I want my family meals to look like the opening credits of "Parenthood" — everyone laughing and chatting and politely passing food to each other under the soft glow of flattering lights.

I frequently want them to sound like the opening credits of "Parenthood" too — no actual dialogue, just a Bob Dylan song drowning out any trace of human voices.

A recent breakfast:

"Stop looking at my orange juice! Mom, she keeps looking at my orange juice!"

"You stop looking at my face! Mom, he's looking at my face!"

I know family meals are important. I've read all the same studies you have, linking them to a decrease in teen drinking, drug abuse, depression and eating disorders . They're credited with boosting self-esteem and grade-point averages.

But breakfast is hard. They're half-asleep, they're hungry, a full day of school awaits them.

And dinner is hard. They're half-asleep, they're hungry, a full day of school has drained them.

I wouldn't dream of shrugging them off. OK, I dream about it...

Before he whipped the White House press corps and its Twitter followers into a lather by only taking questions from female journalists, President Obama was doing his part to bust gender barriers for a distinctly younger set.

In a video making the rounds this week, the president joins First Lady Michelle Obama to present gifts to the Marine's Toys for Tots program at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in Washington, D.C. When it's time to sort the toys into "boy" boxes and "girl" boxes, President Obama goes against the grain.

"You know what? I just want to make sure some girls play some ball," he says as he places a basketball in the girls bin.

A few moments later, "T-ball? Girls like T-ball." And into the girls bin goes the Little Tikes set.

At one point Obama appears to catch flak from the crowd of onlookers for placing a toy tool kit in the girls bin.

"Girls don't like toys?" he replies.

And just like that, the president gamely knocks down our ridiculous notions of gendered playthings, and...

Less than half of American kids live in a "traditional" home, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of 2013 American Community Survey data.

Forty-six percent of children younger than 18 live with two heterosexual parents in their first marriage, compared to 61 percent with such an arrangement in 1980 and 73 percent in 1960.

A jump in the number of kids born to unmarried mothers accounts for much of the shift away from tradition. The percentage of kids born outside of marriage is now 41, compared to just 5 percent in 1960, according to Pew.

"Thirty-four percent of children today are living with an unmarried parent — up from just 9 percent in 1960, and 19 percent in 1980," the study says.

A point worth noting, however: Children whose parents are in a same-sex marriage are folded into the "single parent" column because of Pew's concerns about the reliability of gay marriage data. So in some ways, our data collection hasn't caught up with our social progress.

Another point worth...

If our language is a reflection of our lives, 2014 has been the year of culture.

Searched on Merriam-Webster's website more frequently than any other word this year, "culture" has popped up, the site's editors point out, in conversations about "rape culture," "company culture" and "celebrity culture."

"Culture is a word that we seem to be relying on more and more. It allows us to identify and isolate an idea, issue or group with seriousness," Merriam-Webster editor at large Peter Sokolowski said in a statement . "And it's efficient: We talk about the culture of a group, rather than saying 'the typical habits, attitudes, and behaviors' of that group."

We've discussed America's culture of violence and Wall Street's culture of greed . We've dissected gun culture ,  bro culture and selfie culture . Feminism conquered the culture even as it butted heads with sexist culture .

And that's all layered on top of old standbys high culture, low culture and pop culture.

Nostalgia was the second-most...

My daughter asked me recently if I believe in karma.

She said her third-grade teacher explained that some people believe if you put positive things into the universe, you receive positive things in return.

I told her I believe, unequivocally, in putting positive things into the universe. But I stop short of embracing karma the way it's often presented, because it implies that people had it coming when terrible things happen to them. You only have to read one story about Ebola orphans in Sierra Leone to know that, very often, people didn't have it coming.

What I do believe in, I told her, is finding the positive, however tiny, in life's lousy moments. It trains your mind to take inventory of and commit to memory the moments that make you feel optimistic and fortunate, instead of just focusing on the things falling apart all around you.

That's when things started falling apart all around me. (Some would call it karma.)

It started last Friday night, when my daughter complained of intense...

With notable and tragic exceptions, American children are safer, healthier and better-educated than they were in decades past, according to a new report.

The National Child and Youth Well-Being Index , produced annually by Duke University, finds that violent crimes and suicide rates have decreased significantly for youths since 1995, and teen births have declined steadily since 1975. Smoking and binge drinking are also down, as are households run by single parents.

The study looks at 28 key indicators to determine quality of life for children from birth to age 19. The indicators are then collected into seven groups: family economic well-being, safe/risky behavior, social relationships, emotional/spiritual well-being, community engagement, educational attainment and health.

Youth death rates, according to the report, are a third of what they were in 1975, the study's first year.

The number of American youths who were victims of violent crimes has declined 59 percent since 1994, when 121...