Parenthood

Best fight on TV this month? The Pacquiao vs. Marquez PPV boxing match? The dos Santos-Velasquez UFC title match on Fox? For our money it was this week's Braverman vs. Braverman throwdown on NBC's Parenthood . In this domestic demolition derby, Kristina (Monica Potter) decimated her husband Adam (Peter Krause) when she found out he hadn't been entirely honest about that gorgeous young receptionist he hired. Adam got off relatively easy. The week before, Kristina gave a boy she thought was picking on her son Max a verbal lashing so severe, you could practically feel the kid's growth spurt reversing itself.

Thuds could be heard in the Christian Lifestyles classroom. And it didn't matter anymore. Without risking failure, the seniors could slam down the sacks of flour on their desks as if they were, well, just sacks of flour. A potential pie crust, even. Mary Ellen Mahon, who teaches the lifestyles course at Bishop Eustace Prep School in Pennsauken, announced the good news to her second-period class last week. "This is the day you'll say goodbye to your kids," she said. They cheered.

By George Parry Across America, eager high school graduates have left for college. Media reports suggest many of them took along smart phones and video-enabled laptops that will allow them to maintain near-constant contact with home. There will be frequent opportunities for technologically enabled, real-time advice on course selections, extracurricular activities, and the challenges of dormitory living. This appears to be a convergence of communications technology and helicopter parenting - a form of child-rearing in which concerned moms and dads hover over their offspring and provide never-ending guidance and intervention to protect them from life's frustrations and vicissitudes.

Brian Doyle and Amy Derstine were 16, in love, inseparable, and in what euphemistically used to be called trouble. "It was a matter of hormones gone wild," said Linda Scheckenbach, frankly. "We used to have to pry them apart in the halls. " Scheckenbach is the home-economics teacher who supervises the teen-parenting program and day- care center at Souderton Area High School. Scheckenbach's job is to help students whose adolescent sense of immunity from consequence has failed to protect them from parenthood.

Constant whitewater. It's a voguish phrase among management gurus, used to express the sense that placid times are a thing of the past for corporations and careers, that frothing turmoil should be considered routine. To survive constant whitewater, the gurus advise, institutions and individuals need to hone certain skills: adjusting nimbly to ever-changing terrain; managing unyielding stress; maintaining, amid constant jostling, a clear-eyed view of ultimate goals. Execs pay thousands for such advice.

Nutrisystem Inc., the Fort Washington weight-loss product company, has hired Michael P. Monahan as chief financial officer effective May 22. Since 2009, Monahan has served as chief financial officer of PetroChoice Holdings Inc., a distributor of industrial, commercial, and passenger-car lubricants.   Simona Rossi has been named associate chair, Division of Hepatology, at Einstein Healthcare Network, Philadelphia. Rossi had been assistant professor of medicine, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.

NOTED FEMINIST Gloria Steinem took the podium at the National Constitution Center on Tuesday night, addressing a crowd of 500 spanning four generations at Planned Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania's annual Spring Gathering. Steinem's talk came at a time when illegal-abortion doc Kermit Gosnell's trial is highlighting the uglier side of the abortion issue in Philadelphia, and as state legislators are considering measures to limit abortion access under future government-funded health-insurance plans.

MICHELLE Malkin's Dec. 8 column, "Planned Parenthood's Privileged Predators," utterly and irresponsibly misrepresents Planned Parenthood and www.teenwire.com, our award-winning health Web site for young people. Planned Parenthood, the medical community and the majority of Americans agree that young people need medically accurate, age-appropriate health information. We lag tragically behind other developed nations in ensuring that our young people have the information and services they need to prevent pregnancy and protect their health.

When the offices were at an unobtrusive brick building in downtown West Chester, people stopped in only occasionally. But now that Planned Parenthood of Chester County has moved its administrative offices to newly renovated quarters at 8 S. Wayne St., several people drop in daily seeking counseling, guidance, printed material or videotapes from the expanded health and human sexuality library. "I'm surprised at the difference a location could make," executive director Edgar Huffman said.

After opening last Wednesday amid protests by anti-abortionists, the new Planned Parenthood clinic in Edgewater Park had a relatively quiet first day of business Thursday, attending to only a handful of clients. The protesters had not returned by late Thursday, and according to Edgewater Police Chief Tony Francesco, "they're probably not going to bother this place much. " Like Planned Parenthood of Greater Camden, which opened the Burlington County branch, the new clinic will not perform abortions.