Jessica Lahey’s book is an incisive and eye-opening read on the pitfalls of modern-day overparenting.
By Randi Olin
Parenthood
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
There are many subtle ways in which we teach our kids it’s okay for someone to take what they want from another’s body.
By Gail Cornwall
Surely what boys and girls gain from playing together should outweigh any inconvenience of having to organize separate changing areas.
By Lauren Apfel
I wonder in which direction of social acceptance Charlie’s drum will lead.
By Sara Petersen
We wanted our children to have the same sense of wonder and excitement we did, to face the world like it was pile of Christmas presents waiting to be opened.
By Adrienne So
A mother of a special needs child finds unexpected common ground with her neighbor.
By Brianne DeRosa
After infertility, she’s not the parent she thought she’d be.
By Amy Klein
It is an awesome responsibility to be entrusted with the care of someone’s child, but for the first time I’m less anxious about it.
By Teri Carter
For now, what I hope my kids see is that family life is a team effort. We may run different plays than other families, but we’re only interested in the home field win.
By Ann Cinzar
Both my children hate being around me and water—I’m the parent whose urgent, borderline hysteria ruins all the fun.
By Christie Tate
If calling me Mrs. Badzin makes me seem more uptight than other people’s parents, I almost welcome that boundary.
By Nina Badzin
One of the hardest parts of parenting is deciding when to let your children come to their own conclusions and when to steer them down a certain path, in the name of transmitting values.
By Lauren Apfel
Is it possible to love being a mom without knowing why?
By Christine Organ
What grooming habits is my daughter going to learn from me, and what will I say to her about why she might be expected to shave her legs but her brothers won’t be?
By Lauren Apfel
The chance to remember myself at that age, in a way that I often don’t when I wrangle with my own teens, was illuminating.
By Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser
Cousins are more complicated than I’d realized. They give more than I thought possible, but they also demand more than I’d ever known.
By Antonia Malchik
Children are resilient little creatures and they don’t need our eyes on them, our attendance at every single school function, to know how profoundly they matter.
By Lauren Apfel
The idea of my son scanning the stands for my face and not finding it is a horrifying thought, a cross I cannot seem to bear. By Randi Olin
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. By Catherine Newman
If my partner and I had been straight we might have all nodded to each other in recognition, but because we are queer, our difference is what stands out.
By Jennifer Berney
Without practicing curious, respectful engagement ourselves, we can’t expect to pass it on to our children.
By Sharon Holbrook
I don’t think we are a family who loves each other in some especially profound way. We have just made the words that stand for our love a part of the verbal dance we do.
By Lauren Apfel
Seven years on, my son is still a sucker, thumb mostly, but also occasionally sleeves, zippers, the pointed snout of a stuffed animal.
By Daisy Alpert Florin
I can’t help feeling sad for all the things I imagined his childhood to be, but now know it won’t.
By Zsofia McMullin