This Week in Family
After Christine Blasey Ford came forward early this week with allegations that the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her when she was in high school, some commentators discredited her story as characteristic of adolescents. This defense of Kavanaugh hasn’t sat well with a lot of teenagers, writes the Atlantic staff writer Joe Pinsker. He talked to several students about their thoughts on the allegations, the fallacy that “boys will be boys,” and the conversations they’re having with their peers about consent.
When parents see their newborns move around in their sleep, they often wonder what’s happening in their infants’ brains. However, psychologists don’t definitively know if babies’ brains can conjure up dreams, and they have no idea what they might be dreaming about, writes the Atlantic staff writer Alia Wong. Though it’s difficult to strap an infant into a brain scanner, scientists have inferred that, like older children and adults, babies dream during REM sleep, but they just have no language to communicate about it.
Other Highlights
Two pieces this week talked about the so-called “confidence gap” between men and women—and whether it can actually explain differences in their professional outcomes.