Hundreds of stories have been written about Michelle Obama as an example for working mothers. Among the questions that the pundits have asked: Does the fact that she’s being compared to Jacqueline Kennedy mean anything for women? Should she have labeled herself the First Mom?

How about a look at Barack Obama as an example for working dads? If you find that jarring, you’re not alone; we’re less accustomed to seeing men as symbols of their entire gender. Nevertheless, the president-elect’s story holds some insights for guys.

First, even the most successful working dads have some hard-core conflicts. As a senator, Mr. Obama worried about how his choices as a striving high achiever would affect his daughters, he wrote in his 2006 book, “The Audacity of Hope.” At home on weekends after long absences, he struggled with feelings of inadequacy. Although he crammed in zoo or pool trips, he battled a sense that “by my absences I may have forfeited certain rights” as a father.

Second, commuter marriages take a toll. Michelle Obama grew so angry over her husband’s weekly absences during the girls’ preschool years that her “anger toward me seemed barely contained. ‘You only think about yourself,’ she would tell me. ‘I never thought I’d have to raise a family alone.’” Only over time, Mr. Obama wrote, did he fully appreciate the difficulty of the compromises Michelle had to make as the primary day-to-day parent.

And finally, a father’s absence has a lifelong impact, leaving a son endlessly striving “to either live up to his father’s expectations or make up for his father’s mistakes,” he wrote. Mr. Obama’s father left his mother when the President-elect was two and later spent only a few weeks with his son. Upon this fact Mr. Obama blames “a chronic restlessness, an inability to appreciate, no matter how well things were going, those blessings that were right there in front of me.”

Readers, what, if anything, does Barack Obama’s example as a working dad mean to you? Will he give voice to working parents facing private challenges of their own?

San Francisco reporter Jim Carlton, a veteran youth-sports coach, writes:

Parents’ obsession over their kids’ athletic skills never seems to end. The latest case in point: A front-page report about a new kit that tests kids to see if they have a certain gene that some say predicts sports greatness.

The $149 test, in which you swab inside a child’s cheek to collect DNA and send it to a lab, purports to analyze the gene ACTN3, which may be linked to certain athletic abilities. The goal: to help determine which sport a child is most likely to excel at.

To me, that’s a dangerous game because parents who find their child tests best at power sports like football, for example, are likely to focus just on that sport. But studies have shown an increase in injuries related to children who concentrate on one sport too early in life, such as shoulder tendonitis from pitching baseballs too much. Kids who focus too hard on one sport can get burned out emotionally, too, feeling that the game just isn’t fun anymore.

In my role as a youth athletics coach in my spare time, I have seen firsthand the benefits of children playing multiple sports. I just finished coaching my sons’ soccer teams, for instance, and most of the kids on them play other sports during the rest of the year. In the fall, there is soccer. In winter, there’s basketball. And in the spring, they put on their baseball gloves.

What’s great about this mix is that each sport calls on the kids to use different athletic skills. In soccer, for example, the emphasis is mostly on the lower body. Basketball, which starts right after soccer, requires a great deal of upper body strength and dexterity. And when baseball season comes, speed and stamina take a back seat to eye-hand coordination; even an out of shape kid can make a great baseball player, if he can catch and hit the ball. (Think Babe Ruth.)

The added benefit of playing multiple sports is that kids are less likely to suffer burnout from having to play just one all the time. Both my sons, ages 7 and 10, always can’t wait until one sport is finished and they get to start the next. Among their biggest thrills: getting to put on a new uniform!

Readers, do you think kids should be genetically tested for sports greatness? More broadly, have your kids ever gotten burned out from focusing on a sport? Do you encourage your kids to play multiple sports?

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A new study out today on the mental health of young adults paints a disturbing picture: One in five college-age adults has a personality disorder that disrupts their daily lives.

But fewer than 25% of these young adults with mental-health problems actually seek treatment. The study, of more than 5,000 young people age 19-25, brings up a host of issues for parents who have young-adult children who are away from home, often for the first time.

If a child displays symptoms of mental illness, it’s natural for parents to want to dive in and get their child help. But with college students, it’s far from simple. As Wall Street Journal reporter Elizabeth Bernstein has explained, there is an ongoing debate over how much access and influence parents should have when it comes to their college-age children – who are technically adults.

You can’t force a young adult to get treatment, and colleges often decline to reach out to parents or share information about students’ behavior, citing the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or Ferpa, which protect students’ health and academic records.

Parents who are worried about a child away at college can ask the student to sign a Ferpa waiver allowing the school to share information with them. A growing number of colleges offer such waivers – check your student’s packet of admission information, or call the dean’s office to find out more. And if the school doesn’t offer a pre-formatted waiver, parents can ask their child to write a “letter of consent” to be included in the academic file.

Certainly many school officials, students and families feel that parents shouldn’t intrude, and that college is a time to foster self-reliance. Others believe that college-age students are adults in name only and still need Mom’s and Dad’s guidance – especially if the child is dealing with mental-health issues.

Readers, do you think that parents should take a hands-off approach with college-age young adults, even if it means allowing them to stumble? If you feel parents should have oversight of their college-age kids, would you ask your child to sign a privacy waiver? Does it make a difference if you’re the one footing the bill for school?

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It’s a tough time to be trying to teach your children the fundamentals of financial independence – saving and investing wisely, for example, or learning to manage a checking account.

It’s always been a jungle out there, but the thicket has gotten thicker. It’s official: We’re in a recession. Stocks are plunging and banks are increasingly predatory, levying record fees on consumer accounts and transactions. And returns on the traditional investment vehicle for kids, the savings account, have plummeted to near-invisibility.

With so few rewards to be had, how do you teach your children financial basics? My teenage son recently laughed out loud at his small savings account’s tiny annual yield and remarked that there seemed to be no point in using a bank. When I followed my customary practice of turning over $1,000 of his college savings to him to manage at age 18, the investment opportunities were so bleak that he had a hard time finding any interesting moves. And last year, my daughter, then 19, saw her bank almost completely consume her checking-account balance with a series of cascading overdraft-protection fees — the result of a bank error. (Meanwhile, some banks, such as PNC Bank, have launched new Web-based accounts specifically to appeal to people under 30.)

Wall Street Journal columnist Steve Yoder and his son Isaac offer an interesting example of how a parent can extract a worthwhile lesson from a bad experience. Steve noticed that the bank had been charging Isaac a $25 monthly service fee on the “free” joint checking account they’d opened a few months ago, threatening to devour Isaac’s balance. Although Steve’s first impulse was to stomp off to the bank and fix the problem, he instead wisely alerted his 17-year-old son and let him resolve it. Isaac visited the bank twice, pressed hard and got all but $25 paid back, learning two valuable lessons, he writes: to monitor his bank statements carefully, and to press hard when wronged to get what you want.

Readers, have your children had hard lessons from these markets? Have you found good ways to teach them money skills in this environment? What lessons for kids lie in the current financial turmoil?

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My teenage son came home from school one recent day laughing about a remark one of his friends had made: “Who irons your shirts? Nobody?” his friend had asked, eyeing my son’s white pinstriped shirt flopping open over a Zoo York T-shirt.

Although the friend was right, my son found it funny. He’s a casual dresser who has never wanted to look pressed-and-starched. Nevertheless, it made me wonder if I’ve been remiss about ironing. Although a quick check of Abercrombie & Fitch’s Web site assured me rumpled is in, I briefly considered pulling out the ironing board.

Gloria Baume, Teen Vogue magazine’s fashion director, later reassured me in an interview that today’s latest fashion fabrics for kids continue to be “all rumpled … The more disheveled you are,” the better, she says.

But she also predicts more families will be pulling out their irons in the coming months. For items that do need pressing, she foresees a back-to-basics, hands-on trend. “Old-fashioned things like ironing and washing your own clothes and taking care of them — I think those things are going to come back in a big way” among teens and parents alike, she says. Among the factors she cites are parents’ resistance to high dry-cleaning bills and teens’ growing love of do-it-yourself, hands-on crafts, such as iron-on patches for clothing.

I’m already considering cutting our family’s dry-cleaning bills by ironing more of our jackets, shirts or skirts; I’m also wondering when I, or my kids, will find the time. I’m not alone, based on recent blog posts on learning to iron here and here. And as we’ve discussed before, many teens don’t do–or don’t know how to do–their own laundry.

Ms. Baume says she finds ironing “therapeutic,” evoking memories of ironing with her grandmother as a child. I can relate. I grew up helping my mother iron; the smell of hot cotton and the whoosh of a steam iron are still pleasant. But as an adult, avoiding this chore has been a foundation-stone of my juggle. I buy wrinkle-resistant items, whip my kids’ clothes out of the dryer, hang them up fast and hope for the best.

Readers, do you ever iron your kids’ clothes? Is ironing making a comeback at your house? Do you see this as a potential way for your family to save money?

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Today is what Internet retailers and their public relations firms refer to as “Cyber Monday,” when consumers begin online holiday shopping in earnest. More than 80% of online retailers are offering special deals today, including one-day sales, while some 20% are offering free shipping.

As a working mom with family and friends spread out across the world, I rely heavily on Internet shopping. Although online shopping isn’t always a time saver, as we’ve discussed here and here, it is much quicker for me than fighting the crowds at the mall and trekking to the post office.

I typically use Amazon.com, which sells virtually everything and usually has free shipping and good deals. To help out shoppers in this rocky economy, Consumer Reports Money Advisor and others detail some other ways to find sales: Sign up for email sale alerts from your favorite stores; use sale aggregator sites such as iStorez.com, gottadeal.com, dealnews.com and bfads.com;and sign up for RSS feeds listing sales, offered at stores including Wal-Mart, Target, Sears, Overstock.com and Best Buy. (Also check out the WSJ’s handy holiday gift guide, as well as this WSJ column on clever, low-cost gift ideas, including bargain-priced stocks, frequent flyer miles and even a Thermos.)

For more shopping advice, I contacted my friend and shopping expert Rachel Teichman who, until recently, ran a shopping newsletter for my hometown newspaper.

Some of her tips:
• If a site you like doesn’t have free shipping, order with friends or neighbors and split the shipping
• Packaging is everything—and can make a smaller gift go a long way. Include a candy cane, lollipop, stickers or magnet on the outside of the gift to dress it up. Buy a reusable grocery bag to be the gift bag. “It’s two gifts in one,” she says.
• Instead of buying expensive toys for the kids, encourage their creativity by buying low-cost art supplies, such as t-shirts and fabric pens, picture frames and a disposable camera or stickers and an album.
• Ms. Teichman often shops at smaller merchants, such as those featured on the craft site etsy.com, a “great resource for original gifts at all price ranges.” (She loves these felt play foods.)

Readers, do you have any other holiday shopping money-saving (or time-saving) tips, or hidden-gem deals?

The fact that you’re seeing this means we know a little something about your reading habits already—you’ve found time to visit The Juggle, whether for the first time, on an occasional visit or as a regular stop. But I’m wondering what other reading material gets you through your day or week.

My wife and I kick things off on our commuter-train ride by reading the Wall Street Journal and one of its competitors. When we split up at the terminal, she generally keeps the Journal, since I can get one at work. There, I naturally spend a lot of time reading things on my screen that are going to end up in the paper. I peruse various news sites and media and political blogs during down times, especially during the long election season recently ended. (I also regularly click on parenting sites Offsprung, Babble and ParentCenter.)

On the way home, I either finish parts of the newspapers that I didn’t finish in the morning or read a magazine brought along for the purpose—I subscribe to several, including the New Yorker, Fortune and Portfolio, though not as many as in my single days.

And sometimes I read a book, though not nearly as often as I should and would like to. Working at a feature section of the paper helps, since our bookshelves groan under the weight of surplus review copies. I’m reading a forthcoming biography of John Cheever now, when I can fit it in amid periodicals, Web sites, work and family interactions (and TV!). I’m looking forward to the next Juggle Book Club (having participated in the previous one), which will encourage me to carve out time for what’s sure to be a diverting book, whatever we all choose.

Readers of The Juggle, what else are you readers of? Or do you find you don’t have time to read much these days?

According to a story in today’s Wall Street Journal, the Food and Drug Administration said it found “trace levels’ of the industrial chemical melamine in a sample of U.S.-made infant formula.

The chemical, however, was found in just one U.S. formula sample, and the FDA said that formula was still safe to consume. “It didn’t cause any concern at all, not from a health standpoint, ” said the director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

This report comes after a slew of headlines about toxic chemicals in everything from baby bottles to popular toys, as well as recalled cribs and car seats. Some parents say they’re not getting too ruffled by such news, feeling there’s a certain amount of risk that parents simply need to accept. Others say researching product safety is so time-consuming it’s like a second job.

But for some moms, this news about formula is different. That’s because infant formula can be fraught with particular symbolism. A lot of mothers who read about the benefits of breast milk feel pressure to exclusively breastfeed their babies. But for some moms, especially those working outside the home, it’s often not feasible. Many moms who breastfeed and valiantly pump (not the most appealing part of motherhood, trust me) still must supplement with formula. Other moms encounter physical problems with nursing, while still others choose not to do so. The result for some: formula guilt.

One nursing colleague, who diligently pumps twice a day in our company’s “pump room,” said that even her best efforts at producing enough milk for her infant aren’t enough. Her doctor assured her that formula was a great substitute for breast milk and that formula-fed babies turn out just fine.

Still, she felt awful when she first had to start supplementing with formula and this recall didn’t help matters. “It’s just another reason to feel bad about using formula, when you’re feeling bad enough already,” she said.

Readers, how did you react when you saw the formula news?

UPDATE: The Food and Drug Administration said Friday that it will allow trace amounts of melamine in infant formula.

Note: The Juggle writers will be home with their families Thursday and Friday. We’ll be back on Monday. Happy Thanksgiving!

In a televised conversation last week, CBS’s “60 Minutes” correspondent Steve Kroft invited President-elect Obama to make a few mother-in-law jokes. The incoming Commander-in-Chief wisely refused the bait.

Smart man. The willingness of his children’s grandmother, 71-year-old Marian Robinson, to move to Washington, D.C., and help care for the Obama children, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, is one of the best things the President-elect and his family have going for them, child-development experts say. The constancy and stability Mrs. Robinson will help provide are essential to healthy development of small children facing big changes, as reported in today’s “Work & Family” column.

We’ve written about conflicts that can arise when grandparents provide child care. The unique benefits are sometimes overlooked. “Having continuity across the generations is wonderful” for children, says Margaret Beale Spencer, a professor of applied psychology and human development at the University of Pennsylvania.

Some experts even say grandparents’ love can be superior in some ways. They can often provide the undivided time and attention that tired, busy parents cannot. They may be able to love more freely and unconditionally than parents, who may be stressed and burdened with worries about appearances or what their child’s behavior says about the quality of their parenting. Grandparents are also uniquely equipped to pass on family history and a sense of family identity.

In my family, my older brother’s and sister’s kids benefited richly from knowing our parents and visiting their farm. A sense of historical perspective, my nephew once told me, was the greatest gift he got from my father.

What benefits – or drawbacks – have you or your children experienced from grandparents’ care and involvement?

Note: The Juggle writers will be home with their families Thursday and Friday. We’ll be back on Monday. Happy Thanksgiving!

Weekend Journal reporter Ellen Gamerman writes:

Getting into a top college is tough, but so is weeding through all the advice about it. To sort out the good tips from the bad, I recently talked with college freshmen about what they wish they’d known when they applied to college a year ago.

The story in today’s Personal Journal gathered suggestions from several types of applicants: the student who didn’t get into any of his dream schools, the longshot who made it to a top school even though his college coach told him he’d never get in, the striver whose application was pockmarked with embarrassing spelling errors (i.e. “chemestry”), and others.

It’s easy for kids to get psyched out. Web sites like CampusExplorer.com and MyChances.net help students calculate the odds of getting into their top choice, store shelves groan with college admissions how-to books and an army of private college coaches is ready to do business. And there’s still no way around the element of luck and timing: great applications end up in the reject pile through no fault of their own.

Over the past few years, I’ve spoken with admissions officers, parents, teachers and kids about applying to college, and many say the best advice is simply to remember that everything will work out, and no matter what happens, it’s not the end of the world. Still, I have to think that when I applied to college all those years ago, that wouldn’t have gotten me through my long nights with the 15th draft of my essay and my bottle of Wite-Out.

I’ve also heard my share of sketchy admissions advice, like stand out in your interview, a logical suggestion that some kids are taking to the extreme. Jeannie Borin, president of College Connections, a private college consulting firm based in Los Angeles, says some parents have asked if it’d be OK for their children to dye their hair a bright color or get some unusual piercings so they’ll get noticed. Ms. Borin advised the kids not to take such measures.

What about you—do you have a favorite piece of college admissions advice? What do you think about the tips kids are receiving today? Where do you seek guidance—school counselors, college coaches, how-to books, Web sites, current college freshmen, other parents?

Note: The Juggle writers will be home with their families Thursday and Friday. We’ll be back on Monday. Happy Thanksgiving!