I had to let go of the idea that I was the only one who could meet my children’s needs.
By Samantha Shanley
Category Archive: Parenting Challenges
I could not teach my stepdaughter, this girl so quickly becoming a woman, that to stay was always right.
By Katie Gutierrez
What if our split isn’t the best thing for her? What if it does irreparable harm?
By Robin L. Flanigan
I needed to embrace the role of supportive parent, to leave the coaching to my daughter’s coaches. But I just couldn’t do it.
By Keith Landry
Being an advocate for a cause in general is quite a separate thing from letting your own kid be different.
By Kimberley Moran
Kids—they break you wide open and expose parts you didn’t even know could feel pain.
By Katie Rose Guest Pryal
So why is it you want a baby, my therapist asks. Love, I answer.
By Bethany Marcel
When you’re a parent, you have to believe that no matter what your child does or says they still deserve to be loved.
By Erika Sauter
More than my body and my schedule, IVF took over my mind.
By Belle Boggs
I wait for sleep, for the fever to break, the tooth to fall out, the rash to go away.
By Zsofia McMullin
Sorry, can’t make it to the sorority reunion. My thermometer says I’m ovulating!
By Amy Klein
“We’re happy, the three of us, aren’t we?” I asked my husband.
By Leslie Kendall Dye
We’ve raised three children of our own, but still have a little parenting left in us.
By Julianne Palumbo
The doctor finally looked at me and said, “We can’t hold her down. She’s sixteen.”
By Laurie Lichtenstein
Nobody told me while my house was falling apart that eventually I would start to see clearly again.
By Lauren Apfel
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
It made me spitting mad, the way the daily duties of parenting and home ownership began to rest entirely on me.
By Hope Edelman
I cling to the knowledge that if I have given her anything, I have given her hope. I see it in her smile.
By Jenn O’Connor
I can’t imagine spreading my legs and letting doctors make quick work of this loss.
By Nicole Piasecki
If actively fearing for your children’s safety is a natural instinct, my maternal hardwiring must be faulty. By Lauren Apfel
Motherwell publishes provocative, evocative essays on all aspects of the parenting experience. Here are our most-read pieces from 2016.
I’m postpartum. Without a newborn. At 20 weeks of pregnancy, my baby didn’t make it.
By Jenn Press Arata
What shocked me most about online dating was the absolute scorn for women who wanted, or already had, children.
By Dena Landon
If bad things really do happen in threes, then my son being hit by a car had completed our 2016 trifecta.
By Samantha Shanley