Michelle Duggar, 41, is due on New Year's Day, and the latest addition will join seven sisters and 10 brothers. There are two sets of twins.

"We've had three in January, three in December. Those two months are a busy time for us," she said, laughing.

The fast-growing family lives in Tontitown in northwest Arkansas in a 7,000-square-foot home. All the children — whose names start with the letter J — are home-schooled.

Duggar has been been pregnant for more than 11 years of her life, and the family is in the process of filming another series for Discovery Health.

Full story: Happy Mother's Day: Woman Pregnant With 18th Child

Women can influence the gender of their child with what they eat before they conceive, according to new research that lends scientific support to age-old superstitions about pregnancy.

The discovery shows higher calorie intake prior to conception can significantly increase the chances of having a son while women on restricted diets are more likely to produce daughters.

Scientists at Britain's Oxford and Exeter Universities, who studied eating habits of 740 women during their first-time pregnancies, say that their findings seem to back certain traditional links between diet and gender while disproving others.

"We were able to confirm the old wives' tale that eating bananas and so having a high potassium intake was associated with having a boy, as was a high sodium intake," research leader Fiona Mathews, a specialist in mammalian biology at Exeter University, told the Guardian newspaper.

Full story: Study shows bananas make baby boys

Women seeking a lifelong mate might do well to choose the guy a notch below them in the looks category. New research reveals couples in which the wife is better looking than her husband are more positive and supportive than other match-ups.

The reason, researchers suspect, is that men place great value on beauty, whereas women are more interested in having a supportive husband.

Researchers admit that looks are subjective, but studies show there are some universal standards, including large eyes, "baby face" features, symmetric faces, so-called average faces, and specific waist-hip ratios in men versus women.

Past research has shown that individuals with comparable stunning looks are attracted to each other and once they hook up they report greater relationship satisfaction. These studies, however, are mainly based on new couples, showing that absolute beauty is important in the earliest stages of couple-hood, said lead researcher James McNulty of the University of Tennessee. But the role of physical attractiveness in well-established partnerships, such as marriage, is somewhat of a mystery.

Full report: Why Beautiful Women Marry Less Attractive Men

The way to keep children safe in the virtual world is to give them the skills that they have always needed in the real world

The day after Barack Obama won in Iowa, I tried to engage my nine-year-old daughters in a conversation about what had the feel of a historic moment. "Oh yeah," one replied. "I've seen him on Presidential Paintball." I looked bemused, and she promptly Googled up a game in which players could adopt the persona of White House hopefuls, blasting away at each other with green goo.

It was one of those moments that make you love the internet. Kids who would otherwise have no interest in US politics could now reel off the field of candidates as if it were the Arsenal team. But such moments are far outnumbered by the paralysing kind: the porn site stumbled on in a search for pets; the latest supposed web suicide pact; some fresh warning about grooming on social networking sites.

So Tanya Byron's study into children's computer use is a timely response to a widespread sense of anxiety. Any day on the talk boards of Mumsnet.com you'll find parents asking each other how to protect their kids from the perils of the virtual world (this week's scare story is Miss Bimbo, the online game tempting teenagers with plastic surgery and diet pills). The big bad world that once started beyond the front door is now in our sitting rooms or, worse, behind the closed doors of our children's bedrooms. There's a sense that nothing we do can thwart them if they're determined to break the boundaries.

But whether grooming (the No 1 fear for parents) and bullying (the No 1 fear for kids) are widespread or not, many of Byron's proposals - about laws on assisted suicide, child internet safety, and the classification system for video games - make good sense. Codes of practice for social networking sites are sensible, if only to flag up the need for caution about what children post.

Full report: Good old parenting will keep the online bogeymen at bay

After nearly 19 years of marriage, Robin Williams and his wife are getting divorced. Marsha Garces Williams filed a petition for dissolution of marriage on March 21 in San Francisco Superior Court, citing irreconcilable differences.

The two met when Garces Williams worked as a nanny for Williams' son Zachary, whom he had with his previous wife, Valerie Valardi.

Robin and Garces Williams also have two children together, Zelda and Cody.

Full report: Robin Williams, Wife Are Divorcing

New Jersey prosecutors have subpoenaed records of JuicyCampus.com, a Web site that publishes anonymous, often malicious gossip about college students.

Language on the site ranges from catty to hateful and offensive. One thread, for example, on the "most overrated Princeton student" quickly dissolves into name-calling, homophobia and anti-Semitism.

JuicyCampus may be violating the state's Consumer Fraud Act by suggesting that it doesn't allow offensive material but providing no enforcement of that rule — and no way for users to report or dispute the material, New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram said Tuesday.

Milgram said she believes New Jersey is the first state to investigate the site.

The investigation began last month when a student came forward who had been terrorized by posts on the Web site that included her address. Prosecutors have subpoenaed information from JuicyCampus on how it is run, citing concerns about "unconscionable commercial practices."

Full report: College gossip site under scrutiny

Dating after your divorce can be a daunting experience. How do you know what to reveal about your past, and when should you reveal it?

Austinite Chris Roberts never imagined he'd be back in the dating pool, but after his marriage dissolved, he found himself there without a life jacket.

“It is difficult. You have to think about what's the first thing you're going to tell somebody,” he said.

Psychologist Sydney Paver recommends telling a person on the first date your status.

“I think the best thing to do is to be very honest and direct. If you're not yet divorced, it's really important to reveal that, otherwise people feel tricked,” Paver said.

As to why you got divorced, Paver says don't reveal too much. And when speaking about your ex-spouse, remain neutral. That's what Roberts does.

Full report: Getting back in the dating scene after divorce

Meg Robustelli had heard reports that a chemical in most plastic baby bottles could be dangerous, but she had not done anything about it. That's when her mother stepped in and bought her glass bottles.

"She's an alarmist, but I'm grateful," said Robustelli, whose daughter, Mia, is 14 months old. "I switched because of all the concerns about the plastic."

She made the change about six months ago, becoming one of a relatively small but growing number of parents turning to glass bottles amid concerns over a chemical used to make plastic bottles, bisphenol A.

"I wish I was using glass from the beginning, so I could have avoided any exposure," said Robustelli, of Stamford, Conn.

Bisphenol A, or BPA, is a manmade chemical used in polycarbonate plastic, the material used to make most baby bottles and other shatterproof plastic food containers. Americans are widely exposed to BPA, but opinions on its safety are mixed.

The Food and Drug Administration says current uses with food are safe. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says animal testing has shown that BPA has hormone-like effects on the reproductive system. The CDC says more study is needed to see if it could be harming people.

Some pediatricians advise families to use alternatives to polycarbonate bottles to be on the safe side.

Full report: Glass baby bottles make a comeback

At least one in four teenage American girls has a sexually transmitted disease, suggests a first-of-its-kind federal study that startled some adolescent-health experts.

Some doctors said the numbers might be a reflection of both abstinence-only sex education and teens' own sense of invulnerabilty. Because some sexually transmitted infections can cause infertility and cancer, U.S. health officials called for better screening, vaccination and prevention.

Only about half of the girls in the study acknowledged having sex. Some teens define sex as only intercourse, yet other types of intimate behavior including oral sex can spread some diseases.

Among those who admitted having sex, the rate was even more disturbing — 40 percent had an STD.

"This is pretty shocking," said Dr. Elizabeth Alderman, an adolescent medicine specialist at Montefiore Medical Center's Children's Hospital in New York.

"To talk about abstinence is not a bad thing," but teen girls — and boys too — need to be informed about how to protect themselves if they do have sex, Alderman said.

The overall STD rate among the 838 girls in the study was 26 percent, which translates to more than 3 million girls nationwide, researchers with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found. They released the results Tuesday at an STD prevention conference in Chicago.

Full report: Study finds 1 in 4 US teens has a STD