When Your Best Friend Gives Birth to Your Babies—All 4 of Them
“My kids know they’re a product of me and their dad, but that Debbie was our oven … They love her even more knowing the sacrifice she made.”
When the Misdiagnosis Is Child Abuse
Some pediatricians are trained to determine whether kids’ injuries are accidental. Their assessments can be subjective—but they’re often accepted as fact. And when they’re wrong, parents can needlessly end up in jail.
Dear Therapist: I Love My Girlfriend, but I Asked Her to Move Out
I do not want to lose her and I miss her terribly, but I believe I had no other choice.
How the Pandemic Has Changed Us Already
The Great Depression permanently altered many people’s behavior. Could COVID-19 do the same?
How to Navigate a Midlife Change of Faith
When we think of our identities as fixed and unchanging—I am this kind of person; I am not that kind of person—we’re shutting ourselves off from many of life’s possibilities.
I Run a Tutoring Company. I Get Dozens of Calls a Day About Learning Pods.
This is what the scramble to teach from home looks like.
Dear Therapist: I Don’t Want My Sister in My Bridal Party
My entire nuclear family is incredibly angry with me.
The Empty Nesters Who Run a Bookstore—And Live Together
“A lot of people told me, ‘Don’t do it.’ I said, ‘But I love books and reading.’”
Taking My Children to See Frederick Douglass
How a visit to his birthplace helped me understand this moment of rage, reckoning, and possibility
Dear Diary: This Is My Life in Quarantine
Sensing that they’re living through a historic moment, many people are journaling to create a keepsake of life during the pandemic.
The Winter Will Be Worse
When socializing outside gets harder in much of the U.S., daily life will get more dismal, and the virus might spread even further.
Dear Therapist: Is My Middle Child a Monster?
I’m so tired of people seeing only her bad traits.
There Are Other Options Besides Reopening Schools
Alternative solutions to parents’ dilemma just require more time, money, and imagination.
‘Success Addicts’ Choose Being Special Over Being Happy
The pursuit of achievement distracts from the deeply ordinary activities and relationships that make life meaningful.
Will Kids Follow the New Pandemic Rules at School?
Students are generally capable of doing what public-health experts ask, but not all of them, not everything, and not all the time.
The Pandemic Is Putting Marriage Even Further Out of Reach
Married life is already the purview of the privileged. The economic crisis will only make things worse.
Dear Therapist: My Husband Doesn’t Want Another Kid, so I’m Considering Divorce
I don’t know that I would ever be able to forgive him for taking this away from me.
20 Years of Friendship With the Woman Across the Hall
“I used to joke and say, ‘If I died in my apartment, I knew that Barbara was the person who would find me.’”
‘We’re Talking About More Than Half a Million People Missing From the U.S. Population’
The pandemic is disrupting birth, death, and immigration rates, and the U.S. population could reach its lowest growth rate in 100 years.
What My Kids Learned When They Weren’t in School
This time since school was canceled—since life was canceled—has given them an education they couldn’t have gotten any other way.