When we crossed a Black Lives Matter protest in Manhattan this past summer, my 7-year-old had questions. “What are the protestors asking for?” he inquired. He already knew George Floyd was dead, and how he had died. We had offered an age-appropriate…

It is not generally considered professional to start crying during a celebrity interview, but it’s been a long day (year). My daughter has just this morning started her last year of high school from her bedroom, and I’m especially raw — kindergarten…

From a resolute Harriet Tubman to Rosa Parks’ refusal to move to Bree Newsome’s climb up a 30-foot flagpole, social movements are rightfully rich with the presence of mighty women. So it’s only natural that behind the current generation of activists…

Our resident advice-giver-outer Jenny True provides shouty, full-hearted answers to your questions about pregnancy and parenthood in her column Dear Jenny. Warning: This is not a baby-and-me singalong; this is about yelling into the cosmos and…

One only has to wish for a juicy novel about admissions to a fancy private school and it appears, in the middle of a year in which the school system has fractured along class lines into those who can afford private learning pods and those doomed to…

I wish I dried up I wish every drop of my milk slipped passed those pink lips and nourished the ground Where the bones lay Of my babies Starved while I feed their murderer I wish I dried up So the missus babies would dry up too And be brittle So I…

Back in the middle of March when my kids’ school closed for “three weeks” to minimize the spread of COVID-19, I wasn’t sure how my husband and I would manage our full-time jobs for that long with two busy children underfoot. Now, after almost six…

Black women do breastfeed. Sixty-nine percent of Black mothers initiate breastfeeding at birth. By six months, however, only 17 percent of those mothers are still breastfeeding their infants. Historically, Black mothers not only have social barriers…

“When I was first placed in a group home, my biggest worry was, ‘Will people accept me? Will I have to fight?’” This was Jessie, a young queer person who has experienced foster care, offering a testimonial for for “Fostering Inequity: How COVID-19…

The other day my 8-year-old daughter woke up sobbing from a nightmare in which her best friend died of COVID-19. My 11-year old keeps asking me lofty, nuanced questions about race and equality that I can’t always answer, and my playful toddler tries…

One set of parents, in a committed relationship with their school — that is just one possible arrangement among many, in a year that has seen the rise of learning pods; multiple families banding together to hire a tutor to teach their children at…

Ten hardened men went out into the arena armed with bows, axes, and knives, each convinced he would last the longest. They were ex-military, a law enforcement officer, a prepper: survivalists dropped into the damp wilderness of Vancouver Island to…

I’ve homeschooled my 9-year-old son his entire life, so when this pandemic hit, I felt lucky that schooling at home wasn’t much of an adjustment for us. Sure, some of his extracurricular activities came to a screeching halt, and others moved online.…

I have spent the past 15 years working on and writing about the epidemic of anxiety and depression affecting kids, but the past five months have been like nothing I’ve seen before. The pandemic has brought with it anxiety in adult and child alike —…

Among the many parents who want to be out on the streets marching with the Black Lives Matter movement is the singer Kehlani. "I can't show up for this protest because there's a lot of exposure to people and I don't want to bring a virus home to my…

There is no “first day of school” chalkboard big enough to capture the complexities of sending your kids to school — or keeping them home — during a global pandemic. Whether your school is holding in-person or remote classes or a hybrid of the two,…

My son starts first grade in a few weeks, and I’m scrambling to figure out what he’ll need to thrive, while maintaining my ability to make a living. The memory of crisis schooling through spring has led me, along with many other parents, to…

In May, a mother in Dilley, Texas, was asked a question that no mother should ever have to answer. Ever since she sought asylum in the United States, the mother and her 3-year-old child have been incarcerated. On August 13, the family will have been…

For those who have measured the pandemic in angry moon cycles and emptied bottles of wine, one topic remains fixed in our minds as motivator and balm: what we will do once this is all over. Without our kids. Or partners. Attending an Orangetheory…