# For parents

Explanations about birth, development, health and school, based on studies and public records. They can help you understand and ask questions; they do not replace medical advice for your child.

## Before birth and in the first months

What studies have measured about pregnancy, birth and a newborn’s senses.

- Before the baby, a promise with no guarantee (https://inainte-de-copil.mariuscomper.uk/en/)

Claudia Goldin argues that part of low fertility is a credible commitment problem: women's autonomy advanced faster than the sharing of family work.

- When Ambient Heat Becomes Dangerous in Pregnancy | The Heat Threshold (https://mariuscomper.uk/pragul-termic/en/)

A systematic synthesis of epidemiological evidence on ambient heat during pregnancy. How local climate, humidity, and gestational timing shape risk thresholds at 30.55°C, 34.11°C, and 39.07°C.

- The baby’s heart on the monitor: what doctors saw on the trace, and how the babies were born (https://mariuscomper.uk/bebelusul-pe-monitor/en/)

The last hour before full dilatation in 506 real births from Brno: the CTG trace, what nine obstetricians said and the baby’s pH at birth. When most called a trace pathological, 29 of 55 babies had a normal pH.

- What a baby hears in the womb: your mother's voice as you first heard it (https://mariuscomper.uk/the-first-voice/)

For months before birth, you could hear. Listen to a mother's voice the way it reaches the child inside her, rebuilt from studies that placed microphones in the womb, then record your own.

- What a newborn can see: your face through a baby's eyes, week by week (https://mariuscomper.uk/the-first-face/)

A newborn can see you, but not the way you think. Let your own face be filtered through measurements of newborn vision, then watch it come into focus over the first three months.

## Growing up, language and adolescence

Research on vocabulary, bilingualism and teenagers’ relationship with phones.

- Bilingual children: are they smarter? What 149 studies show about attention and memory (https://mariuscomper.uk/bilingvism-copii/en/)

All 1,194 results from 149 studies comparing children raised with two languages to children raised with one, one dot each. Pick the children's age and the kind of test and see the average: small, and after correcting for selective publication no clear evidence of an advantage remains. Plus six neighbouring claims about mother tongue, checked at the source.

- Phones and teenagers' mood: what the public data show (https://mariuscomper.uk/telefon-adolescenti/en/)

One survey analysed 372 ways: the link between screens and US high-schoolers' sadness is small on average, but it differs by screen, sex and hours a day. You choose what counts as “screens” and as “mood” and watch the result move. Plus the experiments, school phone bans and the numbers for Romania.

- How many Romanian words do you know (https://mariuscomper.uk/test-vocabular/en/)

A two-minute Romanian vocabulary test: of 125 words (100 drawn at random from the DEX, 25 invented) you tap the ones you could explain and learn how many of the dictionary's 64,907 words you know, with a margin of error. The dictionary is drawn as a sunflower: the commonest words at the centre, and at the rim the 20,825 that never occur in 332 million words of subtitles. Creangă, Eminescu, Rebreanu and the Constitution sit on the same flower. For native speakers, heritage speakers and learners.

## School, health and safety

Public sources on children’s schools and health, explained with their limits.

- Where do the children go to school? (https://mariuscomper.uk/unde-merg-copiii/en/)

In autumn 2025, Romania counted 85 primary-school pupils per 100 births from 2015–2019: 91 in towns and 79 in communes. For each of 3,181 localities, the map compares births assigned by INS with pupils enrolled in its schools; it does not identify where individual children attend.

- Your child’s school on the Education Ministry’s seismic-risk list (https://mariuscomper.uk/scoala-cu-bulina/en/)

The Education Ministry’s 21 September 2026 export lists 161 Class I rows for building/use entries across 133 units in 32 counties. It has no unique building IDs.

- How many school days are left? (https://mariuscomper.uk/cate-zile-de-scoala-mai-sunt/en/)

Pick the county and class track to see how many real course days are left until the next break and the summer holidays, in the 2026–2027 school year.

- Measles in Romania, 2016–2025: who died, and who could have protected them (https://mariuscomper.uk/rujeola/en/)

Two measles epidemics in Romania, 55,940 confirmed cases and 94 deaths. Of those whose age was published, 43 of 89 were babies under one. Romania's schedule gives the first vaccine dose at 12 months; until then, their protection depends largely on the people around them. All from the reports of Romania's National Institute of Public Health. In English and Romanian.

## Keep exploring

- Education ↗ (https://mariuscomper.uk/en/education/)

- Health ↗ (https://mariuscomper.uk/en/health/)

- Psychology ↗ (https://mariuscomper.uk/en/psychology/)

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Marius Comper · https://mariuscomper.uk/en/for-parents/