Archive for 'Adventures in Parenting'

S. sends her children to a day care provider, and she has a quandary: her children wake up happy and ready to go to their “school,” but she doesn’t share their enthusiasm.

The owner, she says, gossips about the other parents, and her communication style feels very unprofessional. It’s not easy to describe, S. says, but when parents raise issues, like the use of high school students to supervise a classroom of toddlers, the provider takes offense rather than considering the ...

Extended breastfeeding, the current scientific thinking goes, offers significant health benefits for the child, and probably for the mother. But what about for the father? Is what’s good for the gosling and the goose, also good for the gander? And why does it matter?

I know, most women think their breasts are theirs. I’ve been hearing this since I was a toddler being cautioned, “Don’t touch!” But most guys just want to touch. Most girls, thank God, eventually make some guys ...

The Milk Wars: “We need more balanced, reassuring voices telling women not to feel guilty if they can’t nurse exclusively for months on end. Given how difficult it is for some women to nurse, we should understand that we might sometimes be asking too much.”

Love, Money and Other People’s Children: “No one can dispute the importance of raising a child. Most parents, holding a new baby, face the most monumental work of their life. Perhaps the reason we often deny ...

Reading “Two Classes, Divided by ‘I Do’” in The Times last weekend, left me troubled. If there is any obvious takeaway from this and the earlier news that for younger mothers, out-of-wedlock births are the new normal, (leading to elevated risks of falling into poverty for children), it would seem to be this: first comes love, then comes marriage, then start considering the baby carriage.

But that’s a mantra, and a stigma, that’s unfair to the reality of many families. Parents ...

Over the last six months, I have watched my little boy become a man. His voice has dropped, the downy fluff on his legs has become coarse and he skulks about the house in some sort of hormonal haze. Last week, I discovered that he has surpassed me in height. His physical transformation is clearly underway; now it’s time for him to face a psychological and intellectual coming of age.

My culture — American by way of English, Irish, German and ...