“If we hadn’t demeaned parenthood in favor of elevating career-achievement to a quasi-religious cult, and if we hadn’t in effect become nomadic, rootless, individualistic, disruption-venerating, thrill-seeking strivers, we might have our priorities straight when it comes to what a good life, a happy life, and fulfilling life actually can be.”
Read More“We used to talk about childcare as if its purpose was to ‘free’ women to get jobs. We updated that to ‘freeing parents’—men and women—to get jobs.”
Read More“To get respect, women with children or caregiving males or nonbinary caregivers must identify themselves as having some other job besides ‘just childcare’ or being ‘just a houseparent’ because childcare is regarded as unskilled labor.”
Read More“Evolution built us to expect help from others and to give it. That’s the reason we instinctively wanted to know why our government “isn’t doing anything” and expected someone to ‘do something’ when Covid-19 emerged as our version of the Black Death.”
Read More“Providing a space for the inner stillness a child needs to contemplate the beauty of life—their very own encounter with the spirit of the Primavera—is what grandparents are ‘for.’”
Read More“Parenthood is often delayed past what makes sense biologically. That’s because people are given no good choices. Help from family evaporates into thin air when jobs change and people move far away.”
Read More“There’s a reason infant and child mortality rates dropped when kids were with parents during the Covid lockdown rather than with strangers.”
Read More“When our grandchildren were in school before the virus hit, I’d find myself comparing notes with a throng of parents, people half my age, while waiting around for the dismissal bell at our local public school.”
Read More“As my daughter Jessica, who is the CEO of a green-energy investment company in New York City, put it: ‘Businesses were established by men. They pretended they had no families. Families and women stayed home. When women joined the workforce, the deal was we pretended we didn’t have a family either and played by men’s rules. Then came Covid, and business meetings were on Zoom.
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