Tag: parenting

A child’s doll exerts a gravitational pull on every member of her family.

A new father with early-stage MS sets out to understand the interiors of his daughter’s mind, and his own.

Does each of your children represent a novel you’ll never write? Michael Chabon is okay with that.

Steven Church discovers his own fragility and limitations in these five discussions with his son.

Meaghan O’Connell on the joy, the triumph, and the prison of breastfeeding.

Kitchen karma comes for Irina Dumitrescu when her young son turns into the picky eater she used to be.

When you don’t need to worry about the big things, you can start obsessing over the small ones.

Some parents don’t want their kids to know how much money they have. They also don’t want their kids to become opera singers.

Journalist Erika Hayasaki uses science to show how motherhood can improve creativity.

“Brayden” and “Nevaeh” have got nothing on their 17th-century predecessors, “Waitstill” and “Supply.”

After a series of dead ends, a young man finds direction and identity in the Army. Despite his parents’ pride, the lingering question becomes: at what personal cost? 

When her son was born, Emily Gould read 25 books about babies and sleep, but wound up only more confused.

Leslie Jamison explores the fraught role of stand-in parent as she considers her new life as a stepmother to a six-year-old.

The beloved author confronts some critical questions.

But by trying to Make Childhood Great Again, this parent misses a critical point about why kids are overscheduled.

Navigating life with a transgender child.

Writer Katherine Reynolds Lewis, in Mother Jones, examines the latest approaches to addressing children and discipline—most notably, that timeouts, negative consequences, and other traditional punishments might not be as effective in many cases as helping kids manage their own emotions. It’s based on “Collaborative and Proactive Solutions,” a program that was developed by psychologist Ross […]

Rewriting the false narrative of childlessness.

In Bloomberg Businessweek, Claire Suddath reports that there are only two countries in the world that don’t have some type of legally protected, partially paid leave for working women who just had a baby: Papua New Guinea and the U.S. The result is another big gap between the haves and have-nots: The policies vary widely […]

Sabine Heinlein grew up in a family where everyone was treated as equals. It didn’t work out like they hoped.

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. * * *

“Sacha Coupet, a professor of law at Loyola University Chicago, who used to work as a guardian ad litem and as a psychologist, worries that the Adoption and Safe Families Act, by promoting ‘adoption as the normative ideal,’ has made it easier to avoid ‘dealing with the enormously complex root causes of child neglect and […]

“Who should get to keep a child: the parents who nurse and tend him, or the parents who brought him into the world?”

“No one makes it through life unscathed, but you usually get a grace period at the start. My son would not be so lucky.”

“Paying for Finn: A Special-Needs Child.” Jeff Howe, Money Magazine.

“The Hell of American Day Care.” Johnathan Cohn, The New Republic.

On raising children with extraordinary talents: When Kit was 3, a supervisor of his play group told May that he let other children push him around. ‘I went in one day and saw another child snatch a toy away from him,’ May said. ‘I told him he should stand up for himself, and he said: […]