Sometime in the late ’50s, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann sat down to write an essay about a subject that had been mostly overlooked by other psychoanalysts up to that point. Even Freud had only touched on it in passing. She was not sure, she wrote, “what inner forces” made her struggle with the problem of loneliness, though she had a notion. READ MORE >>
Sympathy for the Stay-at-Home Mom
An argument about work, life, and the modern calendar
My first mommy date—you know, those painstakingly-dressed-for occasions you hope will turn the mother of your child’s new best friend into your best friend, too—also gave me my first taste of the shame that makes the mommy wars so bitter. Tali’s husband worked on Wall Street, she stayed home with the children, and the playroom in their restored Victorian on a lake in Westchester was photo-spread perfect. READ MORE >>
About two-thirds of the way through Makers, the PBS documentary charting the rise and fall of modern feminism, we learn the exact moment the American women’s movement died. OK, maybe “died” is too strong a word. Let’s say it had a really big stroke. On June 30, 1982, the Equal Rights Amendment passed its deadline for ratification and expired. READ MORE >>
Why do grandmothers exist?The question is not as unfeeling as it sounds. READ MORE >>
How Older Parenthood Will Upend American Society
The scary consequences of the grayest generation.
Over the past half century, parenthood has undergone a change so simple yet so profound we are only beginning to grasp the enormity of its implications. It is that we have our children much later than we used to. This has come to seem perfectly unremarkable; indeed, we take note of it only when celebrities push it to extremes—when Tony Randall has his first child at 77; Larry King, his fifth child by his seventh wife at 66; Elizabeth Edwards, her last child at 50. READ MORE >>
Even Scientists Dream of Time Travel
Defusing the War of Words Over Organic Food
Has anyone noticed that the war of words over organic food has become nearly as ritualized as a high-school debate-team practice session? READ MORE >>
