On Parenthood

But just as surely, another part of me wanted to manage the threat of  his  potential independence by subsuming him into myself. It was tempting to treat the baby as a prop for my own narratives of motherhood rather than as an independent person in his own right. But babies give no quarter to our preconceived ideas of what mothering them

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Except that this now began to seem to me like an astoundingly perverse way to approach spending time with a newborn, not to mention an unnecessarily exhausting thing to have to think about when life was already exhausting enough. Obviously, it mattered to keep half an eye on the future—there would be vaccinations to be administered, preschools to a... See more

It’s a strange thing, being the parent of a teenager. One thing to raise a little boy, another entirely when a person on the brink of adulthood looks to you for wisdom. I feel like I have little to give. I know there are fathers who see the world a certain way, with clarity and confidence, who know just what to say to their sons and daughters. But

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Except that this now began to seem to me like an astoundingly perverse way to approach spending time with a newborn, not to mention an unnecessarily exhausting thing to have to think about when life was already exhausting enough. Obviously, it mattered to keep half an eye on the future—there would be vaccinations to be administered, preschools to a... See more

Five years ago, I would have looked at someone with two kids under two and thought, “Wow, that looks so insanely stressful, so hard. How do they do that?” And now I have two kids under two, and sure, it is stressful and hard, but it’s also normal now. You get used to it. And just like you rarely go from aspiring entrepreneur to having twenty employ... See more

Tillie Olsen wrote: “In the twenty years I bore and reared my children . . . the simplest circumstances for creation did not exist.” It was a physical problem, a time problem; it was also a question of selfhood. “The obligation to be physically attractive and patient and nurturing and docile and sensitive and deferential . . . contradicts and must

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If you’ve read my letters to my son, Myles, you know I am madly in love with him, and I love sharing with the world this love I did not get to experience myself. He’s given me a new sense of purpose. (I hate disclaimers, but I feel like I had to set this up for what I’m about to say.)

At the same time, I struggle with how much my marriage changed so... See more

"Parent or childfree" used to be my framework for understanding a dividing difference of adult life. But aging and, yes, friendship, have taught me that there are so many experiences that binary doesn't capture: To want kids but not be able to have them, for physical or financial or logistical reasons. To not want kids but accidentally get pregnant... See more