Now that I’m 47, I do not want to do that anymore. I want to be myself. I want to say “no” more often to the things that don’t serve me.

At the same time, I have been working to face and overcome longstanding fears. I want to try things that I used to avoid out of self-consciousness and insecurity.

Subscribe now

There’s often a tension between these two goals. Because while I want to say “no” to the things that don’t serve me, I want to say “yes” to things that I’m nervous about but that may end up being wonderful. Sometimes “no” is rooted in self-respect, but other times it’s driven by fear. Sometimes “yes” is grounded in courage, but other times it’s offered to please others.

How do we tease apart which ones are which? How do we learn to say “yes” and “no” for the right reasons, not the wrong ones?

Share

Over the past month, I’ve had several opportunities to work on these questions. The first was when I was invited by a friend to do hot yoga. I have never taken a group yoga class, much less one in a 107-degree room. I had dabbled with a few online yoga videos during the pandemic, but lord knows those didn’t get me very far.

Hot yoga sounded challenging and, potentially, embarrassing — I wouldn’t know what I was doing and would almost certainly fumble in front of the instructor, my friend, and a bunch of strangers. So when it was presented to me, I wanted to say “no” to protect myself.

Yet deep down, I could sense that the “no” wasn’t coming from the right place. I actually did want to do hot yoga! I just didn’t know how.

I was reminded of a word I often use with my kids when they are nervous about trying new things: “yet.” It wasn’t that I couldn’t do hot yoga. It was that I didn’t know how to do it yet.

So, though terrified, I said yes. I went, and sure — I toppled over a few times. I did some poses wrong. But I got through it, and I didn’t feel judged. Nothing terrible happened because I was bad at something in public. And next time, I knew, it would be easier.

Subscribe now

Later that week, that same friend invited me to a “paint and sip” class. I immediately frowned and shook my head. I have always been a terrible visual artist and have avoided it all costs; I’ve pretty much never drawn anything more complex than a stick figure.

My friend assured me that the class was low stakes, and that people would tell me exactly what to do. Still, I resisted. I imagined people in the class looking at my painting and wondering if something was wrong with me.

Eventually, after my friend repeatedly reassured me it would be fun, I said yes. And guess what? It was fun. I certainly didn’t create the best painting, but it was a hell of a lot better than I thought it would be. And hmm, maybe I needed to revise my self-concept as a “terrible” visual artist. Maybe some of the things I had decided I was “bad at” were simply things I had never let myself practice.

This friend then invited me to do a third thing: A cooking class. Hmm, I thought. I don’t want to do this. But why? Was it for a good reason, or a bad reason? I dug down and realized: I used to love to cook. But these days, I don’t want to cook when I don’t have to, because I do it all the time for my family. I realized that there was no secret fear underneath the resistance that I needed to conquer. I just didn’t want to spend my free time doing what I considered a mundane task.

This time, I could recognize that it was my pleaser-self that wanted to say “yes,” and that my authentic self was the one that wanted to say “no.”

So I said no.

Subscribe now

There’s one more decision I want to share with you, and this one was by far the hardest to navigate.

About a month ago, I was offered the opportunity to go to the Burning Man festival. I have always been curious about it — I’ve heard great things and not so great things, but it feels like something I want to experience. I happened to not have custody of my kids the week of the festival this year, and several acquaintances offered to help me with lodging and logistics.

I hemmed and hawed. Even if I hated it, I thought, it would be an interesting and unforgettable experience. And it seemed to fit perfectly with the person I was trying to become: someone more adventurous, spontaneous and willing to say yes. On the other hand, to make it happen, I would pretty much have to drop everything and dedicate the rest of my summer to organizing and logistics.

In this case, it was really hard to figure out what I wanted. I went back and forth, then back and forth again. Both voices were strong: one saying this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience and would probably be amazing, and another saying this isn’t the the summer I actually want.

What made it especially confusing was that saying “no” could easily be interpreted as fear. Was I chickening out? Was I failing at this whole project of becoming more adventurous? I actually remember thinking: I will feel like a failure if I don’t go.

I talked to friends. They overwhelmingly told me to go. Of course they did: “Go to Burning Man!” is the much more exciting story.

Unsure of what to do, I meditated. What became clear in my meditations was that the voice telling me to go was loaded with shoulds. I should go to Burning Man. I should be spontaneous. I should do this weird, hard, interesting new thing.

But deep down, I realized, I didn’t actually want to go. At least, not this year. I wanted to have a quiet end to my summer.

It became clear: The right answer for me was “no.” But wow, it took me a while to get to that decision.

We all have many parts — multiple mini-people living inside us. Some are ruled by expectations and norms and seek approval. Some are frightened and want to keep us safe. Others are rooted in our authentic selves and know exactly what we need and want. But all the voices can be loud, and it can be very hard to disentangle them.

I think courage can be about doing the hard things you are afraid to do, and it can also be about refusing to do the things that other people want you to do. Sometimes, these distinctions are easy to discern. Other times, they’re not — and it can be hard to tune into and recognize which voice is authentically yours.

Subscribe now

Share

Today I’m running an interview with Emily to share some of her insights with you. If you have a neurodivergent kid or teen, I highly recommend that you read her book in its entirety — it’s chock full of helpful advice.

Emily, what inspired you to write The Neurodivergent Learner?

As a school psychologist early in my career, I became intrigued not only by how kids learn but also by what can impede student learning. My clinical work with autistic, ADHD, and gifted learners, along with my journey as a parent raising neurodivergent boys, led me to write this book. I have been on all sides of the IEP/504/parent-teacher conference table, and I wanted to share not only my professional experience but also the emotional experience of nurturing neurodivergent learners.

What are some recommendations for how parents can work with teachers and administrators to support neurodivergent students without unwittingly fueling an adversarial or confrontational dynamic? Are there any approaches parents might want to avoid?

Always enter conversations about children with curiosity. Children’s behavior, motivation, and engagement ebb and flow throughout the day and with different people and activities, so they can look very different across settings. If a child struggles at both home and school, parents and teachers are often ready to problem-solve together. However, when a child is only struggling in one environment, it can be easy to point fingers, saying, “Well, it’s not a problem at home,” or “I never see that side of them in the classroom.” If we accuse the other party, collaboration will shut down, and our child will continue to struggle.

Get curious about why this discrepancy exists and how it’s working in one setting and not the other. Work together to figure out why certain skills only happen at a certain time, in a certain space, or with a certain person and try to expand that success to other parts of the day.

Share

How do you suggest that parents talk to their kids about neurodivergence so that they accept and embrace it? Do you also have suggestions for helping kids talk about their neurodivergence with teachers, friends, peers, etc?

Even before you talk to your child about their unique brain, you can lay the foundation by talking about differences in interests, skills, and sensory experiences. Some differences will require an accommodation, like headphones for noisy spaces or extra movement for a busy body, while others will need therapeutic intervention, such as speech/language therapy or occupational therapy. You can help a child get to know their strengths and needs for support, and then when they are ready to understand more, explain that their pattern of development has a name.

It also helps to share stories of someone else they know with similar types of thinking, interests, or skills so your child doesn’t feel alone. It’s incredibly rewarding to see a child realize that someone else thinks or feels the same way they do!

You explain that neurodivergent children can have trouble identifying sensations within their bodies, and this can affect their mood and energy, among other things. How can parents tune into their children’s inner sensations and help their kids identify and talk about them, too?

If a child is not yet able to sense when they need to eat, use the toilet, or sleep, we have to schedule these routines for them like we do younger children. However, as a child’s awareness of these sensations emerges, you might notice that they ask for or try to get a snack themselves, or begin complaining, which you know is the first sign of fatigue. Help them connect what they are noticing — such as hunger, low energy, or irritability — with the need they are having, then work on helping them communicate what they need to feel better.

Leave a comment

Can you talk about why neurodivergent kids can struggle with motivation, and what parents can do to make them feel more inclined to do required or expected tasks?

Neurodivergent learners struggle with motivation for different reasons. An autistic learner may struggle to feel a task is relevant to their life, while an ADHD learner may struggle to remember to do boring tasks because something else more interesting captures their attention. If the lack of motivation is coming from not understanding why a task is relevant, we need to make it relevant! What is the child interested in, and how can we connect the unmotivating task to that interest? If the lack of motivation stems from a boring task, we need to create a routine with external motivators to help kids get in the groove of doing boring things like chores.

What are your key tips for helping neurodivergent kids manage homework?

Visual systems! Most neurodivergent learners struggle with executive functioning skills, which is our ability to organize, initiate, and see a task through to completion. When executive functioning skills are developmentally delayed, a child might understand all of their homework but be unable to find it, complete it, or return it to school. Work with your child’s teacher on agenda plans, binder systems, and visual checklists that will help ensure consistency.

Also, don’t confuse intelligence with executive functioning. Many bright students continue to need executive functioning support for homework and studying into the middle and high school years not because they don’t understand the material, but because they haven’t yet mastered being independent workers.

Subscribe now

Finally: What are some reasons neurodivergent kids can struggle to make and maintain friendships, and what can parents do to provide guidance and support?

Autistic and gifted learners can struggle with making friends because their interests may not align with those of their same-age peers. If this explains your child, look for social experiences based on interests, and not age ranges, to help your child engage with others. For those with ADHD, many will make friends quickly but struggle to keep them due to impulsivity or hyperactivity that can overwhelm peers. Seek out play opportunities where your child’s energy align with others. For instance, two active children will likely have more fun than one active and one calm, quiet child.

Also, as parents, we worry about our child’s happiness if they are not as social as we are, but stay focused on their social satisfaction. Are they satisfied with just being around people? Having just one friend? Or are they wanting more experiences? If they want more, start by engaging with others who share their interests.

Subscribe now

Share

Get 20% off for 1 year

Some of you already have kids back at school; others (like me) are still (eagerly?) awaiting their kids’ first day. Either way, the back-to-school transition is a big one that can last for weeks, if not months.

So today, I’m sharing some of my favorite back-to-school posts from the past few years. Some of these are for paying members only, so if you’ve been on the fence, this week’s sale is a good reason to jump on over!

Get 20% off for 1 year

When my kids and I visited Maine last week, we went out for ice cream after dinner one night. The shop had board games and playing cards, so we sat and played Blackjack for half an hour after we finished our treats.

At one point, a boy — probably around 7 or 8 — walked in with his parents. They ordered ice cream and sat down at the small table next to us.

I didn’t see what happened next, but I suspect the little boy got a cone, and his mother put the cone upside down into a cup. Suddenly, he panicked.

“Why does it look different?” he said. His parents didn’t answer. “Why does it look DIFFERENT?” the boy asked again, more agitated.

As soon he started getting upset, I saw the parents tense. They quickly tried to shush him. “Stop it,” his dad said. “Be quiet,” his mom said.

Yet he kept asking the question over and over again, with increasing volume and intensity.

Then, suddenly, the dad stood up, yelled that his son didn’t deserve ice cream if he behaved that way, grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him out the door.

The entire shop went quiet. Both of my kids furtively glanced at me, eyes wide, horrified. I was upset too. A few minutes later, the dad and child came back in. The boy was still crying, but quietly.

The mom then turned to her husband and snapped, “You were more disruptive than he was.” The dad replied, sharply: “I don’t care.”

My kids, clearly still shaken, suggested that we should stop playing cards and leave. We walked to our car in silence.

I said: “That was really hard to see, huh?” I wondered how to talk about this painful experience, what I should say, how I should frame it.

Get 20% off for 1 year

Read more

Since I’m away, I’m re-sharing this wonderful interview I did a few years ago with Rachel Somerstein, an associate professor of journalism at SUNY New Paltz and the author of the extremely important book Invisible Labor: The Untold Story of the Cesarean Section.

When I first heard about Rachel’s book, I knew I would inhale it. Both of my children were born via cesarean section. After 36 hours of labor, my eldest was born via emergency C-section; my doctor told me that his oxygen levels were dropping and they needed to get him out quickly. I so clearly remember being wheeled into the OR, screaming and crying, terrified on behalf of his and my safety. I also remember feeling the first cut and having to demand more anesthesia — it was awful, but, thankfully, my son was born healthy and my recovery wasn’t that difficult. Since then, I’ve done a lot of research on the circumstances of his birth, and I believe there were a series of medical decisions, starting early on in my pregnancy, that led to this birth outcome that perhaps could have been avoided.

Subscribe now

In my second pregnancy, my (new!) doctor and I tried for a vaginal birth (VBAC) but that, too, didn’t happen, My daughter’s C-section birth was much less traumatic in the moment, but the recovery was much harder because the anesthesiologist accidentally punctured the membrane surrounding my spinal cord when administering the spinal anesthesia, causing my cerebrospinal fluid to leak out. This changed the pressure around my brain in ways that caused me to have an intense “spinal” headache for several days post-birth, so I could hardly sit or stand up and care for my daughter. By far the worst part was the anesthesiologist’s initial and very sexist dismissiveness — “you can’t possibly have a spinal headache; you’d be in more pain!” — which, thankfully, he eventually apologized for. And again, now my daughter and I are just fine.

Still, the fact that I — and many other mothers and children — have recovered from their birth traumas doesn’t mean we shouldn’t scrutinize the system that led to them. We so often say, “All that matters is that everything worked out okay in the end,” and certainly, that’s the most important thing. But it’s not the only thing. What I love about Rachel’s book is that it asks and answers the hard and uncomfortable questions. In today’s Q&A, we talked about the C-section’s horrifying racist history, the many factors that have caused C-sections to become so common, the ways in which C-sections can impact maternal health after birth, how pregnant people can prepare for the possibility of a C-section, and more.

Share

Rachel, what inspired you to write Invisible Labor? Could you briefly share a bit about your own initial C-section experience?

When I was pregnant, I expected to have a vaginal birth. I was completely unprepared for a C-section. I wasn’t only taken by surprise by the way the birth went — it was really traumatic — but by the more-routine aspects of the operation too. I had skipped over any mention of C-sections in the books I’d read, and no provider suggested that it might be a possibility, either. So the first time I learned about cesareans was when I was going through and recovering from my own surgical birth.

Those first few months postpartum, I spent a ton of time reading about birth and motherhood. But in 2016, I couldn’t find anything that represented the kind of experience I’d had — probably the closest example is Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Fleishman Is in Trouble, but that hadn’t been published yet. Frankly, I couldn’t find that much about C-sections at all. Much of what I did see was really insulting: that C-sections are the “easy way out,” a “designer delivery” for people “too posh to push.” That made me so mad! Even if my C-section hadn’t been traumatic, it’s physically and emotionally exhausting to care for a newborn while recovering from an unplanned major abdominal surgery, navigating breastfeeding, going through all of the changes of identity, especially as a first-time mom.

I decided to write Invisible Labor to fill the gap — the silences, really — about C-sections. I wanted to write the book that I needed when I was trying to make sense of what had happened to me. I knew there were other people out there who would need that too.

As for the particulars of my own C-section, when the doctor started to operate, he didn’t listen to me. I told him “I felt that.” He told me that I would feel pressure. I repeated, “I felt that.” I wasn’t feeling pressure — it was pain. And it got much much worse; I felt the whole operation. Once my daughter was born, the anesthesiologist put me under general anesthesia. I don’t remember my daughter’s birth. It is the worst thing that has ever happened to me on many levels: the pain, obviously, but also that my physician didn’t listen.

Leave a comment

You suffered such immense pain during your C-section. How common is pain during a C-section and why is it so rarely talked about?

We have to see pain during C-section, and the relative silence around it, in the context of how we treat women’s pain writ large — which we do a terrible job of preventing, recognizing, and treating. The Times recently ran a piece about how fewer than 5 percent of physicians use any anesthetic to prevent pain during IUD insertion, for instance. Only now, because the topic has gone viral on social media, has the CDC made pain relief during those procedures a priority. That women’s pain is so routinely dismissed is one reason it takes an average of 10 years to be diagnosed with endometriosis. All of this is to say that when you look at the relationships among women, pain, and their bodies, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that pain during C-section is so under-discussed.

There’s also this idea that if you talk about pain during C-section, you’ll scare women. I have a really big problem with this. First of all, there are many scary or sad things that can happen during pregnancy and birth. Not talking about miscarriage, or preeclampsia, doesn’t protect you from them. Instead, not talking about them means that you’re less prepared to deal with them if they do happen. And it’s a lot scarier, and more isolating, to experience something terrible that you had no idea was possible, and that no one ever talks about. Then you have isolation, or even stigma, layered upon trauma.

You can educate someone about risks without scaring them: something like, In the unlikely event of xyz, these are your options; what would you like to do if that happens? This is why I have life insurance, why I have a will, why my husband and I have identified who would be the guardian of our children should we die before they turn 18. Not my favorite topics, but to avoid dealing with them would only make it worse for everyone in the unlikely event that they do happen.

As for how common it is, researchers have only recently begun studying pain during C-section. So far, they’ve found that it happens in about 10 percent of cesareans. That pain varies a lot — from the kind of very intense pain that I felt to less but still significant pain. And yet, not all consent forms about C-sections in the U.S. even mention that it’s a possibility, which is another form of silence.

Subscribe now

Why have doctors become so reliant on technology, such as electronic fetal monitoring, during labor and delivery? What are the downstream ramifications for women, babies and birth — and what role does this technology play in instigating C-sections?

There are two reasons for this: the role of technology and the financialization of medicine.

In our society we treat “objective” data that comes from a computer, or a machine, as if it’s better or smarter than what a person knows. A good example of this is Google maps. Sometimes Google will spit out a route, and I’ll follow it, even though I think that there’s probably a better or more direct way to get wherever I’m going. I know that some of what Google Maps tells me to do is smart, and some of it is irrelevant or not helpful, but usually I follow it anyway.

It's important to think about electronic fetal monitoring (EFM) in a similar way. EFM, which provides a continual stream of information about the baby’s heart rate, provides some information that’s important, but some that isn’t. A “bad tracing” may suggest that the mother needs to shift position or needs oxygen. Or it may mean that a baby is in trouble and needs to be born right away — maybe by C-section. It may also not mean anything. Because it relays every. single. change of the baby’s heart rate, there’s a lot of noise in the data. And, interpreting EFM is highly subjective. But in part because we’ve become so accustomed to trusting technology as the supreme arbiter, and believing that it reveals all there is to know, it’s ubiquitous.

EFM has driven up the C-section rate dramatically. There’s ample evidence that if you use it continually it will result in more cesareans. Yet it hasn’t made birth safer for babies. Rates of cerebral palsy and oxygen-deprived brain injuries have not gone down since EFM’s introduction in the 1970s. But the C-section rate has gone up from about 4.5 percent to more than 30 percent.

Then the question is — if it’s not reliable or doing what it was meant to do — why do we keep using it? That’s where you get into the financializaton of medicine, which basically means that hospital systems’ missions are drifting from a primary focus on healing and caring for patients to using medicine as a way, first and foremost, to make a profit. Increasingly, health systems’ cultures reflect that. EFM, as an example, enables a nurse to watch a patient from the desk — rather than provide support to her in the room. And at the desk, she can watch more than one patient at a time, which means that a hospital can employ fewer nurses, and save money. It’s cheaper, in that sense, than providing continual bedside support, which is what labor and delivery nurses used to do more of.

But EFM can’t help you get into a better position to bring down a baby for vaginal birth. It can’t hold your hand or tell you you’re doing a good job, that you’re safe, that you can do it. And that loss of in-person support also matters for C-section rates. That’s part of the logic of how a doula works; that kind of support has been shown to increase the likelihood of vaginal birth. But that kind of care, which is known as high-touch, low-tech care, is expensive and time-intensive — the average first-time labor lasts 24 hours. You can’t substitute a machine for a person. And a financialized medical system doesn’t value it — it values low-touch, high-tech care, which is efficient and speedy.

Obstetricians very real concerns about being sued are also at play here (more than 80 percent of OBs are sued at some point in their careers). Because if there’s a birth injury, a lawyer can come back and point to a blip on the EFM strip and say, Here’s where the baby was hurt, even if there is no way to know for sure if that’s true. And then, again, you have what a computer says (or supposedly knows) which we treat as the final word — as more trustworthy than an experienced provider’s.

Share

In your book you talk about some of the lesser known downstream ramifications of C-sections. How do C-sections shape the risk for postpartum mood disorders? 

This is such an interesting and still-developing area of research.

Some studies suggest that unplanned C-sections can make a person more likely to develop a PPMD. That might be because of the stresses of an unanticipated operation and the difficulties recovering. Some mothers have the feeling of, What does this operation mean about me as a mother? Or they might feel, as some moms told me, that their bodies failed them. They might have lingering pain, which itself can be associated with a PPMD. C-sections also make it harder to breastfeed, and ending breastfeeding before six months is associated with postpartum depression. Other studies suggest that there is no difference between mode of birth and developing a postpartum mood disorder.

But the most important predictor of developing a PPMD I having a mental health disorder, like anxiety or depression, during pregnancy.

You also talk about the racist history of C-sections. I admit I had no knowledge of this, and it's horrifying. Can you share a brief overview? How does this history relate to today's ongoing racial disparities in maternal mortality?  

Yes, it really is horrifying. One thing that’s important to keep in mind is that in the 1800s, C-sections were experimental and only used as a last-ditch effort to save a mother, and her baby, if the baby was stuck. They were often fatal for the mother. At that time, they were practiced disproportionately on enslaved women for two reasons: their lives weren’t valued as much as white women’s lives, and their primary value to enslavers was to birth more slaves (because a baby had the same “status” as its mother).

And these women were not asked if they would consent to the surgery — their enslavers decided for them. Bear in mind that consent at the time, even for free women, didn’t look the way it does today. But physicians would at least ask everyone present at a white woman’s labor if it was OK to do the operation (though there’s also ample evidence they coerced women into it). It’s worth noting that even now, Black women are more likely than white women to be coerced into interventions they don’t want, including cesareans.

Today, Black women are still more likely than white women to have C-sections.

There are many reasons for this, but it comes down to racism at the systemic and individual levels. Access to midwifery is a good systemic example. In the U.S., demand for midwives exceeds supply for everyone, from all ethnic groups. But the gap between the availability of midwives and the demand for them is greatest among Black women. That matters, because midwives attending low-risk, first-time mothers have lower C-section rates than OBs attending mothers low-risk first-time moms. So if it’s your first baby, and you’re in good health, and you can’t access a midwife, then the likelihood you’ll have a C-section is already elevated — even if there’s nothing clinical that should make it so. And that sets you on a trajectory for future C-sections, because in the US the vast majority (around 90 percent) of mothers who’ve had a C-section will have a repeat cesarean with a subsequent birth.

The bottom line is that there is nothing biological about Black women that makes them more likely to have a C-section than women of other ethnicities. Likewise, there’s nothing about Black women biologically that makes them more likely to die during pregnancy or after. It’s racism, including social determinants of health, like access to midwifery, quality care, paid leave — none of which is equitable in our society.

Leave a comment

What advice do you have for people who are pregnant and might face the possibility of a C-section? What can they do to prepare, if anything, and advocate for their needs?

I suggest learning about what happens during a C-section so that if you need one, the first time you think through aspects of surgical birth isn’t the moment that it’s happening. For instance, if you anticipate having a cesarean, and you think you might be anxious, do you want medication for anxiety? If you take medicine, what are the side effects (i.e. memory loss)? Are you OK with that? Or do you prefer non-pharmacologic support, and what would that look like, and who would provide it? Talking about this for the first time in or on your way to the OR is hardly the optimal moment to explore your desires or the full risks, benefits, and alternatives of whatever intervention.

I also think it’s important to reflect on what you hope your birth will be like and talk about how you might integrate those wishes, whether a birth is surgical or vaginal. I don’t mean a birth plan, which is fine, but can go out the window if suddenly you end up needing an intervention you hadn’t planned for. More of an examination of your values and priorities. Maybe you are a modest person and feel uncomfortable with how exposed you might be during birth; how can providers address that, in the OR, while also doing their job safely? Or maybe it’s important to you that you aren’t separated from your baby after birth. How can you and your baby stay together, provided you are both stable? Maybe you want to start breastfeeding as soon as possible, even in the OR! How can your providers support that? We wouldn’t bat an eye if someone having a vaginal birth made these requests. It’s OK, and important, to speak up—or to have a trusted advocate do so for you. And, ideally, to start these conversations before birth, when you’re still pregnant.

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

So many mothers I talked with felt shame about having had a cesarean. They asked,
Did I even really give birth? Or they felt that others looked at them as if they’d somehow failed to live up to an unspoken standard of motherhood. Still other moms felt troubled by what their C-sections meant about their bodies — as if, because they hadn’t had a vaginal birth, their bodies had failed them. This was especially the case for people who had an unplanned C-section.

I have two important things to say about these feelings: First, it is OK, and normal, and healthy, to grieve not having a vaginal birth, or having a major surgery, and a tough recovery, while also dealing with the harmful stereotype that C-sections are less than or the easy way out. We do a terrible job of allowing mothers to express negative feelings postpartum. It’s OK to feel and say these things, which don’t go away because you have a healthy baby.

Second, the way your baby was born — by cesarean, vaginally with an epidural, after an induction, vaginally without medication — doesn’t mean anything about your character or how good of a mother you are. You grew a baby in your body and brought it to this side of the veil. Another set of fingers and toes, a heart, a brain. How remarkable you are.  

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

This week, I have a very cool podcast to offer you. I was lucky enough to join three amazing parenting experts for a special parenting-related episode for Psychologists Off the Clock, a podcast I love about the science and practice of living well.

The experts who joined me were clinical psychologist and parenting expert (who writes the Substack Parent Smarter, Not Harder), psychologist and adolescent technology guru (who writes Techno Sapiens), and clinical psychologist and digital technology / mental health expert (who writes The Future of Sanity). They are brilliant and amazing and I was so honored to be part of the conversation.

In the podcast, we talked about how parents can spot trustworthy parenting guidance amid all the online noise. We also talked about the strengths and limitations of parenting research (both historically and today). For instance, we discussed why it’s so frustrating that dads haven’t participated more in parenting research (both because they haven’t always been invited, and because when they are invited, they often don’t sign up). As a result of this imbalance, we may mistake findings about mothers for findings about all parents. We cannot tell whether the identity of the parent matters or whether the parenting behavior is all that matters. The lack of information about dads’ influence also means that when parents are blamed for their kids’ actions our outcomes, it’s typically moms who receive all the blame.

Another thing I highlighted in the podcast was an easy-to-spot red flag parents can use when assessing the quality of parenting advice. This is something I also discussed a few months ago in my Q&A with writer Elizabeth Weingarten. In a nutshell, questionable parenting advice is typically framed as one-size-fits-all — if you’re not getting the results you want, it’s because you’re doing it wrong. Parenting advice you can trust, on the other hand, is framed as contextual — it may not work for everyone, and if you aren’t getting the results you want, it’s probably not because you’re doing anything wrong. It may simply be that the advice isn’t a good fit for your child or family.

Different cultures have different parenting norms too, and research suggests that parenting practices that are constructive in one cultural context may not have the same effects in another. That’s in part because kids may interpret and respond to parenting practices differently depending on the norms that surround them.

We talked about many other things in the podcast, too, including:

• How parenting advice moved past simple “good vs. bad” rules to consider how things like culture, environment, and everyday context shape what works

• Biases in parenting science and the importance of leaning into “goodness of fit” to figure out what actually works for a specific kid

• How nuanced, multimethod science often gets distorted by media algorithms and fear-based messaging—and how to spot misleading science headlines

• How kids are actively using AI, why vulnerable or unfulfilled kids are most at risk of becoming overly dependent on it, and how parents can guide their children through open communication rather than strict bans

• Positive trends in youth resilience and self-control, how shifts in modern parenting may be helping to drive these improvements, and why adults in every generation fall victim to the cognitive bias that “kids these days” are doomed

If you’d appreciate a reassuring, reality-based sanity check on modern parenting advice, please check out this podcast.

Subscribe now

Share

The week before camp was particularly chaotic this year, because my kids were at my house for most of the week, then went to my ex’s for two nights. The plan was for me to pick them up from his place and drive them straight to camp. But, of course, there was a snafu and some items got left at my house, so after picking up my kids and their bags from my ex’s, we had to stop briefly at my house again.

When we loaded everything back into my car, I said to my kids: “Please check that all your bags are in the car.” I hadn’t been involved in the last stages of packing, so I didn’t know what they were bringing or how many bags there were.

When my kids didn’t seem to respond to my request, I said it again: “Guys, please check that all your bags are in the car!” I heard grunts of acknowledgment, closed the trunk, and started the car. Off we went.

I’m sure you can see where this is going. Let me tell you how it all went down.

Read more

There’s a whole lot I could say about the relationship between demonized foods and health. I won’t, but I will say that it’s complex, and the associations are not as straightforward as most people think. Still, even if you believe certain foods are terribly unhealthy, that doesn’t mean that limiting them at home with your kids is a good idea.

Subscribe now

Among other things, studies suggest that restricting kids’ access to foods can make those foods more enticing. As I explained in Slate:

In a 1999 study, Penn State researchers identified three types of snacks—wheat crackers, cheese fish-shaped crackers, and pretzel fish-shaped crackers—that a group of 4- to 6-year-olds found equally tasty. Then they split the kids into groups and seated them around tables. They allowed all of the kids as many wheat crackers as they wanted but put either the cheese fish-shaped crackers or pretzel fish-shaped crackers in a clear container in the middle of the table and told the kids they couldn’t have them.

After several minutes, a bell rang and the groups were each allowed to eat as many of the formerly banned crackers as they wanted in addition to the wheat crackers. The researchers found that the kids talked positively about, asked for, and ate whichever type of cracker they had been denied—far more than the always available wheat crackers. Interestingly, the kids who became most preoccupied with the forbidden crackers were those who had parents who restricted certain foods at home.

As one paper that replicated these findings succinctly put it, “parents’ use of restrictive feeding practices is counterproductive.” I’ve seen this play out when I host play dates: Kids whose parents restrict foods at home often binge on those items when they find them at my house.

Share

I’ve been familiar with this phenomenon for a while, but a few weeks ago, I talked to a neuroscientist who helped me consider it from a brain chemistry perspective. I was interviewing Tom Bellamy, a neuroscientist at the University of Nottingham in England, for a story I was writing for The New York Times about obsessive romantic infatuation, otherwise known as limerence. (Here’s a gift link.) He was talking about the fact that the brain’s dopamine reward system responds strongly to what are known as intermittent rewards — rewards that are given some of the time, but not all of the time.

Intermittent rewards, he said, work like this:

Sometimes you get a lovely big reward, but it's not predictable when that reward is going to come, and that causes a process called incentive sensitization, where the wanting drive — that motivating drive from dopamine — gets strengthened and reinforced until you kind of want something irrationally… That one reward becomes the total preoccupation, and the strength of the wanting drive can be very powerful.

Intermittent rewards help explain the allure of gambling, he said. A person playing a slot machine may win early on but cannot predict when the next payout will come. That uncertainty can sustain anticipation and motivate the person to keep playing. When a payout is larger than anticipated, dopamine signaling can briefly increase, making the whole experience more salient and the drive for the reward even stronger — intensifying the urge to keep playing.

Subscribe now

When Bellamy described this, I immediately thought about food restriction at home and how it plays out in a broader food environment. When parents limit kids’ access to sweets or other foods, they will nevertheless, at some point, encounter a situation in which they can eat those foods freely — perhaps at a friend’s house or a birthday party. This makes access to those foods — the “reward” in this case — intermittent. Kids don’t know when or where they’re going to get them, and this may then strengthen the desire for the foods over time.

To be clear, researchers have not directly tested whether this pattern affects children’s dopamine systems. But I think it could help explain why restricted foods can become especially salient and why children may then binge on them when they are available.

I know what some of you are thinking: But if I give my kids free access to these foods, they’ll eat nothing else! At first, maybe, yes. Your child may eat all the cookies and all the ice cream because their brain hasn’t habituated to the new normal in which these foods are no longer so intermittent. Their brain may say: “Who knows if mom and dad will make these disappear again, so let’s eat as much as possible now!”

In my house, though, the novelty eventually wore off. I used to tightly restrict sweets and certain snacks at home, but I don’t anymore, and I promise, my kids aren’t constantly eating Oreos. Sure, sometimes they eat cookies as snacks. But they also eat strawberries, carrots, and dried mangoes. I can’t say for sure that dopamine explains this change, but I do wonder if making sweets less scarce and emotionally charged helps their brains “calm down.” When restricted foods become more ordinary, the desire for them may become less intense and all-consuming.

What are your thoughts? Share in the comments!

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Share

I’m in Barcelona with my kids. It’s the first time I’ve traveled outside of the country alone with them, and the only Spanish words I know are “hola,” “por favor” and “gracias,” so I’ll admit I’ve been nervous. But it’s been wonderful. Everyone has been welcoming, the food has been delicious, and the weather has been great (though hot!).

When I decided on this trip back in March, I knew that we’d be here during the semifinals of the World Cup. My son, who is 15, has been obsessed with soccer for at least a decade. Most of the gifts he requests for Christmas and his birthday revolve around it; he organizes his schedule around the Premier League and Champions League matches. And he’s always adored Spain’s national team.

So for three months, we desperately hoped that Spain would make it to the semifinals. Sure, the matches themselves would take place in the U.S., but we were thrilled by the possibility of being in Spain while Spain was playing. I told my son that if Spain made it to the semifinals — or even if they didn’t — we’d probably be able to watch the matches in public squares surrounded by Spanish fans. We talked about our Barcelona soccer-watching plans at least once a week leading up to our visit.

And then, magically, Spain advanced to the semifinals.

Subscribe now

We arrived in Barcelona last Saturday, giddy with anticipation. Our very first purchases, the afternoon we arrived, were Spain jerseys for me and my daughter — of course, my son already had one. We also got a Spain flag, which my son planned to wear as a cape during the match. I had already done a ton of research on where we could watch it, and, surprisingly, I learned that there were no official watch parties in Barcelona.

Nervous, we asked locals where we could watch the match. The woman who sold us our Spain jerseys said to go to the Plaça de Catalunya, a large central square in Barcelona. They’d either be projecting the match outside, she said, or we could go to one of the large Irish pubs nearby, which she said were rarely busy during soccer matches.

My son had his heart set on watching outside, in the kind of public square I’d been promising him for months. So I crossed my fingers that we could watch it there.

Out of an abundance of caution, we continued researching where to watch the match. There was a city outside Barcelona hosting a watch party, but that seemed far away. Then, somehow, three hours before the match started, I stumbled across an article in The Guardian saying that the public square three minutes’ walk from our apartment — a square we’d already visited multiple times — would be the “#1 place” to watch the semi-final match in all of Spain.

What!?

Share

We were ecstatic. We wouldn’t have to travel anywhere! But we were still cautiously optimistic. My son suggested that we walk over and do reconnaissance. I agreed, so we headed to the square at 6pm the day of the match — three hours before the start time. It was eerily quiet. I went into one of the bars and asked the bartender if they would be playing the match.

He shook his head, confused. Spanish soccer wasn’t a big deal in Barcelona, he said, and our particular neighborhood was among the most indifferent of all.

He suggested we go to Plaça de Catalunya — the same place the woman who sold us the jerseys had suggested. Clearly, this was our best bet.

We ran home, changed, and headed out on the Metro. We noticed we were the only people on the subway wearing Spain jerseys — very odd, but it confirmed what the bartender had told us. Barcelona, it seemed, didn’t really care.

Subscribe now

When we got to Plaça de Catalunya, I found a tourist booth and asked the man there if the match would be played in the square. He actually laughed at me.

“Uh, no,” he said.

“Okay, well, where can we watch it?” I asked, exasperated.

“Any bar or pub around here,” he said.

it was 7pm. I was worried about my son. He’d had his heart set on watching it outside in a square, and suddenly, that possibility was gone. When he was young, he’d had a tough time with frustration tolerance — when things didn’t go his way, he had huge meltdowns. I knew this match was a Very Big Deal to him, and I was waiting for him to lose his mind.

He didn’t. His attention turned forward, not back: He said ok — let’s find a lively bar where we could watch the match.

We started wandering the streets while I looked up bars and pubs on Google Maps. None of the bars we found had TVs. I started searching specifically for Irish pubs, and one by one we walked to them. The first had a line around the block. The second had space, but when the hostess started ushering us in, she told us kids weren’t allowed. (We’d previously been told that kids were allowed in bars and pubs.) We found a third pub, but it was at capacity and also restricted to people 18 and older.

It was 7:30 p.m. We had nowhere else to go. I braced myself for the crying, the yelling. But they never came.

Instead, my son calmly suggested that we go back to our apartment, order dinner and watch the match there.

Leave a comment

Readers, I was floored. FLOORED. My exacting 15-year-old son had calmly pivoted not once, but twice, over an event he’d been dreaming about for months. It was beyond my brain’s capacity to understand. (His dream was largely my fault, by the way: I’d assumed — and all but promised him — that the match would be shown in the plazas. A rookie mom mistake.)

We headed back to the subway the way we’d come. I could not have cared less what we were doing or where we were going — I was just so, so proud. I told my son that I knew he’d had so many expectations for the match, and that it must be frustrating to have the evening unfold so differently from the way he’d imagined. I told him I was really impressed by his calmness and his ability to shift gears. He didn’t say much, but I could tell he heard me and appreciated that I had noticed.

In the end, we got back to the apartment, ordered food, and watched Spain win by ourselves. We took to the streets afterward and got gelato — in the nearby plaza where literally nobody seemed to care about Spain’s win but us. No doubt, we’d have had a much more festive night if we’d stayed in New York. But that was just fine.

The night was nothing like the one we had hoped for. There was no giant screen or roaring crowd — though eating his gelato, my son did wear his flag as a cape as he’d planned. What I’ll remember and celebrate most about that evening is not Spain’s win, but my son’s new ability to face disappointment, take a breath and move forward. It’s the kind of milestone others might not even notice, but it was the biggest win I saw that evening by far.

Subscribe now

Share

Since I’m traveling, I’m re-sharing a newsletter I wrote several years ago. I loved digging into this research, and I hope you appreciate it too.

Subscribe now

A few years ago, my family traveled to San Diego to visit extended family. We were on the plane to JFK, and a flight attendant walked down the aisle giving out snacks. When she handed then 8-year-old daughter pretzels, my daughter thanked her.

The flight attendant crouched down and quietly said to me, “I want you to know that your children are the first kids — and in fact, among the first people at all — to say thank you to me out of the 150 people I served before you.”

I was, as you can imagine, floored. At first, sure, I felt a pang of pride — yay, my kids did good! (I know this anecdote could come across as a humble-brag — Look how awesome my kids are! — so I want to emphasize that my kids have NOT said “please” and “thank you” in about 4 million other situations in which they should have.)

Then, however, I felt sad. Why was it that so few people thanked him? Including the adults? What does this say about the state of our country? Why is it so damned hard for kids (nay, all of us) to be polite?

As I often do when I start pondering a topic, I hunted for some science. That’s when I discovered the research of Boston University psycholinguist Jean Berko Gleason, who has studied these exact questions. Berko Gleason’s work sheds light on why it’s so hard for kids to learn to be polite — and what we should be doing to nudge our kids in the right direction.

Share

First, I think it’s important to remember that politeness rituals are 100% learned and 0% innate. Sure, some altruism might be hard-wired, but the details of what to say and do in specific social situations is not. And learning any new skill takes practice.

But politeness is especially tough — and there are a few reasons why. Consider how parents (and adults in general) typically teach kids language: We usually give them clues to help them grasp a word’s meaning. We see a dog while we’re walking outside and point to it and say “Look at that dog! Isn’t he a cute dog? What a nice dog!” We use visual prompts, and we use the word we’re trying to teach in multiple ways in different kinds of sentences. This is what’s called “referential language,” because it’s language that refers to something. (In this case, the dog.)

This is not the approach we typically take when we teach kids to say “please” and “thank you.” When we teach kids these phrases, we don’t usually help them understand what they mean with context, nor explain why we are asking them to say them — we just say things like “Say ‘please’,” “What do you say?” or “What’s the magic word?” As Berko Gleason and her colleagues explained in a 1984 paper:

While the acquisition of referential speech may involve children's producing words only after they have gained some concept of their referents, the acquisition of politeness routines usually involves an intervening adult who insists the child produce a form even if the child does not yet recognize the requirements of the social situation and may not be able to analyze the formula linguistically.

In other words, when we encourage kids to say polite things, we often do not give them the context or meaning they need to grasp why they are being asked to say it. We usually don’t sit them down and say, “Hey, sweetie, let me teach you about the word please.” We just prompt them to say it in various situations and hope, one day, they will learn to understand why and generalize our expectations.

Further evidence that young kids don’t really know what “please” and “thank you” mean comes from a small study conducted by Berko Gleason and her colleague Esther Blank Greif in 1980. (Yes, these studies are old, but they are the seminal studies on the topic.) They invited 22 children between the ages of two and five into their lab and videotaped them as they each played with their parents. At the end of the session, a researcher came into the room and gave the child a gift. The researchers recorded and analyzed what the children said to the gift-giver, if anything, as well as what the parents said to their kids.

They found that the kids spontaneously said “thank you” to the gift-giver only 7 percent of the time (see? Your kids aren’t the only ones), but that 51 percent of the parents then prompted them to do so, usually by saying something like “What do you say?” or “Say ‘thank you.’” The researchers observed, too, that the kids rarely said “thank you” in their own words, which was a sign that the kids probably had little grasp of what the words meant. As they wrote in the paper:

None of the children varied the adults' form or attempted to express their appreciation in their own words. No child said, for instance, “thanks a lot,” and there was no evidence of the children adding to their expressions of appreciation such things as “Thank you, it was really nice of you to give me this toy.” In general, the children performed the routine without elaboration in the form presented to them, without giving evidence that they knew, in any sense, what the routine meant.

Subscribe now

Kids also have a hard time knowing when to say “please” and “thank you” because the cues for saying them are abstract and vary from situation to situation. Berko Gleason explained to me that some of the first phrases kids learn are “hi” and “goodbye,” and that’s largely because there’s a very simple cue for saying “hi” and “goodbye”: When someone else says it to you first. (In the study mentioned above, kids said “hi” or “goodbye” about 25 percent of the time, always in response to the gift-giver saying it first.) The cues for saying “please” and “thank you” are much more abstract, stemming from the kind of situation you’re in and what has just transpired, and those are much harder for kids to recognize.

Another reason kids struggle with politeness words is that, typically, children don’t have any desire to say them. When you say “my foot hurts,” it’s because your foot hurts and you want to tell someone, Berko Gleason said. When you say “This book was so good,” it’s because you loved the book and you want to share the sentiment. But usually, kids do not have an overwhelming feeling of thankfulness that drives them to want to say “thank you,” Berko Gleason told me. “You don't want to say ‘thank you’ because thankfulness is welling up in you,” she explained. “It's performative — it's something that you have to do at a certain occasion.” And it’s much harder to get kids to say things because you want them said than if they really want to say them. (Yes, sometimes, we can feel thankful and want to say “thank you.” But I’d venture that 99 percent of the time we say “thank you,” we are not doing it because we feel overwhelmed with gratitude.)

To summarize, kids have trouble learning polite phrases for a number of reasons: We don’t do a good job of teaching kids their meaning; it’s hard for kids to predict when to say them; and the phrases don’t reflect any kind of inner desire to say them. (By the way, these same factors are at play when kids are learning — or shall I say failing to learn? — to say “I’m sorry.”) No wonder my kids needed prompts every day at the dinner table FOR YEARS before they started saying “please” and “thank you” on their own.

Share

With any conversation about politeness, I also think it’s crucial to address gender stereotypes. I encourage both my son and daughter to be polite — to say “please” and “thank you” when it’s appropriate, because I think it’s respectful. But I’m also sensitive to the fact that our culture sends messages to girls that they are supposed to be sweet and docile and overly polite, and I push hard against those expectations. Among other things, I think it’s important to tell kids that politeness is different from assertiveness. You can be respectful of others while also being a leader and holding your ground and fighting for what you want and need and believe in. These things can absolutely co-exist.

On that note, in her research, Berko Gleason did not find that parents prompt girls to be polite more than they prompt boys to be polite. So there is no evidence of a difference in socialization practices on that front, at least not in her research. But she does find that fathers tend to be less polite than mothers — perhaps an unsurprising finding given the gender stereotypes, but an important difference that kids notice and learn from. If a girls sees her mom being more polite than her dad, she might infer that girls are expected to be more polite than boys are. Likewise, a boy will infer from this observation that boys don’t need to be as polite as girls.

So what can we do to help kids — both boys and girls — learn to be polite? Berko Gleason said that prompting — which is what many of us already do — is important. It helps in the long run to say things like “What’s the magic word?” and “What do you say?”. Eventually, kids figure out what we want and why, and the phrases become automatic with practice. Modeling politeness as parents is important, too — and especially for dads, so that they can help to shatter the stereotype that there should be sex differences in politeness.

It may also help, Berko Gleason said, to talk to kids about the meaning behind polite phrases. Explain to them why we say “please” and what it means, and why we say “thank you” and what that means. You could say something like, When someone says or does something kind for us, we say “thank you” to show them that we appreciate what they did. It’s a way of showing them that we noticed and are grateful for their kindness.

I couldn’t help but also ask Berko Gleason if she thinks that people have become less polite in recent years. “It is clear that our public figures have become less polite, and when people are role models, and they are rude and horrible, then other people are going to follow suit,” she explained. (This is rooted in social learning theory, which I talked about in my first book — people learn how to behave based on the behavior of others in power, and Trump and others have not set a good example.)

On the other hand, she also pointed out that “every generation thinks this next generation is falling apart,” so our fears that everything is going to hell in a hand basket are probably overblown. (I’ve written about this doomsday bias here before.) The next time I fail to hear a “thank you” when I expect one from my kid, or other kids, or an entire plane full of passengers, I’ll try to remember that politeness is a learned skill — and that we are all works in progress.

Share

Subscribe now

1. Man, that stinks! When kids complain, they often want empathy, Lisa says. This is a great line to use to offer validation.

2. Do you want my help or do you just want to vent? Similar to #1, this gets at the fact that kids often don’t want guidance — they want to unload. If they do want help, this question gives them the opportunity to voice that.

3. Is there anything I can do that won’t make this worse? When a kid is struggling and we offer suggestions, we often get in the way, Lisa explains. This phrase says: “I’m here and invested, but I appreciate that I can get annoying sometimes when I’m trying to help.”

4. Don’t worry about getting caught; worry about whether you or somebody else could get hurt. This is a great phrase if your kids are going out at night, she says. It keeps the emphasis on safety, where it should be.

5. What’s getting in the way? This is a helpful thing to say if you have a kid who’s not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, Lisa says. This phrase communicates that you’re teaming up with them rather than coming down on them.

   Share

After hearing Lisa’s five wonderful phrases, I thought about what I frequently say to my kids, who are 11 and 15. I thought it would be fun to share them here. These may not be helpful for you — every family is different — but I do find them helpful myself. These can apply to younger school-aged kids, too.

Read more

If you fit into one of the below three categories and would be willing to talk to me, please let me know, either by commenting below, sending me a Substack message, or emailing me at melindawmoyer at gmail.

These interviews would be on the record, using your full name, unless otherwise noted. Thank you!!

I’m looking for:

1. People who have become intensely romantically infatuated with someone and experienced deep longing, obsessive and intrusive thoughts, compulsive behaviors, and a really strong desire for emotional reciprocation. (Also known as limerence.) For this story, I can just use your first name rather than your full name.

2. People who have been “love-bombed.” This term can be used in a various ways; I’m specifically looking to talk to someone who dated a person who did at least some of these things:

   • Gave you over the top compliments. Not just “I think you’re really special,” but something like, “I have never met anyone like you. I think you’re special in a way that no one else has seen.”

   • Got in touch (texts, calls) very frequently.

   • Made grandiose gestures — bought gifts, flowers, etc or offered to help a lot.

   • Implied early on (within weeks) that the relationship can/should be permanent or long term, or pressured for commitment. They may have talked about wanting to spend their life with you or said you were their soulmate.

   • Eventually became controlling or abusive in some way. (This is not a requirement — if you got out of the relationship early, you may never have seen this behavior!)

3. People who have experienced chronic or permanent adverse effects after taking a cancer immunotherapy (Keytruda, Opdivo, Libtayo, Tecentriq. Imfinzi, Bavencio, Yervoy, Imjudo).

If you have experienced any of these things and would be willing to talk to me for stories for I’m writing (two for national newspapers and one for a national magazine), please let me know! I would be happy to share more details before we talk. And please forward this to friends or loved ones who might fit these criteria.

Thank you! I’m hoping to do interviews this and next week.

Subscribe now

Much has been written about how unfair it feels that dads who are seen doing any parenting are often loudly praised for it. Shop at the grocery store with your toddler and you’re “such a good dad.” Take your kid to the playground and you’re “a wonderful father.”

This disproportionate praise is a pretty glaring illustration of how low the bar still is for dads today.

But my take isn’t that we shouldn’t appreciate what fathers do. I think it’s wonderful to acknowledge how much labor it can take to bring a toddler to a grocery store. It’s important to recognize and call out the very difficult work that all parents do. But if we’re going to praise dads, then we need to be doing the same for moms. And we need to stop scrutinizing mothers much more harshly than fathers. This is especially important since, in heterosexual couples, mothers still do substantially more parenting labor, on average — especially the invisible planning, anticipating, and remembering that keeps family life running.

We need more research on this parenting double standard and how pervasive it is, but one study illustrates it well. It’s from 1998, but the findings still (sadly) seem quite relevant. In this study, Mount Holyoke researchers interviewed 88 couples with three distinct patterns in terms of father involvement: low involvement, in which both the mom and dad agreed that the dad did 25 to 30 percent of the parenting; medium involvement, where the dad did 35 to 40 percent, and equal involvement, where the mom and dad each did 50 percent. (I am doubtful that these numbers accurately reflect parents’ mental-labor contributions, as research finds that it’s extremely rare, even today, for fathers to match mothers on that front.)

Then, the researchers interviewed each parent separately, asking them questions like “Do you ever get criticism from any source about the way you are doing things?,” “What about praise?,” and, “From whom are you likely to receive those messages?”

The results were staggering. Among the supposedly equally-sharing parents, over half of fathers reported being commended for their parenting involvement, but only four percent of their wives reported similar accolades. Women were also much more likely to report being criticized for working outside the home, and fathers were more likely to report being criticized for spending too much time at home. (Wtf.)

Other research has suggested that mothers are more harshly criticized than dads when they make parenting mistakes. People also judge working moms as worse parents than working dads. Mothers are expected to be perfect and endlessly available, and then they are judged when they inevitably can’t be. Fathers, meanwhile, are often praised simply for showing up.

Here are two rather telling graphs from that 1998 study:

Again, my belief is not that it’s bad to praise dads for their parenting. What’s bad is the unfair and sexist parenting double standard. If we’re going to shower men with accolades when they appear in public with their kids, we need to do the same for women. And we need to recognize that so much of the work women do (compared to men) is invisible — rarely noticed, and rarely praised.

So yes, let’s celebrate good fathers today, as we should. But let’s also stop treating ordinary fatherhood as heroic and ordinary motherhood as unremarkable.

Subscribe now

There’s no question that it’s crucial for parents to talk to kids about race. The problem is, white parents don’t always realize this. They often think that toddlers and preschool kids are “too young” to notice or understand race, when, in fact, kids notice race from a very young age — even as babies.

Children are excellent social detectives, so they also notice the racial power hierarchies that exist in society. They see that people of color often have less power and money than white people do, and if kids aren’t told otherwise, they may start to assume that it’s because white people are somehow inherently better.

Share

We, as parents, need to actively challenge that assumption before our kids absorb it. We need to tell our kids that racism is the reason people of color have historically had — and often still have — less power and wealth than white people do. It has nothing to do with intelligence or intrinsic worth; it’s rooted in centuries of prejudice and bias.

What’s a good way to get a conversation going? I addressed this question in depth in chapter 7 of my book How to Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes. And a new study, published in May in Developmental Science, provides useful nuance about the words we might want to use — and avoid.

Read more

—

My son has almost drowned twice, and both times, it was my fault. He had been frolicking in the shallow end for 45 minutes in both cases. Then I got distracted for a minute, and when I glanced back, he was gone. There were multiple people in the pool with him each time, some within a couple of feet, a few of them relatives — and nobody saw that he had drifted back to where the water deepened and had sunk below the surface. The only reason I noticed was because when I looked for him, he wasn’t there.

These two experiences are among the most traumatic of my life, and they were pretty scary for him, too. Thankfully, he was fine, at least physically. But the incidents proved to me that drowning kids don’t call for help; they don’t kick or splash. They just sink and quietly disappear. They also revealed to me that swim lessons — which my son had taken after the first near-drowning — weren’t failsafe, and having adults around simply isn’t enough. I want to dig into the data on these two realizations in more detail today, because to me, at least, they were surprising. And they are crucially important, because more American kids die from drowning than from car accidents; drowning is the leading cause of death in kids ages 1 to 4.

Subscribe now

Swim Lessons Are Not a Panacea

I have absolutely nothing against swim lessons — I think they’re crucial, and both my kids have taken them. But swim lessons can be dangerous if they cause caregivers to become overconfident about their kids’ abilities and watch them less closely.

In a 2014 study, researchers repeatedly surveyed parents over the course of eight months as their preschoolers took swim lessons. As the kids acquired more lessons, parents began to believe that their kids knew how to keep themselves safe in potentially dangerous water situations — that they were, for instance, good judges of their own swimming ability and knew to stay away from pools when unsupervised, which aren’t things that swim lessons generally teach.

The parents also began to assume that their kids needed less careful watching around water, which isn’t always true, either. In another study, researchers asked parents to judge how well their kids had mastered various swim skills in their lessons and found that parents overestimated one in every five skills. (This overestimation of swimming competence tends to be especially bad among fathers.)

In a recent technical report on drowning prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics warned about this phenomenon, noting that “parental perceptions regarding necessary levels of supervision change as children progress through swim training, potentially to the detriment of the child’s safety."

Why aren’t kids who take swim lessons safe? Because, in part, young kids typically don’t learn survival skills in swim classes. “Mostly, what these lessons do is prepare the child for swimming by making them comfortable in the water — getting their face wet, going under the water — and teaching them some rudimentary skills,” said Barbara Morrongiello, a professor at the University of Guelph in Canada who studies parent safety practices and drowning prevention, when I spoke to her a story I wrote for Slate.

Share

There’s nothing wrong with this; if classes foster a love for water play and swimming, that’s great. What’s bad are parents’ assumptions that the classes do more. “Swimming programs for youngsters under four shouldn’t really be considered a drowning prevention strategy,” Morrongiello explained.

That’s because the ability to survive a near-drowning typically requires more than just the types of water skills that keep children afloat in normal swim situations. Kids might drown because they’re really tired, have gotten a muscle cramp, or have been injured during water play — and they need to learn what to do in these specific situations to stay safe. Children are also especially at risk after falling into water fully clothed, because clothes make swimming more difficult. Cold water has the same effect. Last summer, my nine-year-old daughter, whom I’d considered to be a strong swimmer, had to be rescued by a lifeguard during a swim test at camp in a very cold lake.

So even if your kid has had ample swim lessons, don’t assume that you can leave them be in the water — or half watch while you’re chatting with friends. Which brings me to my next point.

Subscribe now

When kids drown, adults are usually nearby — just not fully paying attention

A few days ago, my wonderful former journalism student Anna Gibbs wrote a powerful piece for Slate highlighting the data showing that most child drownings occur when adults are close by. She writes:

More often than not, children drown in the presence of their guardians, not their absence. A study back in 2004 that analyzed the drowning deaths of 496 children under 14 years old showed that, alarmingly, only 10 percent of the victims were completely unsupervised when they drowned — in other words, 90 percent of the children who died had an adult nearby who did not see the drowning occur. Drowning happens right under the noses of parents who, often, are aware that their child needs to be monitored in the pool, and who are trying their best to do so.

That’s because it doesn’t take much of a distraction to render supervision ineffective. “It’s the knock on the door,” says Amy Peden, a drowning prevention researcher at the University of New South Wales in Australia. “It’s the call on the phone.”

Gibbs talks about the many and various ways adults get distracted: They use their phones, they do household chores, they socialize with other adults. She also cited data suggesting that roughly 40 percent of drownings happen in the presence of other children, perhaps because there’s a notion of safety in numbers. Sometimes, though, kids swimming with other kids can put everyone more at risk. A couple of years ago, in yet another near-drowning episode — this one less scary because I saw it as it was happening and acted fast — I had to jump into the pool to rescue my daughter and her cousin while they were playing in a hotel pool together. Her cousin had accidentally floated into deep water and grabbed my daughter for support, which pulled them both down. And yes, we were at a hotel pool surrounded by adults — but no one but me noticed them as they disappeared under the surface.

Give a gift subscription

When Gibbs asked Sarah Denny, the pediatrician at Nationwide Children’s Hospital who headed the AAP’s technical report, when parents could safely ease up on supervision — would a 13-year-old who’s a strong swimmer be okay on their own? — Denny firmly responded: “If someone is in the pool, they need to be supervised at all times.”

Here’s Gibbs again:

As kids become more competent swimmers, drowning does become less likely, Peden says. But getting older brings other factors into play, such as substance use, swimming in natural (and riskier) bodies of water, and overconfidence. Denny recalls once when her son hopped in the pool at the beginning of a summer and swam across it, a lap he had done in past years. Halfway across, unaccustomed to the swim, he started to sink; she jumped in with her clothes on. After toddlers, adolescent boys are the most at risk of drowning. In fact, at all ages, boys are more likely to die by drowning than girls, usually about twice as often. But once they become teenagers, that jumps to almost 10 times as often.

I realize that this may all sound very scary. And you know I don’t like causing parents anxiety. Going by the numbers, most of your children will be just fine as they swim this summer, but I do think it’s important to be aware of the data and to understand what close supervision really means and why it’s essential. If this information helps to save one child this summer — or prevents one of you from having a terrifying close call — it will, to me, have been well worth it.

What are your thoughts or experiences? Share in the comments!

Share

Leave a comment

One thing I deeply care about, as I’m sure you know, is trying to help parents and kids navigate uncertainty. And as a newly separated mom in my late 40s, I have recently become even more acquainted with uncertainty. So I immediately bought and read Elizabeth’s book and knew its insights would be perfect to explore here.

Subscribe now

How to Fall in Love with Questions follows Elizabeth’s journey of discovery as she grapples with tough questions that have kept her up at night about relationships, identity, and purpose. It’s a beautiful read, and I found that it resonated deeply with with the work I’ve been doing lately around self-exploration and self-acceptance.

Today, I’m running a Q&A with Elizabeth (who also has a wonderful Substack, Time Travel for Beginners) that digs into some of the concepts she explores in her book relevant to parenting and adulting. We talked about helping kids navigate uncertainty and low self-esteem, how safety differs from protection, how to spot sketchy parenting advice, and more. Her book covers tons more ground, though, so I highly recommend you read the whole thing!

In my book Hello, Cruel World!, I talk about the value of modeling comfort with uncertainty in front of our kids, because doing so helps kids understand that we don’t always have to have answers or opinions — that there is value in taking time to reflect, think, and even do research before coming to a conclusion. Given all you’ve done to learn to embrace uncertainty, what are your key recommendations for parents who want to do the same?

So many things! Let me try to boil it down into the biggest one: In the most uncertain moments, choose curiosity over fear, and connection over information consumption.

Let me tell you a quick story that illustrates this. When my son turned four-months-old, he went from being an okay sleeper to a horrible sleeper. He was up every 90-minutes at night and his naps were a disaster. I spiraled down the sleep influencer content rabbit hole, consuming everything I could find on infant sleep. I spent my days and nights tracking his sleeping and eating patterns with the rigor of a scientist racing to discover a life-saving vaccine.

Nothing. Worked.

The more information I consumed, the more I bought into the illusion that there was one right answer if I could just find it, and that this answer offered not only the answer to my sleep problems but…all of them. I was falling into a common trap: Research suggests that we can get addicted to information – and answers – the way we get addicted to junk food. We crave more and more, while never satisfying the deeper desires underneath.

What are those deeper desires? Often, it’s to feel connected, to feel less alone in the uncertainty we face, in the big questions we hold. And this makes sense: Community evolved to help us feel safer in times of uncertainty. Modern neuroscience research shows that when we’re embedded in a supportive community, our cortisol levels drop.

As I continued my feverish experimentation, I discovered that even on days when I’d gotten sleep, I was still stressed. The sleep struggle had revealed another set of questions about my new identity as a mother, co-parenting, and how my anxiety might impact my son.

These were questions that couldn’t be answered quickly, or through online sources.

Instead, what helped me the most was tending to a deeper desire: Connection and community. The best I felt during that time was when I went on a walk with another mom who was facing similar sleep challenges. Neither of us had the answers, but we were navigating the messiness together.

The TLDR: Some questions in our lives are answerable through outside sources, others are not (or at least not quickly). It’s crucial to know what kind of question you’re asking so you know the right strategy for addressing the discomfort you might feel. In my book, I share a framework for starting a questions practice to help guide folks through this process.

I love this sentence from your book: “Instead of defining safety as being protected from difficulty, safety meant being able to sit with any kind of difficulty.” As you explain, the ability to accept uncertainty relates to the ability to face challenges and try new things. What are some ways we can help ourselves recognize that uncertainty is okay, even good, when it comes to supporting growth and identity development? How can we come to understand the concept of safety as being different from protection?

It’s helpful here to consider a weight-lifting analogy, because uncertainty tolerance is like a muscle. Just like you wouldn’t go to the gym and start lifting 100lb dumbbells if you’ve never strength-trained before, we need to start smaller when it comes to building our ability to not only tolerate uncertainty, but also recognize it as a source of growth and development.

Starting smaller can look like finding low-stakes ways to practice tolerating uncertainty. That could be not looking up the menu for a new restaurant before you go, or trying a new class at your gym, or meeting a new person for coffee.

Or you could practice tolerating uncertainty with a Zen koan, which is the topic of the chapter you quoted from. Koans, which began to emerge in China 1000 years ago, can be short stories, paradoxes, or questions that help us with our ability to tolerate the unknown. Because koans cannot be answered or solved through rational thinking, they can help teach us a different way to exist with the unknown.

The bottom line: It’s impossible to protect ourselves — or our kids — from every struggle or challenge in the world. Safety through constant protection, then, is an illusion. Instead, true safety emerges from “uncertainty strength training”, and the ability to face, rather than avoid, the challenges in our lives.

Share

In your book you talk about the fact that sometimes, the best way to alleviate difficult feelings is to pay more attention to them, not less. Can you unpack this and explain how to tune into our feelings when they are uncomfortable? Why is it sometimes not helpful to try to understand the "why" behind feelings?

Kate Alcamo, a marriage and family therapist based in Maryland, gave me a helpful analogy for how to conceptualize a different way of relating to our uncomfortable feelings: It’s like riding a horse. When we’re feeling anxious or upset, our instinct might be to try to control the feelings by suppressing, ignoring, or even feeling guilty about them. But that’s a lot like trying to control a high-energy horse by pulling on its reins. The horse responds to your stress not by calming down, but by going even faster, and maybe even bucking you off.

Instead, she recommends “dropping the reins” — taking a moment to relax, let go of the struggle for control of your feelings, and instead getting curious about them. You might ask: What are my emotions right now, and where am I noticing them in my body? What are they trying to tell me? Does this feel heavy, dry, hot, or have a shape, smell or color?

Searching for why you’re feeling a certain way isn’t necessarily bad, but it can perpetuate an illusion: “If I can figure out why I’m anxious about this, or I’m acting in this way, I won’t do it anymore and I’ll be okay,” therapist Kaitlin Nunamann told me. The problem is that’s not always how self-reflection works. Sometimes it might help you understand yourself better, but other times it might surface even more questions. Instead, Nunamann recommends anchoring to what you can know and control: how your breath feels, where you’re holding tension, how you might release it.

Tuning into your embodied, emotional experience by dropping the reins, getting curious about it and rejecting the simple “why” narrative can all help us process our emotions more effectively.

I love the point you make about the fact that the people you love may sometimes “act in ways that feel insensitive, aloof, or uncaring,” and that part of loving them is to “be curious about why they’re acting that way and to listen to their response even when you’d rather throw up your hands.” These are wise words that can help us respond to seemingly unsavory behavior in our kids (and our partners). What are some ways you’d suggest engaging in this kind of curiosity with our kids when they are pushing our buttons? Is it about paying attention to them, considering their perspective, asking them questions?

Let me first say that this is not easy. Even if you’ve written a book about questions! But I’ll share another story that I’ve held onto since writing the book. It comes from Sarah Schnitker, who pioneered research into the science of patience, and is currently a professor at Baylor University.

When I visited her in Texas, I got a chance to meet her (delightful) young daughter, too. Schnitker told me something I think most parents can relate to: motherhood gives her the most regular tests of patience in her life. But it has also helped her learn something important: If she does manage to stay calm during inevitable tantrums, constant questions, or other interruptions, she receives something invaluable.

“Especially in these young ages, when kids show serious emotional dysregulation, it’s very easy as a parent to be like, ‘Stop it, I don’t have time,’” she told me. “But there are times when I sit with it a little longer and ask the question, ‘Is there a reason you’re doing this?’”

When Schnitker gets curious about what’s happening, she’s found her daughter can “verbalize something that changes the whole experience — suddenly, her reaction makes sense, and our relationship is better.” Patience, she told me, gives Schnitker the “opportunity to see her daughter develop into a different person.”

You talk about the self-help industry in your book, which I found fascinating. Among other things, you explained that self-help approaches can either be open or closed. In closed systems, if an approach doesn’t work, you’re told it’s because you’re the problem — you’re not doing it right, etc. These approaches are often not very helpful. In open systems, on the other hand, people are encouraged to take the advice that works and leave the rest — these approaches often include caveats like “this may not work for everyone.” I was relieved to recognize that my parenting advice seems to fall into the open camp, phew! But I’m wondering — because there’s so much parenting advice out there (much of it bad) — how best can parents tell the difference between closed and open self-help approaches? And why are closed systems so unhelpful and how do they relate (if at all) to our relationship with fear and uncertainty?

Your advice *definitely* falls in the open camp — which is why I love it (and use it)!

You’re asking such an important question. Let me start by saying: Staying vigilant against closed self-help systems can be especially difficult as a parent. When you’re sleep-deprived, stressed, and time-scarce, you’re even more vulnerable to these predatory self-help tactics (hello, me at 2am scrolling Instagram for sleep solutions).

You’ve nailed it as far as one way to tell the difference. Another way of looking at self-help systems comes from returning to the fear and curiosity paradigm: Is this person encouraging me to get more curious about the challenge I’m facing, and strengthen my own ability to identify solutions and answers? Or, are they trying to create a structure where I’m increasingly reliant on them and their answers? Am I becoming increasingly fearful that if I don’t follow the plan exactly I’m messing everything up? Is the approach encouraging more curious independence or fearful interdependence?

Interdependence, of course, can be a good thing: We all need to rely on other people for help and expertise. But! Be wary of folks who don’t actually have your best interests in mind, particularly if they keep dangling the carrot of enlightenment or absolution with just one more (paid) course.

You wrote that you have struggled throughout your life with self-worth problems — you felt like you had to prove your worth through your actions and achievements and that your love for yourself was conditional. I've written about research suggesting that perfectionism in kids is often rooted in these kinds of contingent self-worth issues. What helped you address your own issues the most?

This is an ongoing journey for me, and I’ve tried so many different therapeutic practices (I explore many in the book). What has helped most: the act of mental time travel, and in particular, imagining myself as a little girl. It has been easier for me to feel love and compassion for that version of myself, which I can then start to extend to the present version of me. The psychological term for this is called “temporal distancing.” Evidence for this practice suggests that when we imagine how a past or future version of ourselves might handle a particular struggle, the present version of ourselves can gain more perspective.

Something else that has helped: Asking questions of myself during the day like: What would help me feel cared for in this moment? Healing the relationship I have to myself starts with my own behavior, treating myself like I’m worthy of care throughout the day even if I don’t achieve all of my goals.

Subscribe now

Share

I had to admit, though: Going into this trip, I felt anxious. I have social anxiety that crops up in certain situations. I can give public lectures without losing my mind, but if you put me in a group of friends or acquaintances for an extended period of time — even people I really like! — I inevitably start to feel self-conscious.

It feels like this: I don’t have enough interesting things to say. The things I say are boring or weird. I start to second-guess whether I really deserved to be invited, whether anyone actually wants me there. The more anxious I feel, the more I socially withdraw, which fuels a vicious cycle.

Going into this trip, I couldn’t help but wonder whether I’d be battling these demons yet again.

Subscribe now

But this time, the voices in my head were muted. They weren’t gone, exactly, but I could talk them down. I would notice when I felt self-conscious, and then recognize that this was my anxiety talking. The loveliness of my friends helped, too — anytime I started to apologize or make myself small, they buoyed me back up.

It felt like a huge shift. I have recently been trying to tune more into my body and feelings, notice my self-limiting beliefs, and find insight and peace through journaling and meditation. This spa trip illustrated that something really is changing.

Share

Another thing happened that weekend, too. When I left the spa, I drove to Newark Airport to fly to Chicago for my niece’s high school graduation. I told myself I’d write a newsletter on the plane. As is often the case, I had a few ideas about what I would cover, but I hadn’t made a final decision.

When I opened my computer on the plane, I stared at the blank page and nothing came to me. Not a thing. Usually my mind is going a million miles a minute, planning my work time, planning my writing. But I just sat there, time ticking by, staring at the screen.

Although it was frustrating — I needed to write this damned newsletter! — I didn’t fall into a panic. I felt the voice in my head coo: It’s okay. This is actually pretty cool. The anxious chatter in my head has always been there, and it has always felt so important — but now that it was gone, I sure didn’t miss it. And with it gone, I felt a new serenity, a levity.

This emptiness in my brain felt less like a failing than a gift.

Subscribe now

Both of these tendencies, I realize — the social anxiety and the drive to keep achieving — are rooted in a belief that my self-worth is a reflection of how I act and what I do, rather than something that exists no matter what I do. The constant anxious chatter — “I need to do this” or “I need to be better at that” — consists of tales I have spun my whole life that haven’t served me.

I have known this for a while (thanks, therapy!) but I have struggled to actually translate that insight into change — into new tendencies, new feelings, new ways of moving through the world.

These two experiences, which happened over the course of a single weekend, illustrated that I’m finally making progress. And this progress is (ironically) why I don’t have a well-thought-out reported essay for you this week. Instead, I have something quieter: a handful of observations from a weekend when my mind finally gave me some room.

I know that the anxious voices will return. But perhaps I am in a place in which I can hear them less loudly and urgently. I may not have silenced them for good, but I no longer believe everything they say, and that feels meaningful.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Something happened this week that illustrated this lesson for me. Although it involved my dog, not my kids, the broader truth can definitely be applied to parenting.

Subscribe now

On Saturday, my kids were with my ex and I had plans to go into the city to meet friends. I planned to leave at 12:30pm. I let my dog out in our fenced backyard at 9:45am and went to my office to do a bit of work.

Then, a half hour later, I remembered: I had gardened the day before and left the backyard gate ajar. My dog Ozzy is a smart pup, and I knew that he’d be able to nudge it open and escape.

Sure enough, I ran to the backyard and he was gone.

Ozzy has run away a few times. He likes to explore the woods (thankfully he rarely goes near the street — he’s scared of cars), smell the smells, and then come back home, usually within 45 minutes. He’s very hard to find and lure back before he’s ready.

Still, I went outside to see if I could find him. I couldn’t.

Share

I went back inside, nervous. What if he didn’t come back? How would I find him? Would I have to cancel my afternoon plans? I fretted for a while, knowing that the clock was ticking and I needed to jump in the shower and get ready to go. I went back outside and phew, there he was, in the woods near the driveway. I grabbed dog treats and the leash and went out to get him.

As soon as he saw me, he started running away again.

I cursed under my breath as I followed him, but he was determined. He wasn’t ready for his walkabout to end. He trotted up a neighbor’s long driveway and I realized that more chasing would be futile. I wasn’t going to be able to corral him. I went back home and peered out the front windows every few minutes hoping to see him approach so I could let him in. He didn’t appear.

Subscribe now

Then I had a thought: Maybe, just maybe, there was a lesson in here for me. Maybe I needed to trust that Ozzy would be OK and that he would come home when he was ready. Maybe this was an opportunity to let go. After all, I didn’t have control over the situation. There was no way to force Ozzy to come home.

I got into the shower. I was a little worried: What if he came to the front door while I was in the bathroom and I couldn’t let him in? But I tried to relax, let go, and enjoy the warm water. When I got out, I noticed that my front door was wide open. Had the wind blown it?

I walked into the kitchen, and there was Ozzy, panting loudly on the kitchen floor. He’d somehow opened the front door and let himself in. I started laughing. It figures: As soon as I’d relaxed and stopped trying to force an outcome, he returned home.

Share

I couldn’t help but think about how this applies to parenting. As they grow up, kids are more and more out of our control. We wish we could get them to behave the way we want them to and to make the choices we want them to make. But we can’t. Sometimes, if we push them too hard, they run fast in the other direction. Sometimes, we are better off letting go and trusting that our kids will survive on their own — and that they will come to us when they truly need us.

Certainly, there are times when we need to help our kids or scaffold their experiences, but the research suggests that parents today do that far too often. By letting go and trusting in our kids’ abilities, we can help them learn and develop — and strengthen our relationship with them, too. There’s plenty of research suggesting that autonomy-supportive parenting helps kids thrive (and I guess it’s true for dogs, too).

So yes, Ozzy ran away and almost derailed my Saturday. But the experience reminded me that worrying when situations are beyond our reach does not help, and that pushing our kids to do what we want can incite them to push back even harder. There’s power in reminding ourselves that we are not able to curate all of our kids’ experiences, nor should we.

When I saw Ozzy trot up my neighbor’s driveway, he was the happiest I’ve ever seen him. He escaped and it was scary for me — but for him, it was a perfect Saturday morning. And although he loved his bout of independence, he soon enough returned back home.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Often, the sacrifices we make as mothers are invisible. We make a million little choices in which we put others first. These can be hard to see, because they are so automatic. I’m trying to get better at noticing and acknowledging them, but it is hard.

Yes, I know that we don’t have to make all of these sacrifices; often, nobody directly asks for them. But this expectation to put others first has been drilled into us since we were little girls — through what we were praised for, what we saw modeled around us, and what we were taught to want.

Subscribe now

To highlight the sheer number and absurdity of our sacrifices, I’m sharing five things my best friend and I have done in just the past week. And I want to hear your stories in the comments. Let’s make these sacrifices more visible to everyone.

• One of us went to a dance school fundraiser titled “pliés and pinot,” which was supposed to be a 60-minute introductory ballet class — VERY CHALLENGING when you’re in your 40s, by the way — followed by a 30-minute wine and cheese reception. The ballet teacher misunderstood and thought it was a 90-minute ballet class, and none of the 20 women in attendance spoke up to tell her when she kept going. They literally tortured themselves just to be polite.

• One of us was asked a question in a therapy session and then, before answering, said “Don’t worry, I’ll be brief.” Even in therapy — a place explicitly designed for her to talk — she felt compelled to apologize for taking up space.

• One of us had a mug explode boiling water all over her stomach, creating a massive blister, and instead of taking care of it, she continued to run the online fundraiser she’d been tasked with leading. She treated her medical emergency as less urgent than her volunteer obligations.

• One of us was told by an HVAC repairman that she “speaks like she’s a podcast on double speed.” Even her words, she realized, had been trained to get out of the way.

• One of us had a terrifying experience with an off-leash dog that led to bruises, scrapes, and a wrist sprain but didn’t want to get angry at the dog owner because he was the father of her kid’s friend. Even injured, she found herself protecting everyone else from discomfort.

  What are your stories from the past week (or month, or year)? Please share in the comments!

  Leave a comment

  Share

Buy my books!

A few months ago, I wrote about my recent feature in Scientific American, “The Kids Are All Right.” It explored the growing body of research suggesting that in many realms, youth today are doing better than youth of the past: They are more empathetic and inclusive, and they are less impulsive and narcissistic.

This is not what most adults and parents believe, however. In a recent survey conducted by Common Sense Media, 61 percent of U.S. parents said they thought kids today lag behind past generations in their morals and values.

Certainly, there are reasons to be concerned about kids when it comes to their relationships with technology and their mental health — but in other, more character-driven areas, our bleak assumptions about kids just aren’t supported by the evidence. (On the mental health front, there’s a bit of good news too: A study published recently suggests that youth suicide has declined since the launch of 988, the free suicide helpline.)

So why, then, is the public so misguided? And why are all the headlines so damned terrifying1? This was one of the key questions I addressed in my Scientific American piece. I’ve always been interested in how biases and perceptions shape our interpretations and beliefs, and what drives them, so the “kids these days” panic felt like the perfect rabbit hole to jump into.

Share

My research first led me to the work of Central Connecticut State University psychologist John Protzko, who directs the university’s Assumption Lab, which aims to understand the assumptions that underlie prejudice and decision-making. Yes, this is nerdy stuff, but it’s totally my jam, so I was embarrassingly excited to dig into his work and interview him.

One of the first papers I read was aptly titled “Kids these days: Why the youth of today seem lacking.” The paper, which Protzko co-authored with University of California, Santa Barbara psychologist Jonathan Schooler, investigated why adults tend to harbor negative preconceptions about youth. As they explain, this is not a new phenomenon:

Since at least 624 BCE, people have lamented the decline of the present generation of youth relative to earlier generations. The pervasiveness of complaints about “kids these days” across millennia suggests that these criticisms are neither accurate nor due to the idiosyncrasies of a particular culture or time—but rather represent a pervasive illusion of humanity.

Protzko and Schooler wanted to understand what could be driving this ubiquitous belief, so they undertook a series studies to try to find out.

Read more