Family Life

I talked to a mom who was struggling to find her daughter ballet shoes.

She’d already ordered (and had to return 🫠) four pairs.

And she realized that she was spending all that time on her phone... instead of being present with her daughter.

In the past, this would have looked like:

• A trip to the ballet store

• Talking on the car ride

• Maybe ice cream... See more

One thing I know about you...

The book also signals a way out of a prominent contemporary narrative in which women—usually white women—are portrayed as intellectually and creatively stifled by childbearing, and motherhood is characterized as an inherent threat to individual possibility. This narrative isn’t wrong; during the past nineteen months, I’ve had less time to work,... See more

She wonders, “How can mothering be a way that we resist and combat the loneliness, the feeling of being burdened by our caring?” Motherhood doesn’t have to be a site of acquiescence to a broken structure, she argues; mothering can be a vehicle of rebellion.

The exceptions were in two dimensions of personality: conscientiousness and agreeableness. Children were more conscientious when parents were more involved in their lives and worked to provide cultural stimulation (such as taking them to museums); and children were more agreeable when their parents raised them with more structure and goals.