among them Annie at the age of ten.

Which Latin phrase gives a school the legal standing of a parent over the pupils in its care?

In loco parentis means 'in the place of a parent'; American colleges once used it to police students' private lives with curfews, until a 1961 court ruling began its retreat from higher education.

What is the custom of a father taking to his bed during his wife's childbirth called?

Couvade, from the French couver, 'to brood', has the father take to his bed and keep taboos around a birth; it gave its name to couvade syndrome, an expectant father's sympathetic pregnancy symptoms.

Which term describes a kinship system that traces descent through the mother's line?

Matrilineal descent shapes daily life among the Minangkabau of Sumatra, one of the world's largest such societies: the family's great house belongs to its women and passes from mother to daughter.

Which animated film follows a widowed father, Marlin, crossing the ocean in search of his lost son?

Finding Nemo bends biology: in a real clownfish group, when the breeding female is lost the breeding male changes sex and takes her place, so Marlin would have become female.

Which 'generation' label describes young adults who move back in with their parents after a spell of living on their own?

The boomerang generation is named after the toy that comes back; in July 2020, during the pandemic, 52% of Americans aged 18 to 29 were living with a parent, the first majority since the Great Depression.

What label describes an overprotective parent who closely monitors their child's every activity, especially at school?

A helicopter parent is one who hovers; the image goes back to a 1969 bestseller, Between Parent & Teenager, in which a teenager complains that 'Mother hovers over me like a helicopter'.

Which author wrote 'To Kill a Mockingbird', whose widowed lawyer Atticus Finch raises two children alone?

Harper Lee based Atticus on her own father, Amasa Coleman Lee, an Alabama lawyer who once defended two black men accused of murdering a white storekeeper; both were hanged.

Which reptile mother gathers her newly hatched young in her jaws and carries them to the water?

Nile crocodile mothers dig the nest open when they hear the hatchlings calling, and may even roll an unhatched egg in the mouth to help crack its shell.

Who dipped her infant son Achilles in the River Styx?

Thetis, a Nereid, held the infant Achilles by the heel as she dipped him in the Styx, leaving that dry spot his one weakness; the earliest surviving telling is Statius's Achilleid (1st century AD).

Which country introduced the first use-it-or-lose-it 'father's quota' of parental leave in 1993?

Norway set aside four weeks of leave for fathers alone from April 1993, lost to the family if he did not take them, in the hope that more fathers would share the early months at home.

Which musical features 'Sunrise, Sunset', sung by a father and mother at their eldest daughter's wedding?

Fiddler on the Roof has Tevye first promise Tzeitel to the butcher Lazar Wolf, then invent a nightmare to persuade his wife Golde that she must marry Motel the tailor instead.

In The Parent Trap, where do the identical twins separated as babies first meet by chance?

At a summer camp the twins feud until they are sent to isolation together, work out that they are sisters, and switch places so each can meet the parent she has never known.

Males of which bird build and decorate an elaborate display structure, yet leave all chick-rearing to the female?

Bowerbird males take no part in nesting: the female visits his bower, then lays in a simple nest some distance away; a satin bowerbird decks his with blue berries, flowers and even plastic pens and straws.

What theory holds that children pick up behaviours by watching and imitating parents and others?

Social Learning Theory grew out of Albert Bandura's Bobo doll experiments of 1961 to 1963, in which children who watched an adult attack an inflatable doll went on to copy the assault.

Which queen of France endured 23 childless years before giving birth to the future Louis XIV in 1638?

Anne of Austria married Louis XIII in 1615 and bore the future Louis XIV only in 1638; widowed in 1643, she ruled as regent for her four-year-old son with Cardinal Mazarin as chief minister.

In Disney's 'The Lion King' (1994), who is Simba's father?

Mufasa, king of the Pride Lands and voiced by James Earl Jones, is Simba's father in The Lion King (1994); he dies in a wildebeest stampede engineered by his brother Scar.

Which future emperor, aged about twelve, gave the funeral oration for his grandmother Julia, the sister of Julius Caesar?

Augustus, then the young Gaius Octavius, made his public debut with the speech; through Julia he was Caesar's great-nephew, and Caesar's will later made him his adopted heir.

Which author popularised 'unconditional parenting' in a 2005 book of that name?

Kohn contrasts it with conditional parenting that controls children through rewards and punishments.

In Meet the Parents (2000), who plays Jack Byrnes, the father who gives his daughter's boyfriend a lie-detector test?

Robert De Niro's Jack claims to be a retired florist but is really a former CIA agent, and it was De Niro himself who came up with the idea for the polygraph scene.

Which document says motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care?

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, says so in Article 25, which goes on to give all children, whether born in or out of wedlock, the same social protection.

Besides a parent or child, which relative shares about half of a person's DNA?

A full sibling is a first-degree relative, like a parent or child, because both drew on the same two parents; a grandparent, aunt or uncle shares about a quarter, and a half-sibling the same.

Which psychologist devised the 'Strange Situation' test of infant attachment?

Mary Ainsworth first watched mothers and babies at home in Uganda, then built a 20-minute lab test of eight short episodes in which a parent and a stranger come and go and the reunions are watched.

Harry Harlow's infant rhesus monkeys overwhelmingly preferred which surrogate 'mother'?

A cloth-covered one won easily: the infants clung to it all day and visited the bare wire 'mother' only to feed, even when she alone held the bottle, so Harlow concluded that comfort mattered more than milk.

Konrad Lorenz became famous for describing imprinting in which birds?

Greylag geese hatched in an incubator will bond with the first suitable moving thing they see, Lorenz showed, and not only with a mother goose; the work brought him a share of the 1973 Nobel Prize.

Which US president's 1914 proclamation made Mother's Day official?

Woodrow Wilson signed the 1914 proclamation making the second Sunday in May Mother's Day; founder Anna Jarvis later fought the florists and card makers she felt had commercialised it.

Father's Day was founded in 1910 in which city in Washington state, home of Sonora Smart Dodd?

Sonora Smart Dodd, raised with her five brothers by a widowed Civil War veteran, held her first Father's Day in Spokane in June 1910; Richard Nixon made it a permanent national holiday in 1972.

In which penguin species does the male alone incubate the egg?

In emperor penguins the male alone incubates the single egg, balancing it on his feet through about two months of Antarctic winter; fasting all the while, he loses roughly 40% of his body mass.

The female Surinam toad 'incubates' her eggs where?

Embedded in her back: the eggs sink into pockets in her skin, which grows over them, and the young skip the free-swimming tadpole stage, emerging as tiny toads three to five months later.

Male Darwin's frogs carry their developing tadpoles in which body part?

Vocal sac: around hatching time the father takes the brood into his mouth and keeps the tadpoles in the sac for about six weeks, until they hop out as tiny froglets.

A deep-sea mother of which animal was watched guarding one clutch of eggs for 53 months, the longest brooding known?

Octopus: researchers found the same female on the same rock in California's Monterey Canyon on 18 dives over four and a half years, and never saw her leave her eggs or eat.

Whose 2011 memoir 'Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother' ignited a parenting debate?

Amy Chua, a Yale law professor, saw the debate catch fire when the Wall Street Journal ran an excerpt on 8 January 2011 under the title 'Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior'.

In 2018, which US state became the first to pass a law protecting 'free-range' parenting?

Utah's 2018 law, the first of its kind, lets children walk or play outside unsupervised without their parents being charged with neglect; Lenore Skenazy's 2009 book Free-Range Kids is a notable text of the movement.

Fernand Lamaze, who popularised the Lamaze birth method, was an obstetrician from where?

France was home to Fernand Lamaze, but his method came from further east: he built it on the breathing and relaxation techniques he saw used in childbirth on a 1951 visit to the Soviet Union.

What nickname was given to the doted-on only children raised under China's one-child policy?

Little emperors grew up in 'four-two-one' families, with four grandparents and two parents doting on one child; the limit, imposed in 1980, gave way to a two-child policy in 2016.

Which check of a newborn's health was devised by an anesthesiologist in 1952?

The Apgar score, taken one and five minutes after birth, is named after its inventor, Virginia Apgar; only about a decade later were its letters fitted to her five checks: appearance, pulse, grimace, activity and respiration.

In which musical does bride-to-be Sophie secretly invite three men to her wedding, hoping one is her father?

Mamma Mia never settles the question: Sam, Bill and Harry decide it does not matter which of them it is, and each agrees to be 'one-third of a father' to Sophie.

In Mrs. Doubtfire, where does Daniel get the surname for his nanny alter ego?

A newspaper headline, 'Police Doubt Fire Was Accidental', catches Daniel's eye while he is on the phone as the nanny, and when Miranda asks for a name he blurts out 'Doubtfire'.

From 2015, which UN member alone remained outside the Convention on the Rights of the Child?

The United States signed the 1989 treaty but never ratified it; once Somalia and South Sudan ratified in 2015, it was the only UN member state left outside the convention.

In Greek myth, Oedipus unknowingly married his own mother — what was her name?

In Sophocles' telling, Jocasta, widow of King Laius, married Oedipus without either knowing he was her son and Laius's killer; when the truth came out she hanged herself.

According to Greek myth, Athena sprang fully formed from which part of her father Zeus?

His forehead: in Hesiod's telling Zeus swallowed the pregnant Metis for fear she would bear a son to overthrow him; later accounts add that his head was split with an axe to let Athena out, fully armed.

In Roman legend, which animal suckled the abandoned twins Romulus and Remus?

A she-wolf nursed the twins until the shepherd Faustulus carried them home to his wife, Acca Larentia, and the couple raised them as their own.

In which Jane Austen novel is Mrs Bennet anxious to marry off her five daughters?

Pride and Prejudice turns on an entail: the Bennets' estate can pass only down the male line, so it will go to a cousin, Mr Collins, and the girls must marry or lose their home.

Which sitcom blended Mike's three sons with Carol's three daughters?

The Brady Bunch never said what became of Carol's first husband: creator Sherwood Schwartz meant her to be divorced, the network objected, and the question was left open.

The real parents behind Cheaper by the Dozen, the Gilbreths, were pioneers in what field?

Time-and-motion efficiency was Frank and Lillian Gilbreth's trade, and their home doubled as a laboratory for their ideas; two of their twelve children later told the story in the 1948 bestseller.

In radioactive decay, what is the product of a 'parent' isotope called?

Daughter nuclide is the standard term, and geologists date rocks by it: uranium-238 passes through eight alpha and six beta decays to become lead-206, so the ratio of lead to uranium in a crystal reveals its age.

In Unix-like systems, which system call does a parent process use to spawn a child?

fork() makes the child an almost exact copy of the parent; a child that has finished but whose parent has not yet read its exit status lingers as a 'zombie', and one whose parent dies first is an 'orphan'.

America's National Grandparents Day falls on the first Sunday after which holiday?

Labor Day fixes the date: West Virginia housewife Marian McQuade campaigned for the day until Congress set it for the first Sunday after the September holiday and Jimmy Carter signed the proclamation in 1978.

Marie Curie and which daughter form the only mother–daughter pair of Nobel laureates?

Irène Joliot-Curie shared the 1935 chemistry prize with her husband Frédéric for creating artificial radioactivity; like her mother, she died of a blood disease linked to years of radiation exposure.

About how long is a Virginia opossum pregnant with her bee-sized young?

12 days or so is all it takes: the newborns must then climb to the pouch and latch on to one of 13 teats, and many never make it.

Female wolf spiders carry their newly hatched spiderlings where?

On top of her abdomen: the spiderlings crowd onto her back and ride there until they are big enough to fend for themselves; before they hatch she hauls the egg sac attached to her spinnerets.

Guinness lists a record 69 children born to the wife of an 18th-century peasant in which country?

Russia: the wife of Feodor Vassilyev of Shuya is said to have borne 16 pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets in 27 confinements, though later writers have doubted the tale.

Which flightless New Zealand bird lays one of the largest eggs of any bird relative to its body size?

Kiwi eggs can reach about a fifth of the female's weight; she eats three times her usual amount to build one, then has to fast in the last days because there is no room left for food.

Male midwife toads carry the fertilised eggs where until they are ready to hatch?

On their back and thighs: the male winds the strings of eggs around his hind legs and waist and keeps them moist for three to eight weeks, until they are ready to hatch.

A female great hornbill seals herself into her nest hole with a plaster made mostly of what?

Feces, her own and her mate's, make the plaster; she stays walled in for weeks, fed by the male through a narrow slit, and when she breaks out the chicks seal themselves in again.

Demeter's daughter Persephone had to return to the underworld because she ate what there?

Persephone ate pomegranate seeds in the underworld, binding her to return for part of each year; Demeter's grief while searching for her left the earth barren, which the Greeks used to explain the seasons.

In Hindu tradition, who was the foster mother who raised Krishna in Gokul?

Krishna's birth father Vasudeva smuggled the newborn to Nanda and Yashoda to save him from his uncle, King Kamsa of Mathura. Devaki was his birth mother.

Superman's adoptive parents, Jonathan and Martha Kent, farm outside which fictional town?

The Kents farm outside Smallville, Kansas, where they found the infant Kal-El after his rocket crash-landed; Glenn Ford and Phyllis Thaxter played the couple in the 1978 film.

In the Book of Exodus, who found the infant Moses among the bulrushes and adopted him?

Pharaoh's daughter drew the basket from the Nile reeds, and Moses' watching sister offered to fetch a Hebrew nurse, so his own mother ended up being paid to nurse him (Exodus 2).

Louise Brown, born in Oldham in 1978, was the first baby conceived by which technique?

In vitro fertilisation made her the first 'test-tube baby', though the fertilising took place in a Petri dish; her sister Natalie, also conceived this way, had a child of her own in 1999.

Which 1980s custody battle over a surrogacy contract in New Jersey is known by the child's nickname?

Baby M's surrogate mother, Mary Beth Whitehead, refused to give her up; in 1988 the state's top court struck down the contract, yet the girl stayed with her father's family and Whitehead won visiting rights.

'Mommie Dearest' is a 1978 memoir by the adopted daughter of which Hollywood actress?

Christina Crawford's memoir portrays her adoptive mother Joan Crawford as cruel and alcoholic; Joan's adopted twins Cathy and Cindy denounced it, and the 1981 film made 'No wire hangers!' a catchphrase.

In the cartoon Bluey, what are the names of Bluey's parents?

Bandit and Chilli spend most episodes joining in their daughters' make-believe games; creator Joe Brumm drew the scripts from watching his own two girls play.

When Flora the Komodo dragon bred without a mate at Chester Zoo in 2006, what sex were her hatchlings?

All male: Komodo dragons use ZW sex chromosomes, so eggs that develop without a father can hatch only as males; in theory a lone female could found a colony on an island by later mating with her sons.

In Roman law, a father's sweeping legal power over his household was called 'patria' what?

Patria potestas, 'the power of a father', gave the pater familias control of the family's property and, in early law, even of life and death over his children; sons remained under it until he died.

Which marine mammal is among the very few animals known to go through menopause?

Post-reproductive orca grandmothers lead their pods and improve their grandcalves' survival, especially when salmon is scarce. Short-finned pilot whales and humans share the trait.

Thailand's Father's Day on 5 December marks the birthday of which king, who reigned for 70 years?

King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX) was born on 5 December 1927, and Thailand kept his birthday as Father's Day after his death in 2016; Mother's Day falls on 12 August, Queen Sirikit's birthday.

In Anne of Green Gables, the Cuthberts had originally asked the orphanage for what?

Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert had asked for a boy to help on their Prince Edward Island farm and were sent eleven-year-old Anne by mistake; Montgomery based the mix-up on a note she had kept since girlhood.

Paul McCartney wrote 'Hey Jude' to comfort which friend's five-year-old son as his parents separated?

John Lennon had left his wife Cynthia for Yoko Ono, so McCartney drove out to visit young Julian and began a song he first called 'Hey Jules'. Lennon thought the finished song was really about him.

In Spain and much of Latin America, which animal visits children's bedrooms in place of the tooth fairy?

A mouse named Ratoncito Pérez swaps a child's lost milk tooth for a small payment or gift. He got the job in 1894, in a story written for Spain's eight-year-old King Alfonso XIII.

Which Star Trek actor directed Three Men and a Baby, the 1987 comedy about bachelors landed with an infant?

Leonard Nimoy turned a remake of a French farce into a record-breaker: it was the first Disney production to gross more than $100 million domestically in its initial run.

In hospital phototherapy, newborn babies with jaundice lie under lamps that shine which colour of light?

Blue light is absorbed by bilirubin, the yellow pigment behind jaundice, and changes it into forms a baby can pass in urine and stools. An English nurse first noticed that sunlit babies were less yellow.

Which storybook bear got his name from a teddy that belonged to a writer's young son?

Winnie-the-Pooh took his name from the teddy of A. A. Milne's son Christopher Robin, which had itself been renamed after Winnie, a black bear at London Zoo whose owner came from Winnipeg in Canada.

To cut the risk of cot death, a 1994 US health campaign told parents to put babies to sleep how?

On their backs was the whole message of the 'Back to Sleep' campaign, and the US rate of sudden infant death syndrome has fallen by more than 50% since it launched.

What name is given to the soft spots on a newborn's skull, where the bones have not yet joined?

Fontanelles are gaps bridged by tough membrane rather than bone. They let the skull's plates shift so a baby's head can squeeze through the birth canal, and give the brain room to grow.

Which 1980s dolls came with a birth certificate and adoption papers, and had parents fighting in toy shops?

Cabbage Patch Kids grew out of Xavier Roberts's hand-stitched 'Little People', which he said were not for sale but could be 'adopted' from Babyland General Hospital, an old medical clinic he converted in Georgia.

Which bird's chicks are raised on a bright red 'crop milk' produced by both the mother and the father?

Flamingo crop milk looks like blood but contains no red blood cells; the colour comes from a pigment called canthaxanthin. Pigeons and doves feed their young a crop milk too.

In the Bible, which king orders a baby cut in two to discover which of two women is its mother?

Solomon's order was a test: he gave the baby to the woman who begged him to hand it to her rival rather than see it harmed, judging hers the selfless love.

In the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap, which actress made her film debut playing both twins?

Lindsay Lohan played both Hallie and Annie, 11-year-old twins separated after birth who meet by chance at summer camp. A double, Erin Mackey, stood in whenever the sisters shared a scene.

Which great ape nurses its young for up to eight years and waits six to nine years between births?

Orangutan mothers have the longest gap between births of any great ape, and a newborn clings to its mother's belly for its first four months.

In sea turtles, what decides whether a hatchling developing in a beach nest becomes male or female?

Sand temperature settles it: warmer nests produce female hatchlings and cooler nests produce males, so there is concern that heating beaches could yield too many females.

Which diaper brand grew from P&G researcher Victor Mills's dislike of changing his grandchild's cloth ones?

Pampers went on sale in 1961, the work of a Procter & Gamble team that included Mills and fellow researcher Norma Lueders Baker.

The 'practice' contractions of late pregnancy are named after which physician, who described them in 1872?

John Braxton Hicks noticed that many pregnant women felt contractions without being near birth. The tightenings come and go sporadically, and are also known as false labour.

Which US first lady wrote the 1996 book It Takes a Village, about society's part in raising children?

Hillary Clinton took her title from a saying usually described as an African proverb, 'It takes a village to raise a child', and won a Grammy in 1997 for her audio recording of the book.

In Pixar's Brave, a witch's enchanted cake turns Princess Merida's mother, Queen Elinor, into what?

A bear is what Elinor becomes, unable to speak but still thinking like a queen, and Merida's triplet brothers turn into cubs after eating the same cake. The film was first titled The Bear and the Bow.

Which British monarch, a mother of nine, was nicknamed the 'grandmother of Europe'?

Queen Victoria's children married into royal and noble families across the continent, and her eldest grandchild grew up to be Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II.

Harvey Karp's 'five S's' for soothing a baby are side position, shushing, swinging, sucking and which other?

Swaddling, tight wrapping in a blanket, heads the list in Karp's book The Happiest Baby on the Block, which claims the five steps trigger a 'calming reflex' in young babies.

The Dionne sisters, born in Ontario in 1934, were the first known set of what to survive infancy?

Quintuplets were such a sensation that Ontario made the five sisters wards of the Crown, then developed a tourist attraction around them that became known as Quintland.

Zenith's Radio Nurse, the first electronic baby monitor, followed the kidnapping of which aviator's baby?

Charles Lindbergh's tragedy left Zenith president Eugene McDonald concerned for his own infant daughter's safety. Sculptor Isamu Noguchi designed the receiver, his first major design commission.

Which country has given expectant parents a 'baby box' of newborn supplies since 1938?

Finland first issued its maternity package to low-income parents, with a blanket, crib sheets, diapers and fabric for sewing baby clothes. The box comes with a small mattress, so it can double as a first crib.

In the UK, Mothering Sunday falls on the fourth Sunday of which season of the Christian year?

Lent's fourth Sunday was first a day for honouring mother churches, where a person was baptised. 'Mother's Day' became another name for it in Britain under American influence.

On Japan's Children's Day each May, families fly streamers shaped like which fish, one per family member?

Carp streamers, or koinobori, fly in family order: the black one at the top stands for the father, the red for the mother, and another fish is added for each child.

Maria Montessori, whose teaching method bears her name, was among Italy's first women to train as what?

A doctor first and an educator second, she graduated with honours from the University of Rome's medical school in 1896 and opened her first Casa dei Bambini, or Children's House, in 1907.

Which organisation began in Washington in 1897 as the National Congress of Mothers?

The PTA was founded by Alice McLellan Birney and Phoebe Apperson Hearst at a meeting of over 2,000 parents, teachers, workers and legislators, and added 'Parent-Teacher' to its name in 1908.

The old European legend that storks bring babies was popularised by a story from which 19th-century author?

Hans Christian Andersen's tale 'The Storks' spread a far older belief; German folklore had the birds finding babies in caves or marshes and carrying them to households in a basket.

In Greek myth, which craftsman built the wings on which his son Icarus flew too close to the sun?

Daedalus made the wings so that he and Icarus could escape Crete, where he had built the Labyrinth for King Minos; the boy ignored his father's warnings and the wax holding them together melted.

In Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, by what pet name do the four March sisters call their mother?

Marmee raises Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy in genteel poverty while their father serves as a Union Army chaplain, and asks the girls to give their Christmas breakfast away to an impoverished family.

Which pair became the first father and son to play together in an NBA game, as Lakers teammates?

LeBron and Bronny James shared the court in the Lakers' season opener against the Minnesota Timberwolves, four months after the team drafted Bronny with the 55th overall pick.

Paediatrician Richard Ferber gave his name to a 1985 method for teaching babies to do what?

Fall asleep alone is the aim of 'Ferberization', in which parents let a baby cry for set intervals before offering comfort. Ferber laid it out in his book Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems.

Owen Maclaren, inventor of the folding baby buggy, once designed undercarriage legs for which aircraft?

Spitfire undercarriage work came long before the buggy: Maclaren built his 6 lb prototype from lightweight aluminium tubes in the stables of his Northamptonshire farmhouse, and applied for a patent in 1965.

Which newborn reflex makes a baby fling out its arms, then pull them in, at a sudden loss of support?

Moro is the surname of the paediatrician who described the reflex in 1918, drawing it out by slapping a pillow on both sides of a baby's head. It normally disappears by six months of age.

What is the medical name for a newborn's first stool, a dark green substance as sticky as tar?

Meconium is made of what a baby took in before birth, such as mucus, amniotic fluid and bile, and unlike later stools it is almost odourless.

Igbo-Ora, a town nicknamed the 'Twin Capital of the World', is in which African country?

Nigeria's Yoruba people have the highest rate of twinning in the world, at 45 to 50 sets per 1,000 live births. A local yam containing a natural phytoestrogen has been suggested as a possible cause.

A baby echidna, hatched from a leathery egg in its mother's pouch, is known by which name?

Puggle is the word, and the youngster stays in the pouch for 45 to 55 days, sucking milk from pores because monotremes have no teats, until it starts to grow spines.

Which children's brand made the 'Baby Shark Dance' video, the first on YouTube to reach 10 billion views?

Pinkfong, an education brand owned by a South Korean company, uploaded the dance video in June 2016, and it passed the 10-billion mark in January 2022.

Which sweet names Walter Mischel's Stanford test of whether children can wait for a bigger reward?

Marshmallow waits of about 15 minutes earned a second treat, and follow-up studies found that the children who held out longer tended to have better SAT scores and other life outcomes.

Which food names the generation caring for ageing parents and their own children at once?

Sandwich generation was a label introduced in 1981 by Dorothy Miller and Elaine Brody for people squeezed between two sets of dependants, a squeeze felt more as people live longer.

Which 2005 Christmas book by a mother and daughter comes with a toy scout that children must never touch?

The Elf on the Shelf, by Carol Aebersold and her daughter Chanda Bell, says the doll flies to the North Pole each night to report to Santa, then returns to a new spot before the children wake.

Which nursery game is thought to delight babies because they have not yet grasped object permanence?

Peekaboo is thought to show that a young baby cannot yet understand that a hidden face still exists. Jean Piaget, who tested infants by covering their toys with a blanket, placed that awareness late in the first year.

Which B vitamin do women take as a supplement during pregnancy to cut the risk of spina bifida?

Folic acid is the manufactured form of folate, and because it stays stable during processing and storage, many countries fortify foods with it to lower the rate of neural tube defects.

Which Stevie Wonder song opens with a newborn's first cry and celebrates the birth of his daughter Aisha?

Isn't She Lovely runs past six minutes and was not issued as a single when the album came out, because Wonder was unwilling to shorten it; near the end he can be heard bathing Aisha as a toddler.

Which children's author, who had no children of his own, said of them: 'You have 'em; I'll entertain 'em'?

Dr. Seuss was the pen name of Theodor Seuss Geisel, who devoted most of his life to children's books such as The Cat in the Hat without ever becoming a father.

Which Egyptian goddess, protector of women in childbirth, was depicted as an upright hippopotamus?

Taweret was pictured as a composite creature: a female hippopotamus with the limbs and paws of a lion and the back and tail of a Nile crocodile.

In Greek myth, which queen turned to weeping stone after boasting her children outnumbered Leto's two?

Niobe had twelve children in Homer and fourteen in later tellings, against a goddess's two; those two, Apollo and Artemis, were sent to cut her brood down, and the grieving mother turned to stone.

Which Roman matron, asked about her plain dress, is said to have called her sons the Gracchi 'my jewels'?

Cornelia's line outlived Rome: a statue carrying the phrase 'These are my jewels' has stood on the grounds of the Ohio Statehouse for most of its history.

What is the name of the waxy white coating found on the skin of newborn babies?

Vernix, in full vernix caseosa, is Latin for 'cheesy varnish'. It is made by dedicated cells and is thought to protect a baby before birth and for a few hours afterwards.

Which early colleague of Freud argued that a child's place in the family birth order shapes personality?

Alfred Adler's stress on birth order, family relationships and feelings of belonging set him apart from Freud's circle; he also coined the term 'inferiority complex'.

Which paediatrician's The Baby Book popularised the close-contact philosophy known as attachment parenting?

William Sears used the book to advocate breastfeeding and babywearing into toddlerhood, and his works stress a parent's emotional availability and accessibility.