On Friday nights, I would rush through my daughter’s bedtime books, slurring words and skipping full pages. By Shelley Mann Hite
relationships
I ignored her recipe for many years as a way to avoid the loss. By Marcia Kester Doyle
After bursting into tears, you text your brother-in-law: “Sorry, this is awkward, but make sure she doesn’t use a tampon for the bleeding.” By Lorren Lemmons
As much as I love Christmas, without Santa I felt only glee and relief at the massive reduction in my December workload. By Michelle Deininger
“What did you expect, Mom?” said my kid, laughing now, in her same boy-voice she’s always had. By Joanna Franklin Bell
“Birth mom” does not make me feel like a baby machine without feelings, but it does clarify my role in her life. By Adrian Collins
What if birth certificates reflected reality? I imagined three spaces, one for our daughter’s biological mother and two for us. By Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser
If the secret to friendship is hours logged, mothers of school-age children have a distinct advantage. By Michelle Riddell
The truth is I dreaded my Friday playgroup as much as I craved it. I stood apart from the other mothers in ways I couldn’t quite communicate or change. By Laura G. Owens
As parents of older kids, socializing with other moms was apparently no longer part of the job description. By Anne Helena
“Ryan,” I say. “If you ever want to play with the girl dolls, we have them. In this house, you can play with whatever you want.” By Ann Wainwright
How exactly could I break this news to a kid who already went to bed every night scared of death to the point of tears? By Tanya Mozias Slavin
The hardest thing about divorce, I’ve found, is not the being alone. It’s the being alone when most of the people you know and love have a first port of call that isn’t you. By Lauren Apfel
We don’t want our boys to be “cured.” There is no cure; autism is a chronic state, like arthritis, or love. By Elizabeth Michaelson Monaghan
I’d been craving more one-on-one time with my kids for so long and now, thanks to those pesky parasites, I had it. By Kate Lemery
We would take a million pictures of our child but none of us. Forget to schedule date nights because we never needed them before. By Elizabeth Newdom
“Why is she like that?” my son asks. I hesitate. There’s no denying my mother’s passive aggressive disdain towards me. By Elizabeth Maria Naranjo
Is there any better teacher of life for a kid on the spectrum than a brother or sister? By Marya Markovich
How do I deal with my child’s social issues when I still haven’t worked through my own? By Amy Kline
“You’re a different person,” my husband said. This was years ago now. Thank god he was right. By Samantha Shanley
“I built it myself. What do you think?” My father didn’t look up, he just took a drink from his bottle and kept staring at the television. By John Graham
I wonder now why it came as such a shock to me that friends would get married, that wild nights out would become sleepless ones at home with a baby. By Claire Lynch
My mom took off her scarf and revealed her bald head. We all braced ourselves, but the woman at the shop didn’t flinch. By Kandace Chapple
I worry with the other moms about whether we’re good at it. Raising another person. By Marni Berger
So much of who we are has to do with how we think about our own parents and our own childhood.