“I knew it would be bad, I just didn’t know it would all happen so fast,” Hannah Baker*, a 32-year-old mother of one in the southeastern United States, tells me. “I had already made up my ...

It was November of 2020 and I was under the blue skies of Palm Springs, alone for the first time in nine entire months. I was experiencing that particular brand of tired and dumb that only comes ...

When news of the U.S. Surgeon General Advisory on the Mental Health and Well-Being of Parents hit my feeds in late August, I clicked on Dr. Vivek Murthy’s story in the New York Times with the ...

Last year, a letter in the medical journal Pediatrics argued that the frightening decline in mental health among American kids can be partly explained by a lack of independent play. When kids don ...

My 8-year-old has been begging me for a puppy, and I worry I am losing my resolve. Part of me thinks it could be sweet and give him some good company; part of me thinks it will ruin our lives.

The first time we spent the night together, bodies intertwined, I slept more soundly than I had in months. I awoke refreshed, relaxed, and guilty. I never cuddle my usual sleeping partner in bed ...

Elizabeth*, 32, has been taking stimulants since the third grade. During her first pregnancy in 2020, her doctor told her she had to stop taking her medication, and she struggled, but felt she had ...

Before my parents’ divorce, I never brought friends to my house. I didn’t want them there in case something set my dad off — usually it had to do with my older sister’s grades, or her ...

If you are parenting your way through the first part of the 21st century in America, you may regularly tap into an always humming and sometimes throbbing collective anxiety. There’s political ...

Is there ever a right time to start a family? Becoming a parent these days, writes Rachel Wiseman in the recent book What Are Children For?, can seem “less like a transition and more like ...

A few months ago, I was enjoying an adult beverage with my newish friend Julia when she mentioned that every Monday she goes grocery shopping at the Berkeley Bowl, a beloved East Bay institution ...

Five heavily documented teenagers describe mild embarrassment, a healthy fear of social media, and — get this — empathy for their parents. But what about their children, the kids they ...