Meg St-Esprit

Somewhere in my mess of a basement that I haven’t yet Konmaried sit two diplomas that I earned. Two college degrees from two very different colleges. The first is my undergraduate degree from a private, competitive liberal arts college — what you'd…

Many of us grew up watching our parents try out diet after diet, hearing them talk about “cheat days” and “naughty foods,” and perhaps even seeing posters of “good” and “bad” foods on the inside of the pantry. All of us want to avoid passing on food…

I will admit that seeing a 9-year-old pulverize a carrot with a knife the size of their femur on Top Chef Junior is, for a moment, a little jarring. We give our kids safety scissors that cut nothing, we gate off the kitchen, but maybe we should be…

There will be no cookies today. My kids attend a school with a new policy banning outside food for class parties. And our school is not alone: districts across the nation have adopted similar guidelines. The reason? Kids with food…

As my feverish, snotty first grader lay on the couch begging me to send him to school (yes, you read that right), I clenched my teeth and prepared for a new parenting hurdle I had not yet faced. His motivation? A perfect attendance award. While my…

We have all felt on the outer at some point, but what if there is a racial component to that feeling? Jerry Craft's New Kid (Harper Collins, February 2019) explores that space, based on the Harlem-born artist's own teen years as a Black student at…

Mother of four Jami Lea can count on one hand the number of times she’s left her kids in over a decade. Sadly, lack of family support means that Jami had had some bad experiences when leaving her kids, which has led her to develop maternal…

I could not sit still watching this show. As Tidying Up With Marie Kondo moved through its redemption narrative, I felt like things were crawling around in my cabinets, in my toy bins, under my couches. My normal anxiety about the amount of stuff in…

When I became a mom to my first baby seven years ago, I felt frantic and anxious almost all of the time. Not only was I worried that I would inadvertently kill or damage him due to my inexperienced mothering, I was viscerally aware of the days…

Standing in the ice cream parlor, my 4-year old son decided to throw down in front of half the town. The source of his frustration? He didn’t want ice cream. He wanted a “beer” to celebrate the first day of school. “Why do I need to get ice cream,…

Co-breastfeeding, where both parents nurse the child, is relatively unheard. The process to achieve this, induced lactation, is often touted in some mothering communities as a mysterious act that a friend-of-a-friend tried, once, maybe. Most parents…

He might be white in your copy of The Night Before Christmas, but from corporate events to malls across America, families are seeking out diverse Santas. After all, why shouldn’t the jolliest and most magical man on the planet reflect the kids he…

I have four kids. Three of them have October birthdays, which makes for a fun and hectic Halloween season. This also means that my current first grader started kindergarten a few weeks before he turned 6, and my 5-year-old twins will do the same…

When we decided eight years ago to build our family via adoption, we knew that many parts of our journey to parenting would be different. Paperwork instead of pregnancy tests, social worker visits in lieu of OB-GYN visits. I fully embraced our…

Even for women who badly want to breastfeed, there can be a slew of obstacles, from mastitis to latch issues. For Meghan Wooldridge, mother of three, the breastfeeding itself seemed to be going okay, but something else was going on. “It took…

“I couldn’t eat lunch meat or take an aspirin, but I sat as nurses in Haz-mat suits put chemicals into my veins.” The baby inside of Stephanie Hosford was completely dependent on her for everything that it needed, and yet she was voluntarily loading…

Written in 1934 by theologian Reihold Neibuhr, the serenity prayer has been used in sermons for generations and was later adopted in short form by Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs. It has provided comfort to generations of folks in a…

Sitting on the couch, watching reruns of an old mindless sitcom while wrapped in an afghan, I watch midnight tick by on my phone. I breathe a little sigh of relief, and feel a pang of grief hit my gut at the same moment. I kiss the four-week-old…

“We devised a plan to get my father-in-law whisky and let him relax. Whiskey and cigar, mellow out and not be bringing his energy in his room," Josh Tarnofsky tells Romper by phone of wife Steph Hendel delivering their son, attended by the baby's…

I was sitting on my daughter’s bed one evening, reading her a bedtime story. She picked the story of Ruby Bridges, the first black child to integrate an all-white Southern elementary school in 1960 amongst a violent backlash. The children’s version…