James' World 2

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Nicotine pouches—small, flavored packets placed between the gums and lips—have recently become an increasingly appealing option for people trying to avoid cigarettes and traditional “smokeless” oral tobacco products. Since the pouches were introduced to the U.S. market in 2014, they’ve found a steady following, particularly among people between the ages of 25 and 44. This month 20 products from the popular ZYN brand became the first such pouches to be “authorized” by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. While this falls short of the FDA’s designation of being “approved” as generally safe, it allows ZYN to continue selling its three- and six-milligram nicotine pouches in 10 different flavors, including spearmint, citrus, coffee, cinnamon, and menthol.

The FDA’s decision on ZYN, whose manufacturer, Swedish Match, had applied for authorization in 2020, was “long overdue,” says Jasjit Singh Ahluwalia, a physician and public health scientist at Brown University, who

has studied nicotine addiction for more than 30 years. The agency’s ruling drew from a study facilitated by Swedish Match that suggests the pouches got people to switch from other tobacco products such as cigarettes—which can contain dozens of compounds linked to cancer or other diseases. Pouches such as ZYN contain substantially fewer harmful chemicals than cigarettes.

The FDA apparently “concluded that the public health benefits have outweighed the risks,” says Mary Hrywna, an associate professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health and a founding member of the university’s Institute for Nicotine and Tobacco Studies. “It doesn’t mean that the products are safe.”

ZYN pouches were the top-selling oral nicotine brand in the U.S. by the end of 2023; that same year Philip Morris International (PMI), the tobacco conglomerate that owns Swedish Match, reported shipping almost 385 million cans of the pouches to the U.S. More broadly, total U.S. nicotine pouch sales rose from 126 million units in the last five months of 2019 to 808 million in the first three months of 2022, according to a JAMA report. Hrywna says that the FDA’s authorization of ZYN is a good first step in cracking down on bad actors.

“The market has exploded, and some of those manufacturers are just opportunists exploiting the lack of enforcement,” Hrywna says. “Now there’s at least one authorized [pouch] product, and so at the very least, I would think that the FDA could now take more forcible action on products that have not submitted any type of application.”

Nicotine pouches’ rise in popularity—and their potentially enticing flavors and marketing—have driven up concern about underage use. In the U.S. people must be age 21 or older to legally purchase any nicotine product, but last April the FDA issued more than 100 warning letters to brick-and-mortar and online retailers that sold ZYN to people under age 21. The 2024 National Youth Tobacco Survey found that pouch use among middle and high school students was 1.8 percent, meaning approximately 480,000 students. The FDA notes this rate among youth to be relatively low—e-cigarette use was 5.9 percent (1.63 million students) in comparison—but groups are concerned about any level of use by kids. So-called ZYNfluencers on TikTok and other social media platforms have been criticized for promoting the pouches to young adults.

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Catherine Garcia was the only one of four siblings raised by her grandmother, as opposed to her mother. Over the years, she and her abuela from Puerto Rico would often switch roles as caregivers. Ultimately, Garcia took on this role full-time until her grandmother passed away.

There is a remarkable story that transpired between the time Garcia first moved in with her grandmother and the day she laid her to rest and beyond. Not only is it inspiring and a profound example of beating the odds, but Garcia’s story echoes the journeys of many other first-generation Latines in the United States who have had to support parents and caregivers while creating a life all their own.

On average, the typical Latine caregiver in the U.S. is 43 years old — which is younger than caregivers of other races and ethnicities — and caring for parents, parents-in-law, or grandparents who average about 67 years old and have one long- or short-term physical condition.1 More often than not, these caregivers have children under the age of 18, who are also living in their home, along with a partner or spouse. While Latine caregivers take on a lot of responsibilities within their household, they have lower incomes and education than their peers.

Today, Garcia is the OB/GYN Administrative Director and Mt. Sinai Academic Coordinator for BronxCare Health System in the Bronx, NY. The road it took for her to get there was anything but a smooth ride. Still, she preserved, the strength behind her resilience from the start and still today has always been her abuela.

Multigenerational families living together is very true to Latine culture in the United States and beyond. Approximately one-third or around 32 percent of Latine households in the U.S. are considered multigenerational,

meaning they include multiple adult generations living together and translate to a significant portion of Latines likely caring for an elderly family member within their household.2 Among those caregivers in Latine familias, women are significantly more likely to take on that role.

At times, it isn’t so much about wanting to be the caregiver as much as it is about adhering to cultural influences that instill strong family values within Latine families, which often means caring for elderly family members at home. 

Abuela’s Girl

“I was raised by my grandmother since kindergarten. She had three boys and always wanted a girl,” Garcia fondly recalls being raised in the Spanish Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City by her Abuela Ana Celia Alvarez from Arecibo, Puerto Rico. “She came to New York from Arecibo after she got married, seeking a better life for her children.”  

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Vivek Ramaswamy, a key member of President-elect Trump’s team, recently reignited the debate around tiger parenting, equating it with “tough love” and framing it as a surefire path to success. His comments painted tiger parenting as a deliberate strategy for raising high-achieving, resilient children, but they overlooked the deeper roots of this parenting style.

Every time “Tiger Moms” enter the cultural discourse, I chuckle. I remember reading Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother as a young mom, and laughing as I imagined telling my deceased father that these practices are supposed to be reserved for Asian kids.

My reaction to that book seemed so much less judgmental than that of my friends—I read it as Amy Chua’s sincere desire to raise strong, healthy children. I thought her observations that nothing is fun until you attain mastery and that parents shouldn’t assume fragility in healthy children were particularly astute.

My friends seemed to see her as a one-dimensional figure: the demanding mom with her arms folded, demanding endless hours of violin practice. But I read a funny, conflicted mom who is truly struggling to figure out what her parenting practices should be in the face of a culture that believes otherwise.

Not having gotten the memo that these practices are only for Asian women, my father demanded academic excellence. He expected me to write book reports on books I had read for pleasure. If I brought home a grade that was less than 100 percent, my father wanted to know where the other two points went.

His higher education had been cut short by economic circumstances, and his chronic illness meant we relied on my mother’s job as a guidance counselor for our income. He always praised my mother’s master’s degree and stated his foregone conclusion that I’d attain a Ph.D. “Imagine…” he’d muse. “You get to write a thesis. And a dissertation.” His tone of voice made these sound like treats. (They weren’t, mostly.)

Even on his sickbed, my father expected me to write a detailed error analysis of my mistakes on tests. I protested in vain that the test was over, I got an A, even if two points were “missing,” and I really didn’t want to. He told me that disciplined scholars faced their mistakes, and he was right.

I felt loved by my father, if frustrated by him, and I read Chua’s book in the same light. I knew that he was afraid of poverty and that he saw higher education as a buffer against that fate. He also knew that he was dying. He was trying to protect—and prepare—me.

Now, Vivek Ramaswamy has brought high-demand parenting back into cultural discourse.

As someone who works with parents navigating their own post-traumatic experiences, I’d argue that tiger parenting is, at its core, a trauma response. It’s not just about wanting your kids to succeed; it’s about needing them to. And that distinction matters because it tells us something profound about how trauma shapes our parenting.

What Is Tiger Parenting?

Amy Chua described tiger parenting as a style that demands excellence. Kids are pushed to master difficult skills, often at the expense of leisure or emotional validation. While this approach can foster resilience, discipline, and achievement, it can also come with significant emotional costs—for both child and parent.

But why would a parent adopt such a rigid, high-pressure approach in the first place? Let’s explore how trauma influences parenting styles.

Trauma and the Fear of Failure

Trauma leaves an indelible mark on the way we view the world. For parents with unhealed trauma, especially trauma related to scarcity, poverty, or persecution, the stakes of “failure” can feel unbearably high. If you’ve experienced a world where not being the best meant losing opportunities—or worse, safety—it makes perfect sense that you’d do everything in your power to prevent your child from ever facing that reality.

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Hmmm…A president for the people?

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CLIMATEWIRE | President Donald Trump’s cancellation of a 31-year-old environmental justice directive threatens the health of tens of millions of people in minority or low-income communities, which have often been dumping grounds for pollution, waste sites, and heavy industry, said civil rights advocates and experts.

Revoking a 1994 executive order by President Bill Clinton removes a mandate that survived four subsequent presidencies, including Trump’s first term, and required federal agencies to address the “high and adverse” environmental and health effects of their decisions on areas with high rates of poverty or large minority populations.

“It’s turning the clock back on decades of work,” said Peggy Shepard, co-founder and executive director of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, based in New York. “They’re working to eliminate policies and programs that support equity, support environmental and climate justice, and that’s just going to have a harmful effect on the health and well-being of so many people in these disadvantaged communities.”

Clinton’s Executive Order 12898, signed in February 1994, required federal agencies to analyze environmental and public health hazards in minority or low-income communities and to avoid adding to them.

Trump, in his own executive order that repealed the Clinton-era mandate, said the policies violate federal civil rights laws, sow racial division, and “deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system.”

Following Trump’s revocation, agencies will review each program for areas where “race and other marginalization identities are considered by the agency and how they are considered,” George Washington University law professor Emily Hammond said. Political appointees will lead the reviews and give reports to the White House Office of Management and Budget.

“It will be OMB that’s actually giving the final say to policies that are eliminated,” said Hammond, who was Energy Department deputy counsel in the Biden administration. “This process takes a while.”

Trump framed his revocation — and several others Tuesday — as an effort to end “illegal preferences and discrimination” in government.

Trump’s directive also will bar most federal grant programs from prioritizing projects that help minority or low-income communities. It also axes a 60-year-old equal employment executive order and several diversity and inclusion policies. Critics said the president’s moves ignore research about the health and financial effects of pollution on poor people.

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WHEN ABC BROADCAST A REMAKE OF AN episode of All in the Family, shot before a studio audience in 2019, the network recreated the Bunker family home In Queens, New York, down to the doilies and faded wall­paper, with Woody Harrelson and Marisa Tomei taking up Carroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton’s roles as Archie, the ultraconservative loading-dock worker, and his kindly wife, Edith. Set in 1976, the episode centers around the unexpected arrival of David Brewster, their son-in-law Mike Stivic’s high school friend, a Vietnam War draft dodger who fled to Canada but just sneaked home for Christmas. When Edith invites David to join them for the holiday dinner, Mike cautions his friend not to tell Archie what he’d done—and to avoid such topics as “politics, religion, sex, books, movies, war, peace, guns . . . grapes, lettuce.”   

Archie, meanwhile, has invited his pal Pinky Peterson, whose son Steve was killed in the war. Mike’s worst fears are realized—David’s secret spills out and the joyous gathering quickly devolves into a bitter confrontation over the war, with a spitting-mad Archie yelling, “What he done was wrong!” Finally Pinky stands up and makes peace. “My kid hated the war too,” he says. “But he did what he thought he had to do. And David here, he did what he thought he had to do . . . if Steve was here, he would want to sit down with him. And that is what I want to do.” Pinky then walks over to David and shakes his hand.  

All in the Family debuted 50 years ago in January 1971, two years before the United States withdrew from Vietnam, and four years before that divisive conflict ended. Fifty-eight thousand Americans died in Southeast Asia, and when the Christmas special originally aired in 1976, the war was still a festering wound. The very day ABC restaged the show in 2019, Congress had started impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, and the country found itself as polarized as ever. So much had changed in four-plus decades—and yet so little.   

Back in the 1970s, of course, it was bold for a sitcom to take on such a sensitive topic as the war. But All in the Family was unlike anything seen before on television. Up until then, TV had a blandly homogenous quality. Three networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC, ruled the airwaves, and the newly created Public Broadcasting Service had a niche audience. They all worked under a draconian Television Code, and offered wholesome and uncontroversial family entertainment. There was no political content, and situation comedies were inhabited by white middle-class families, noble lawmen, and quirky country folk. One of the few working-class shows was The Honeymooners, which centered around Brooklyn bus driver Ralph Kramden, his wife, Alice, his sewer worker friend, Ed Norton, and Ed’s wife, Trixie. It went off the air in 1956 after just one season, but would gain classic status in reruns. The Honeymooners influenced another series about working stiffs—this one animated: The Flintstones, which first aired in 1960 and featured Fred Flintstone, a prehistoric quarryman from the town of Bedrock, his wife, Wilma, best buddy, Barney, and his wife, Betty.   

That was about it for blue-collar comedy until Archie Bunker barged into America’s living rooms. Here was a full-throated “angry white man” from the borough of Queens who proudly proclaimed, “I hate change.” Americans had never seen a character like Archie on their television screens. He epitomized President Richard Nixon’s Silent Majority—conservatives who felt overlooked by the general public and Washington politicos—and he broadcast his biases and prejudices every week as he jostled with Mike and his feminist daughter, Gloria, while demeaning the superficially dim but disarmingly insightful Edith.  

Yet though Archie was proudly reactionary, he harbored a hidden kindness, and the show possessed a subversive and not so subtle radicalism. During All in the Family’s nine seasons on CBS, creators Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin used their series as a televised soapbox to masterfully portray the upheavals and concerns racking the United States. They slyly wove current events into a sitcom and used the medium to explore the rifts within American society and culture. The show pondered the war, the Watergate scandal, and the liberal-conservative divide and depicted the country’s changing views on such topics as politics, race, sex, religion, and women’s rights.   

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