When my youngest daughter turned eighteen last month, my mother asked me if I was going to “drag her to the polls” in November. She remembers when I turned eighteen a long time ago and voting was not exactly top of…

When you’re pregnant, a very large share of your energy is expended getting ready for the baby: doing nursery things, choosing a pediatrician, lining up childcare, and maybe – if you have the time and resources – taking classes about…

Do you remember the Huggies Dad Test commercial? People complained, and it was yanked after a few weeks because it portrayed fathers as unable to care for their own babies. This spot I’m thinking about showed a group of dads…

Having come of age during the Title IX era, I was a proud participant in the early movement that helped transform every field, court, and sandlot into blank slates on which girls could write all their stories of sports glory.…

“We turned out okay, didn’t we?” is a thing my husband and I have said out loud and fairly often when doing a cost-benefit analysis of a particular experience for one of our kids. The sleep-away camp is a good example.…

Winter break or Christmas vacation – or whatever you call the beautiful block of school-free time during the holiday season – never falls at the perfect time for families. When my children were little, I took full advantage of every…

My youngest daughter, who is sixteen, would make art all day if I left her alone but is not in love with reading. Unfortunately, like her mom, she suffers from chronic and recurring 2-page narcolepsy – accompanied by a tendency…

Shortly after giving birth to our first daughter, my husband looked deep into my bloodshot eyes (the whites of which were now red from the hemorrhaging that had occurred while pushing like a crazy woman to eject a tiny human),…

Sorry folks! No partridge, no pear tree, and not a single turtle dove. No swans a swimming or maids a milking, and not one lady dancing (let alone nine). Truth be told, I wanted to call this piece “Twelve Things…