It's hard not to feel some sympathy for the Wescotts. They adopted the boy two years ago, but he spent the last year in a psychiatric facility after trying to burn their house down and leaving a note that said, "Sorry you have to die." He's violent, kills animals, stashed butcher's knives under his bed, and he's been diagnosed with "reactive detachment disorder, disruptive behavior disorder, major depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and fetal alcohol syndrome," according to ABC News.

The Wescotts say they knew what they could handle and requested a child who wasn't "violent or acting out sexually." Since the Oklahoma Department of Human Services claimed he was "well-behaved," "respectful toward authority," and had no significant behavioral problems, they say that when he returns from an inpatient psychiatric hospital in January, they should be able to dissolve the adoption and put him back foster care.

Other parents in the Wescott's adoption support group are backing their fight to make it legal in Oklahoma for adoptive parents to return their child if the he or she turns out to be violent. The state counters that it warns all parents that the children grew up in abusive homes and are likely to have emotional and behavioral problems.

While Melissa Wescott says, "It's not like we're trying to return an itchy sweater," in some ways it is. They didn't promise to take care of the boy unless things didn't work out, and if their biological 11-year-old son developed psychiatric problems, abandoning him would be considereed illegal. Obviously, the Wescotts need help caring for their son. But, with so many adoptive parents fighting to be recognized as their child's "real" parents, creating a law that makes adoption less permanent isn't the answer.

Oklahoma Couple Want To Return Troubled Adopted Son To State [ABC News]

If you're wondering "Why on earth is she going on The Today Show, out of the blue, with apparently no show business to promote, to announce this?" you're not alone, but it turns out Meredith was drawn out of her private life by tabloids who threatened to reveal her "secret," and decided to own the story herself. After three failed marriages, she realized seven years ago that she was a lesbian; she told her kids and friends, and was living openly with her partner, Nancy, without feeling any need to announce it publicly until the tabloid situation arose. So basically, it's really no big deal. But Meredith did say that she hopes that people who remember her from her Family Ties days (aww!) will think of her when issues of gay rights and social equality come up, and have a more open mind. In a week full of scandals and famewhores, Meredith's lack of sensationalism and matter-of-factness is refreshing. Below is the segment in its entirety (don't miss the weird part where Matt asks her if she had a "B-movie moment" in which she ran to the mirror screaming "I'm gay! I'm gay").

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Psychologists at the University of Ulster and De Monfort University questioned 571 people aged 17 to 25 who had only sisters or brothers, both, or were only children, reports The Daily Mail. Researchers found that subjects who grew up with at least one sister were generally happier, more ambitious, and more emotionally balanced than those who only had brothers. [Aww, I am forwarding this to my sister right now. — Dodai]

"Our explanation for it is that the presence of girls opens up channels of communication and it becomes a much more expressive situation that's positive," said University of Ulster researcher Tony Cassidy, who co-authored the study. "Emotional expression is fundamental to good psychological health and having sisters promotes this in families."

Researchers also found that people with sisters were more successful in their careers, as subjects with sisters were more likely to strive to reach their goals. "It certainly seems there is something about the family situation with the number of girls in it that leads to more encouragement to achieve and be independent," said Cassidy.

Women benefited the most from having sisters in families where the parents were still married, but in divorced families both men and women benefited equally from having sisters. "It seems [sisters'] natural inclination was to express themselves, talk about the separation and encourage other family members to do so as well. It seems to help keep family relationships going," said co-author Liz Wright, research fellow at De Montfort, according to The Times of London. "There was markedly less distress in broken homes with a sister."

Brothers had a less positive effect, and men who grew up with lots of brothers scored the lowest for emotional health. "The more natural trend for boys is not to talk about things," said Cassidy in The Daily Mail. "When there are a number of boys together, it is almost like a conspiracy of silence no to talk, whereas a girl in that context breaks it down."

As for only children, their scores fell between those with only sisters and those with only brothers. "It seems many only children had built up significant social support outside the home by the time they reached their late teens which helped them in a crisis and in other areas of life," said Wright.

Why Having A Sister Makes You Happier And Helps Families Bond [The Daily Mail]
Growing Up With A Sister Makes People More Balanced [The Times Of London]

Not letting any grass grow under their feet, less than a day after her death, the Telegraph has reduced Natasha Richardson's death to part of a "family curse" that haunts her prominent clan. This is it: "A series of marriage failures and controversies have beset the family, including Richardson's divorce from her first husband and the revelation that both her father and grandfather were bisexual." And, oh yeah, Liam Neeson once "cheated death" in a motorcycle crash. In other words, she comes from a family. Which is in the public eye.

Beyond the general ghoulish poor taste of casting Richardson's death in such a light — can't we just mourn her on her own terms? — it does seem inaccurate; surely any "curse" worth its salt needs to include at least three tragic and premature deaths and a series of inexplicable happenings. What the Telegraph is describing is no more and no less than the natural ebb and flow of a large, strong-willed family in the public eye — and by those standards, is pretty tame.

However, the very suggestion is an irony of its own. If there is a "curse" to families like these, it's probably the public — and media's — unwillingness to separate one part from the whole. Richardson said that she moved to the States to escape the pressures and expectations of family, and as Obit magazine points out in a thoughtful essay, she succeeded in defining herself independently.

The fact that she made a place for herself in a world that had been dominated by her parents, actress Vanessa Redgrave and director Tony Richardson, her grandfather Michael Redgrave and her aunt Lynn Redgrave was only her most visible achievement. She arrived professionally in a post-modern retrospective age - one in which all the great stories were thought to have been told - that was also rife with celebrity deification.

Richardson did something very difficult: forged her own distinct career and identity and by all accounts lived a life well and happily, no mean achievement. Her death is sad not because she's a Redgrave, but because she was a talented performer in her prime who leaves behind two young sons and a grieving family. For the Telegraph to strip her death not only of its unique sadness, but her life of its hard-won independence, seems unfair. But the lure of a "dynasty" is too potent for the media to ignore. And that, at the end of the day, is a real Curse of the Redgraves.

Natasha Richardson's death adds to speculation of 'curse' on Redgrave dynasty [Telegraph]
Improvising Her Best Role [Obit]

As people spend more and more time at the office, workplace relationships have grown closer and more fraught - in short, more family-like. An increasing number of companies are actively analyzing family dynamics to help manage office interactions. says one shrink,

Work is nothing more than an entirely complex set of relationships. You have partners that are your equals, subordinates, superiors...It’s parents and siblings. All of these dynamics that are exactly the same in the workplace, just the titles are different.”

As is so often the case, things come down to birth order:

Firstborns...tend to be fearful of losing their position and rank, so they may be extremely anxious at a time of layoffs and downsizing. Second-born children tend to be most adventurous and open to change, he said. In fact, [psychologist] Dr. Dattner said that companies he had worked with found that when sending employees overseas, second-born children tended to fare better than older ones. As the older of two daughters, Ms. Frankel said she sometimes feels competitive with Ms. Delio, which reminds her of competing with her sister for their parents’ attention.

Of course, as a composition teacher might say, where's the "so what?" To a degree, all interaction can probably be reduced to familial dynamics - which in turn can likely be explained by some biological imperative. At its worst, can overanalysis of this kind of pre-determining absolve us of adult responsibility? And to a certain degree, isn't what they're describing, at the end of the day, just your "personality?" For the most part, it seems moot: I'm scared of losing my job not because I'm the elder of two, but because we're in a recession; probably any responsible employee craves a boss's approval. What's more interesting is the degree to which an office life can allow someone to break out of his or her assigned roles, building new relationships and dynamics that in a sense give you a chance to do it better. To be crassly pop cultural, Don Draper may be a philanderer in the suburbs, but his commitment to his job is unstinting; where the character of Peggy may be one of a large crowd at home, her experience with dealing with a lot of people allows her to navigate the work "family" and promote herself. To the extent awareness of your proclivities makes you better able to harness them, I suppose this kind of knowledge is useful. But to the extent the formality of an office setting imposes structure and a certain professional courtesy, it seems like that, conversely, can inform home life. Those of us who work from home can just morph into spoiled only children and throw tantrums...with no one to hear.

Family and Office Roles Mix [New York Times]

MOE:: So okay, tonight is a really important night. Hillary needs to win or else, well, as she told Jon Stewart, it's pretty pathetic.
MEGAN: I have to say, I watched that and she didn't cackle even once.
MEGAN: Although a darker brown suit would've been better.
MOE:: She did a really good job. And that was a funny answer. Everyone's really impressed that she's not "acting like a loser" yet, you know? Like at this Eva Longoria-moderated town hall meeting in Texas yesterday. Um, did you know Eva Longoria is a former Miss Corpus Christi? Because that was news to me.
MEGAN: Whoa, that is news to me, too. But, yay for a short girl winning a beauty contest!
9:05 AM
MEGAN: I mean, the problem becomes that if she actually doesn't pull it out today, does she continue to act like a winner and try to keep going through Pennsylvania anyway.
MOE:: Okay, so today's big news to me is that Alex P. Keaton would be an Obamican. This revelation comes to us via his ghostwriter Gary David Goldberg. "I think Obama's slogan is very similar to Alex's own personal mantra: "Of Course I Can." Now ha ha ha yes that is fiction, but the rationale behind it sort of mirrors the rationale behind this nonfiction blog post by Netscape co-founder and gazillionaire Marc Andreessen, who also gave money to Mitt Romney. The Obamicans are, to me, the most fascinating niche of the Obama constituency, because they are willing to discard all their ill-conceived ideology just to get someone motherfucking smart in the White House.
The other person, or their software, refused the request.
9:10 AM
MOE:: Okay, so today's big news to me is that Alex P. Keaton would be an Obamican. This revelation comes to us via his ghostwriter Gary David Goldberg. "I think Obama's slogan is very similar to Alex's own personal mantra: "Of Course I Can."
MOE:: Now ha ha ha yes that is fiction, but the rationale behind it sort of mirrors the rationale behind this nonfiction blog post by Netscape co-founder and gazillionaire Marc Andreessen, who also gave money to Mitt Romney. The Obamicans are, to me, the most fascinating niche of the Obama constituency, because they are willing to discard all their ill-conceived ideology just to get someone motherfucking smart in the White House.
MEGAN: Well, but presumably they consider their ideology to be somewhat less ill-conceived most of the time.
MEGAN: I mean, do they not consider Clinton smart? Because she's not stupid. And neither's McCain, even if I disagree with him politically. So why are these guys going for Obama, who is legitimately considered to be far more liberal than Hillary by more than just the National Journal?
MOE:: Yeah and it also gets to this nagging curiosity: Is Obama really a Leftist? Does he really hate NAFTA? What did NAFTA ever do to him?
MOE:: I like this snippet from the Andressen blog post:

We then asked, well, what about foreign policy — should we be concerned that you just don't have much experience there?
He said, directly, two things.
First, he said, I'm on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where I serve with a number of Senators who are widely regarded as leading experts on foreign policy — and I can tell you that I know as much about foreign policy at this point as most of them.
Being a fan of blunt answers, I liked that one.

'Family Ties' Stars Hold Family Reunion [NBCNews]