This week, we tackle a lighter topic: summer vacation. Summer family road trips used to conjure up images of the kids and parents piled into the station wagon or minivan for a time of togetherness -- singing, playing travel bingo, counting license plates, and other diversions. Looking out the window and marveling at the beautiful scenery was entertainment in itself.

Today, many families travel together much differently. With on-board DVD players, cell phones with text messaging, laptops, iPods, and other high-tech gadgets, looking out the window seems to be a thing of the past.

What do you think? Have high-tech gadgets forever changed this summer tradition? Are gadgets and gizmos a bonus or a burden when it comes to family road trips?

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Stay at home with the kids or go to work? It's a question many moms struggle with, and a question at the heart of a fierce debate. In an op-ed column in the Washington Post last week, E.J. Graff states the media have created a "mommy war machine," depicting stay-at-home moms and working moms facing off in playgrounds with briefcases and diaper bags. The column states that "mommy wars" are a media phenomenon driven by money and marketing.

But Leslie Morgan Steiner thinks the issue is more complicated and that the media stories often oversimplify the problems facing American mothers. She says there is evidence that "women experience a 'mommy war' driven by guilt, tension and understandable jealousy on both sides."

What do you think? How much of this debate is valid, and how much of it is simply media hype?

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California Assemblywoman Sally Lieber is proposing a bill to make it illegal to spank children three years old or younger. Swatting, smacking, slapping, etc., would hold a maximum penalty of one year in jail and a $1,000 fine. KPBS Radio's These Days asked local listeners about child punishment, and NPR's Day to Day interviewed the Democratic assemblywoman about the issue.

Feb. 23, 2007, update: Assemblywoman Lieber has dropped the spanking ban from the bill, though it still forbids the use of certain implements such as a belt, stick, or rod on children under 18.

What do you think? Should spanking young children be a crime?

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