Launched in May of 2016, Motherwell is a digital magazine that publishes provocative, evocative essays on different slices of the parenting experience. Our aim is to tell all sides of the parenting story and, in doing so, to create an interactive community of readers and writers.
Here are our most-read pieces of 2016:
I don’t want my son to read in kindergarten, by Jessica Smock
Kindergarten is not kindergarten anymore. It’s yesterday’s first grade, or even second.
The boring tragedies of parenthood, by Catherine Newman
We are so lucky to have the children here to devastate us with their leaving.
The existential crisis of motherhood, by Catherine Newman
My entire life had become an existential paradox: I could endure neither my love for the baby nor the idea that he could be lost to me.
December is here, but my baby is not, by Jenn Press Arata
I’m postpartum. Without a newborn. At 20 weeks of pregnancy, my baby didn’t make it.
Is there such a thing as too many kids?, by Lauren Apfel
Where does it comes from, this idea of being done, this idea of the “right” size for a given family?
If you give a pig a porno, by Francie Arenson Dickman
What do you say when your tween comes home talking about Princess Leia porn? A modern-day parody.
At the end of a family’s difficult year: gratitude, by Samantha Shanley
In parenting, guilt does not help or heal. If we find our way to it, we must also find our way beyond.
Explain this tutoring thing to me, please, by Francie Arenson Dickman
Is there anyone else out there who finds this situation counter-intuitive? Why do so many kids have tutors?
When I used to be my son’s go-to person, by Randi Olin
That little boy who would cling to me is now a teenager who opts to spend much of his time in his room.
The irreconcilable dreams of a working mother, by Carinn Jade
I am a mother and I am a lawyer. I don’t know how to reconcile these parts of myself, and I feel very alone in this struggle.
A different kind of birth, by Andrea Jarrell
Would having another baby after 50 salve my grief over my children leaving home?
