I knew something was wrong the day my son lay in bed in an emergency room waiting for his MRI to come back. A nurse entered his room and said, “Has your son been outside the country recently?” I did a double-take. “It’s pretty late to be asking that, isn’t it?” “Ma’am, yes or no?” […]
Sometime in February, it was clear that the US was headed toward crisis, and every day we don’t take major action would make the crisis geometrically worse. Suburban schools closed first. The last school districts to close are bigger cities, because they had to figure out how to get breakfast and lunch to the kids […]
I had this idea that coronavirus would be heaven for me because I’ve been working from home with my kids circling all day long for ten years. This should be my time to shine. I was looking forward to when schools closed down. I wanted all the parents to ask each other: How are you […]
Each country reveals so much about itself by its approach to coronavirus. China pretended nothing was happening—the country with the best disinformation system applied it to the virus. South Korea figured out a way to test 400 people a day using a drive-through system—the country with the strongest video game teams applied their team gaming […]
The first writing class I signed up for I told myself I could leave in the middle if it sucked. And I told myself it would definitely suck because who would want to be in a writing group if they were letting me in? So I didn’t go to the class. In fact, I found […]
Last night at midnight, our theoretical family bedtime, we were listening to the most recent episode of our favorite podcast, Chapo Traphouse. And they started screaming at listeners to go to New Hampshire to get people to vote for Bernie. “Go to Durham, New Hampshire! Bernie needs your help in Durham!” I said to […]
Companies that have both men and women in high-level positions see improvements in productivity, innovation, safety, and profitability. Yet the number of women with jobs at the top is still decreasing. You know why you would not want one of those jobs: 80-hour weeks, monthly travel, other people raising your children. But I wonder if […]
As we sat down to dinner last night, my son said, “Look. Kobe died.” I looked at the phone screen. My first thought was: he was so young and oh my gosh his daughter. My next thought was: the rape. I have never stopped thinking about the night Kobe raped a 19-year-old woman while she […]
I coach lots of parents who look at scaling back work and worry about what they’ll do when their kids grow up. If you are one of those people, you are about to save the $350 coaching fee. What you want to do for work when your kids are young is not what you want […]
Feminism provided girls with a whole new language to express the myriad problems-that-have-no-name, but there have been no credible equivalents for boys. In fact, the definition of masculinity seems to be contracting, according to Peggy Orenstein. When asked what traits society values most in boys, only 2% of male respondents in PerryUndem’s survey asked men what traits […]