Relationships & Society
Psychology suggests that the loneliest moment in midlife isn’t a holiday or an…
The loneliest moment in midlife, for many people, does not arrive on a holiday.
Relationships & Society
Why routine calls between adult children and parents can sometimes feel emotionally flat
The parent is talking.
Relationships & Society
Why friendships can fade after retirement when the routines supporting them disappear
On Saturday morning, Margaret stands at the kitchen counter with a cup of coffee that has gone cold while she was looking at her phone.
News
I grew up in the 1990s and learned that looking resilient can make it difficult to ask…
By the mid-1990s, somewhere between half and two-thirds of American kids in elementary and middle school were spending part of their afternoons unsupervised, depending on which study you trusted and what exactly you counted as supervision.
News
I’m 38 and I realized last weekend that my dad has started walking me to my car when I…
I sat in the rental car for ten minutes at the end of my father's road last weekend, engine off, hands on the wheel, unable to make myself drive.
News
When an aging father says he is fine, balancing loneliness and autonomy can be difficult
It is a Sunday evening in London, and my father is sitting in his usual chair, in his usual living room, with the news on at a volume slightly too loud.
News
I’m 38 and I noticed last summer that my parents mostly ask about logistics — the drive…
I drove to my parents' house last summer for a long weekend, and somewhere on the second day I noticed something I'd been not-noticing for about thirty years.
News
For some people, the loneliest moment of the week may not be Friday night alone — it may…
I want to tell you about a specific Sunday in 2018, in my parents' kitchen in London.
News
There’s a certain type of boomer who treats unsolicited opinions as a love language…
When people talk about the gulf between adult children and their boomer parents, they usually frame it as a story about cruelty, or coldness, or some failure of empathy on one side or the other.
News
The most painful thing about having parents who love you but don’t quite know you is…
The cousin called on a Tuesday.
News
There’s a certain type of son who loves his father deeply but may struggle to sit in a…
I have noticed, over a long time, that there is a twenty-minute limit on the kind of conversation I can have alone in a room with my father.
Relationships & Society
Quote by Voltaire: “Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous…
I had a friend in New York, years ago, who was certain about everything.