Few would advocate for cheapening integrity. Yet, the win-at-all-costs movement is doing exactly that, and it’s championed by silent supporters as much as it is by morally hollow leaders. We want to win. We cheer our kids’ teams, compete at work, enter races, vie for prizes and champion the champions—all with good cause. It feels […]
I don’t think they’ll ever offer their girlfriends Midol, but periods have lost their mystique and element of shame. I met my first real boyfriend my sophomore year of high school. Every afternoon when he wasn’t working, we hung out at his house while his mom was at work. One of those afternoons, not long […]
He’s reminding me how to be myself before people told me I wasn’t good enough. I am changing. I can feel it. I just left my 7-month-old’s second swimming lesson. I believe it is important for children to learn how to swim at a young age. We blow bubbles, we work on going underwater, we […]
How am I supposed to explain to them that people are generally decent, that the world isn’t really a bubbling shitstorm of hate? I think we can all agree that there is some messed up stuff happening right now. It seems like every time I open my browser or turn on the TV, I see […]
It’s unconventional. It’s also awesome. My sons can hear me unscrew a bottle of nail polish from across the house. All three of them, ages 6, 4, and 2, come at a run. They barge into the bathroom, sucking up all the breathing space with their energetic boyness. “Paint my nails!” they howl. “Do my toes, […]
As a mother of a white child, I don’t worry that my son will be killed by a cop after a traffic violation; I do worry that he might want to be that cop someday. I am the mother of a son. These days, with angry white men bearing guns, with unarmed black boys and […]
What drives young men who commit horrific crimes? It may be a simple lack of basic morality. Lately, when I see a scowling teenage boy walking through my suburban town, skateboard clutched under one arm, a starscape of acne across his forehead, I experience a quiver of anxiety. The same apprehension clutches me when a […]
As my boys approach adulthood and start relationships of their own with women outside our house, I’m more keenly aware of what they learn both here and outside these walls. And sadly, it’s not as simple as letting them choose the pink shirt over the blue one. I wasn’t raised by a proclaimed feminist, and […]
If women working as writers becomes a normal idea, maybe the idea of women being valued members of any profession will become normal, as well. Once, when my oldest son was in first grade, he gave me a pretty stellar dressing down regarding a Dr. Seuss party at his school. I’d volunteered to do the […]
