Chantal McGowan was watching television at her home when she heard smoke alarms going off upstairs, where her 3-year-old sister, Savanha, was sleeping. "I couldn't smell anything, but when I went into the kitchen smoke was billowing out of the top oven. It was so strong that I almost threw up," McGowan says of the smoke, "but all I could think about was my sister. I ran upstairs and wrapped her up with a quilt around her head and ran downstairs." Chantal removed her sister from the home, left her in the care of neighbors, and then contacted firefighters.

McGowan's mother, Tina Gill, is extremely proud of her daughter: "'If it wasn't for her being so brave I could have lost both of them," Gill says, "Savanha was fast asleep upstairs, and I had just taken the dog for a walk. It can't have been more than 10 minutes. It was as quick as that. When I got back the smoke was pouring out of the house, and all hell had broken loose. Our neighbours were fantastic. The man from next door had to be treated for breathing in smoke as well because he was trying to put the fire out while Chantal rescued her sister. It was very scary, but I'm so proud of her. She saved her sister's life."[DailyMail]

Some of the mothers discussed in this round-up of parenting books have quit their jobs to raise children, and a few of the book writers think those opt-out mommies are at a greater risk for overparenting. "Such a woman faces a huge loss of income—one source says a million dollars, on average, over the course of her career. It is no surprise that she might want child-rearing to be a project worthy of that sacrifice," says Acocella.

But seriously: reading about helicopter moms creating legions of selfish brats is almost as annoying as the actuality of little Cheyenne and Basil screaming and punching your computer while you're trying to work at a coffee shop. The last paragraph of Acocella's piece pretty much sums it up:

For the past three decades, [Steven] Mintz [the author of Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood] writes, discussions of child-rearing in the United States have been dominated by a 'discourse of crisis,' and yet America’s youth are now, on average, 'bigger, richer, better educated, and healthier than at any other time in history.' There have been some losses. Middle-class white boys from the suburbs have fallen behind their predecessors, but middle-class girls and minority children are far better off. Mintz thinks that we worry too much, or about the wrong things. Despite general prosperity—at least until recently—the percentage of poor children in America is greater today than it was thirty years ago. One in six children lives below the poverty line. If you want an emergency, Mintz says, there’s one.

The Child Trap: The Rise Of Overparenting. [New Yorker]