I actively chose hope in having a child, and when you choose hope you also choose despair.
By Shannon Lell
Category Archive: Culture
Motherhood has become so consuming to me that I find it hard not to project onto others a desire for the sense of purpose it offers.
By Lauren Apfel
From sitcoms to memes, the mom runs the show while the dad can hardly remember the kids’ birthdays.
By Kathleen Siddell
Mothers are not static entities. We evolve in this role, as in any other.
By Lauren Apfel
There’s so much against you: the world’s cruel prejudices, its judgment.
By April Vázquez
The sooner a child has a framework to understand the nature of healthy relationships, the better.
By Lauren Apfel
Are we all so jaded and depressed by Hillary’s loss that we’ve just said: to hell with it, mermaid Barbies from here on out?
By Carrie Friedman
Whatever the political climate, we will continue to write about bruised nipples, maternal ambivalence, how to raise kids who believe love is love.
By Lauren Apfel
Being an advocate for a cause in general is quite a separate thing from letting your own kid be different.
By Kimberley Moran
“You’re not going to be good at everything,” I say. It’s a standard line in our house.
By Lauren Apfel
He’s passing as a boy now—as long as he binds his breasts.
By Katrin Grace
Momsplaining perpetuates the myth that someone out there is getting this parenting thing right.
By Carla Naumburg
For black women, wearing our hair in its natural state was—and still is, to some extent—considered defiant.
By Margaret Auguste
Leggings, spaghetti straps, midriff shirts—what’s the harm? Motherwell’s cultural conversation with parenting experts Lisa Damour, Jessica Lahey, and Peggy Orenstein.
Is my daughter a “tomboy” or a “girly girl”? She is neither and she is both.
By Lauren Apfel
We were unwittingly showing our daughter that being a mother excludes other possibilities.
By K.C. Willivee
None of the parents I know are copping to having a kid who is average.
By Christie Tate
I want my children to be part of a college community that is more in line with the ideologies of #Imwithher than #MAGA.
By Randi Olin
Yes, moms need to fight the current political situation. But they also need to take care of themselves.
By Ilyse Dobrow DiMarco
We will fight, my daughters and I. In our black stretch pants and pink pussy hats, we will take our stand.
By Francie Arenson Dickman
In an age of instant gratification, we are all losing the ability to focus on larger amounts of text—and that’s worrisome.
By Lauren Apfel
Planned Parenthood is one of the last vestiges of hope in this country.
By Abigail Rasminsky
Motherwell publishes provocative, evocative essays on all aspects of the parenting experience. Here are our most-read pieces from 2016.
I can’t help but think ideas about simplicity mask ideas about masculinity, and what it is, and isn’t, okay to feel.
By Ashley Lefrak Grider
After this election, if we want our children to be a part of the solution, we need to start modeling activism for them.
By Jody Allard