My mother is fading before my eyes. The coffee was just the latest. First she stopped driving, then she stopped stocking the fridge for family visits, then she stopped cooking at all. We let each transition pass quietly, stepping in to shoulder a weight she couldn’t manage anymore. She gave her car to my niece, […]
Gaining legal standing does not mean we now need to accept conventions that don’t work for us. When I first met Valerie 15 years ago, it was love at first sight. Or, really, email at first sight. We met through an online dating service and spent the first month of our courtship writing one another […]
How can we shape the evolution of families so that they best serve the next generation? Over the weekend, an article in the Washington Post confirmed what many of us have known for a very long time: that marriage is either dead or in critical condition with little hope of long-term survival. At the very least, […]
“Living through what turned out to be nine days alone with my newborn daughter was the mothering equivalent of scaling Mt. Everest for me.” Growing up, I always knew there was some kind of dark secret surrounding my paternal grandmother. We never talked about her for a start. And the only photo I could find of […]
We need to make sure other parents have the same options. When my daughter was born people sent me huge boxes filled with sweet girly clothes in every size between birth and preschool. She had so many adorable little outfits, I could have gone three or four weeks without doing her laundry. Most of those […]
The world has not yet convinced my son, 6 years old and with Down syndrome, that he needs material possessions. As Christmas rapidly approaches, my Facebook feed is filling with pictures of children perched on Santa’s knee and overtired parents rushing to fulfill long Christmas lists. Not so much in our house. My son Bobby, 6 years […]
I destroyed my daughter’s childhood in an instant, and she hated me for it. I’m not a helicopter parent. Not in the typical sense of the term. I don’t bring forgotten homework or lunches to school. I don’t hover over schoolwork or even check to see that it’s done, much less properly. I know it’s […]
If, indeed, we are seeing a rise of Mean Boys who will join the Mean Girls we’ve already heard so much about, what is causing this and how can we change it? When my son was 3, his preschool teacher called me aside to tell me a story. My son went to a tiny school […]
