Motherhood

You can love your kids deeply and hate being a mom. You can hold your children to the bone and still proclaim how sucky it is to be a female parent, in America at least, with our lack of paid family leave or high-quality day care and the cultural insistence that “good women” should stake their entire lives on the opportunity.

But I love being a mom. I’m not always great at it—let’s be very clear about that. Sometimes I yell. I don’t enjoy playing make-believe, and I mostly leave the work of crawling on the floor and pushing Hot Wheels around the rug to Ken and the grandparents. Sometimes, I can get very caught up in my work and have a hard time focusing on what my son... See more

The most important rewards of being a parent come from the moment-by-moment physical and psychological joy of being with this particular child, and in that child’s moment-by-moment joy in being with you.