Amy Schalet, PEP Steering Committee Member, was recently quoted in an article on parents letting their children's boyfriends and girlfriends join family quarantine bubbles. The pandemic might end up prompting American parents to loosen the rules when it comes to their older children's relationships, said Amy Schalet, sociology, and author of "Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens and the Culture of Sex."  "The pandemic is driving home to everyone how important intimacy is," Schalet said. "My sense is that this is a moment of conversation in America around a culture that emphasizes this focus on individual pursuits and yet everyone is feeling the intensity of isolation,” she continued. Read more at AZfamily.com and CNN.

Ezra Markowitz, PEP co-director, co-authored an opinion piece calling for a re-evaluation of how we should discuss crises and catastrophes. “Simply put,” he writes, “narratives of catastrophe and crisis can create nasty feedback loops that make it harder to achieve the compromise, hard work and sustained engagement necessary for meaningful action, especially in a deeply divided society.” Markowitz and his co-author provide four ways to tell more effective stories about the challenges facing humanity. Read more at The Washington Post.

Elizabeth Krause, 2015 PEP Fellow, finds the “threat of xenophobia, a preparedness to quarantine, and the will of solidarity motivated an entire migrant community to take action” during the pandemic in new research. Krause and Bressan argue that the effects of what they discovered “reconfigures dominant ideologies of individualism, open space for collective orientation toward a human economy, and offer potential to alleviate detrimental impacts of pandemics.” Krause & Bressan explain, “The Chinese migrants prioritized health and well-being over business and money. Their collective action of a triple quarantine as a means to prevent the spread of the virus represented a gift to the community at large.” “Not spreading COVID stands as the ultimate gift of solidarity,” they write. “Time will tell to what degree the withering away of xenophobia will endure as a form of reciprocity.” Read more at the News Office.

Rebecca Spencer, 2015 PEP Fellow, is quoted extensively in an article about the benefits of naps when they are taken correctly. Spencer explains, “We know in early childhood naps can help emotion processing.  Because that's the observation for little kids: if you keep them from napping, the parent will be like, ‘Oh my god, they're so grumpy. They haven't napped,’ ” Read more at Discover Magazine.