Skip to content

Telling all sides of the parenting story
Main navigation
  • About
    • Submit
    • Editorial Services
    • Contact
    • Donate
  • New! Motherwell Books
  • Newsletter
    • Sign up!
    • Past Issues
  • Family
    • Fertility
    • Pregnancy
    • New Motherhood
    • Kids
    • Teens
    • Empty Nest
  • Culture
    • News
    • Work-Life Balance
    • Gender
    • Education
    • Food
    • LGBTQ
    • Pandemic
  • Parenting Challenges
    • Grief/Loss
    • Special Needs
    • Education
    • Mental Health
    • Relationships
    • Teens
    • Toddlers
  • Parenting Advice

relationships

How I spent the first Thanksgiving after my divorce

Read More

My sister had asked me to bake. “Keep her busy” was the secret code among my family members that season. By Nancy Payne-Hambrose

November 19, 2018 Parenting Challenges

Can my 70-year-old mother find love after loss?

Read More

It had been a long time since I’d heard her laugh. It felt like clouds parting. By Stewart Lewis

November 15, 2018 Parenting Challenges

Before and after my mother’s accident

Read More

Time heals so much of what goes wrong in life, but the memory of what happened to Mum on that day still makes my body react. By Clover Stroud

November 12, 2018 Books

The little moments when we are hit by grief

Read More

You will be in your slippers, making waffles, and suddenly remember that your mother is dead. By Brianne DeRosa

October 17, 2018 Parenting Challenges

Helping my mother clean out her closet, the year before she died

Read More

After we gave it all to Goodwill, I lived in fear every day that I would see somebody else wearing my mom’s clothes. By Kandace Chapple

October 9, 2018 Parenting Challenges

When you won’t let your kid quit, but then you do

Read More

One mother refused to let her daughter stop playing the flute. So what made her change her mind? By Daisy Florin

September 12, 2018 Family, Parenting Challenges

Sitting in the waiting room of the pediatrician with my teens

Read More

The toddler parents were looking at me in wonder, as if they couldn’t believe their children would ever be old enough to go into the exam room alone. By Deborah Lindsay Williams

August 27, 2018 Family

Perspective | I let my adult children live at home

Read More

Why is living in mom’s basement such a terrible thing? By Fara Nizamani

August 20, 2018 Family

How to swerve: my unconventional path to fatherhood as a gay man

Read More

I was a singer. She was a groupie. We decided to have a baby together. By Stewart Lewis

August 9, 2018 Culture

When you can only handle one child—and that’s okay

Read More

How could I do it all again? The uncomfortable pregnancy, the brutal birth, the dark newborn days. By Joy Netanya

July 30, 2018 Parenting Challenges

How to increase the joy in sibling relationships

Read More

Make sure your children have time together without you. Encourage their collective independence. By KJ Dell’Antonia

July 26, 2018 Books, Family

The day I found out my boyfriend sexually assaulted my daughter

Read More

I am ashamed to admit I believed you were a good man who deserved to be forgiven. By Jo Hall

July 25, 2018 Parenting Challenges

Finding my creative work-life balance in a taco

Read More

For me the taco had become an easy vector of choice, creativity, freedom, and therefore power. By Samantha Shanley

July 18, 2018 Culture, Parenting Challenges

Why I don’t like to shush my kids

Read More

Sometimes making yourself quieter for other people is the same as making yourself smaller. By Lauren Apfel

June 7, 2018 Culture, Parenting Challenges

How to explain blame and divorce to my son

Read More

“Momma was crying last night,” my seven-year-old said. “She was crying because you left our family.” By Erik Raschke

May 30, 2018 Parenting Challenges

Why it’s okay to be a hands-off grandmother

Grandma looking into baby's eyes
Read More

Unlike the majority of her peers, my mom does not consider being a grandma the single most important and satisfying aspect of her life. By Lauren Apfel

May 2, 2018 Family

Perspective | Why mothers need to stop calling themselves #blessed

Hashtag cursive blessed white canvas
Read More

When we use #blessed, we are saying that we have been chosen for joy. The problem is what this word suggests in the context of suffering. By Liz Becker

April 26, 2018 Culture

My son chose comedy instead of college

empty stand-up comedy stage
Read More

I decided to stop asking Austin about his plan. I decided to stop suggesting pathways and careers to him, as if I were a marketing director of adulthood. By Ann marie Houghtailing

April 19, 2018 Family, Parenting Challenges

The very last bath of childhood

two little boys covered in bath-time bubbles
Read More

I can’t imagine a time without children in my house, just as one month ago I could not imagine an evening without bath time. By Kelli Kirk

April 18, 2018 Family

My tangled relationship with my daughter’s hair

young blonde girl brushes her hair
Read More

We are forever snarled in each other’s hair, my daughter and I, invested in the consistency of the people we know best and need most. By Leslie Kendall Dye

April 9, 2018 Family, Parenting Challenges

After divorce, when a fish is not just a fish

single goldfish in glass bowl in front of ominous purple background
Read More

Perhaps the fish were feeble replacements for all that we had lost, but they were also hopeful things. By Samantha Shanley

March 29, 2018 Parenting Challenges

Raising a black activist in a mother’s white world

colorful handprints
Read More

I don’t want to mess this up. I live in fear of being seen as a privileged person with an accessory on my arm. By Jenn O’Connor

March 28, 2018 Culture, Parenting Challenges

What can I do about my teen messing up at school?

confused snoopy sitting at a school desk
Read More

Catherine Newman offers advice to a grandmother, who is raising her 15-year-old grandson, about the reality of teenagers and conflict.

February 26, 2018 Parenting Advice

36 life decisions I don’t regret, even now

women jumping with umbrella in front of yellow wood-paneled wall
Read More

To throw away the cigarettes, and choose to run instead. To stop running when my hips hurt, and walk instead. By Kathleen Harris

February 21, 2018 Culture

The last pause of motherhood

Read More

It’ll only occur to me months later, in the flurry of taking you to college, that this was the quiet part before the big crescendo. By Jennifer Niesslein

January 11, 2018 Family

Posts navigation

Previous 1 … 4 5 6 7 8 Next
Powered by WordPress.com.
Footer navigation
  • Contact
  • Submit
Secondary navigation
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Instagram
  • Sign up for our newsletter
  • Email us
  • Search

Begin typing your search above and press return to search. Press Esc to cancel.