Parenting

Four years ago, novelist Ayelet Waldman sparked a controversy — and wound up on Oprah to defend herself — when she wrote in an essay that she loved her husband more than her children.

Psychologist Richard Weissbourd contends that parents who are obsessed with their children's happiness are ignoring other important values — like goodness, empathy, appreciation and caring — that are necessary to a well-rounded personality.

Judith Warner is the author of the new book Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety. In it she writes about the "choking cocktail of guilt and anxiety and resentment and regret" that is poisoning motherhood for American women. Warner is a former special correspondent for Newsweek in Paris.

Actress Cynthia Nixon is one of the stars of HBO's Sex and the City. She plays Miranda Hobbes, a corporate lawyer who is also a new mother in the current season of the show. Nixon recently starred in the Broadway production of the classic 1930 Clare Boothe Luce play, The Women. She also appeared at the age of 18 in the broadway plays Hurlyburly, and The Real Thing. She's a founding member of the Drama Dept., an Off-Broadway theater company. Her film roles inclue, Amadeus, Prince of the City, The Pelican Brief, and The Out-of-Towners.

Meredith F. Small has written the new book "Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Are". (Anchor books) Small explores the various cultural practices used in raising babies. She is also the author of "Female Choices: Sexual Behavior of Female Primates" and "What's Love Got to Do With It?" Small is a professor of anthropology at Cornell University in New York State. (Interview by Barbara Bogaev)

Barbara Neilson a social worker at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. She works with children with congenital abnormalities, and their families.

Patrick Murphy is the Public Guardian of Cook County, Illinois. He represents abused or neglected children in Chicago’s . In his new book Wasted: The Plight of America’s Unwanted Children (Ivan R. Dee, Inc) he argues that while keeping families together may sound like good public policy, there are many cases in which it only endangers the lives of children. His previous book is titled Our Kindly Parent the State. (Viking) (Interview by Barbara Bogaev)

Commissioner for New York's Child Welfare Agency, the Administration for Children's Services Nicholas Scoppetta. He recently called for an expansion of foster care for the city's children, including "neighborhood based" care. Scoppetta understands well the struggles of children in foster care. As a five year old boy, he was taken out of his home in New York's Little Italy for neglect, and lived in several foster institutions for six years.

Ingrid Labarbiera is the mother of Amy Barbiera, the subject of the HBO documentary "Heart of a Child." The film documents a year in the life of four year old Amy, who at such a young age had a heart/double lung transplant, and then seven months later another double lung transplant. Amy later died. The film's producers are Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon. "Heart of a Child" airs Thursday, June 12 at 8 PM on HBO.

Joyce Dixson co-founded "Sons and Daughters of the Incarcerated" a group which helps children whose parents are in prison. Dixson served seventeen years in prison after being convicted of shooting her husband. She left two children behind when she went to prison in 1976. She later became the first woman to earn an undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan while incarcerated. Dixson's sentence was reduced, and she was released from prison in 1993. She went directly to the University of Michigan and earned a master's degree in social work.