Motherwell publishes provocative, evocative essays on all aspects of the parenting experience. Here are our most-read pieces from 2016.
Category Archive: Parenting Challenges
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
Photographs suggested a future, a future in which we would look back at this moment, but a future where our baby might be gone.
By Yvonne Spence
If you calm down about the illicit nature of the words, we’re just talking about talking.
By Brianne DeRosa
Our no cursing rule is one way I maintain the boundary between child and adult.
By Lisa Sadikman
One day my son was a typically developing, albeit shy, three-year-old. The next he wasn’t able to say a word in public.
By Tanya Mozias Slavin
I am shocked still by the parenting moments that break my heart.
By Catherine Newman
I had to step back and let her stand on her own two feet—even when she was shivering feverishly under the covers.
By Candy Schulman
Why do so many kids have tutors? Are the placement requirements that lax or is everybody just trying to get a leg up?
By Francie Arenson Dickman
The #IHadAMiscarriage campaign was launched to de-stigmatize pregnancy loss.
By Jessica Zucker
Caregiving, which is typically undervalued and underpaid, needs to be given the respect it deserves.
By Vicki Larson
Nowhere in my plans was talking to a stranger about teaching basic social skills. Nowhere in my plans was autism.
By Katie Read
By the time we left China, it felt like he was ours, wholly and completely. And he is. But he is not.
By Kelly Westhoff
I couldn’t let my child have carte blanche access to my body for as long as she saw fit, the way I had originally thought I would.
By Doña Bumgarner
Her son never wanted to be in the picture. Then he discovered himself behind the camera.
By Debbie Urbanski
I wondered if my daughter would grow up to hate me for forcing her to do things—like I hated my parents.
By Anna Gracia
I waited until my thirties to have kids, but there are still moments when my feelings don’t match my age.
By Ann Cinzar
My unborn kid had a 1 in 214 chance of having Down syndrome. Those seemed like pretty good odds.
By Amy Silverman
After surgery, a mother comes to terms with the reality that a clean house is not the same as a loving home.
By Leslie Kendall Dye
Any guilt or reservation about a “failed” birth plan was replaced by an unwavering commitment to my son.
By Stephanie Noll
I wonder in which direction of social acceptance Charlie’s drum will lead.
By Sara Petersen
Is the mother-child bond really so fragile that it threatens to fall apart at any moment without the parents’ constant vigilance?
By Olga Mecking
I was ashamed of my pregnancy losses. I felt I had been kicked out of some elite club of women with impeccably functioning wombs.
By Stephanie Sprenger