The Impossibility of January Parenting
Trying not to press the panic button, which is frozen anyway
Greetings, everyone. This newsletter is a day late because my laptop died a sudden death on Monday. I mean, of course it did, it’s January! Maybe it simply couldn’t deal with another Trump presidency, I don’t know. I reached down to wake it up from slumber so I could work on this newsletter and it didn’t respond. I drove 40 minutes to the nearest Apple Store and was told that it would cost them $549 to simply look at it, probably hundreds more to fix it, and that I wouldn’t get it back for a week. I was like, um, okay, I guess I’m buying a new laptop today. And here we are.
This experience actually jibes well with my newsletter today, which is an ode to how hard it is to be a parent in January. It’s a month that starts when we’re already exhausted from the holidays, and it hits us with all the things we didn’t see coming (and some that we did, but are still a lot to handle). I thought it would be cathartic to list out the many legitimate reasons we are all totally losing our minds right now.
Before I jump into the list, a reminder that the price of this newsletter will be going up this Tuesday, to $7/month or $70/year. Subscribe now to lock in my lower price, $5/month and $50/year, forever. Please remember that this is my job, and that in supporting me, you are also supporting independent, science-based reporting, which we could use a lot more of right now. (And also, yes, your support helps me pay my bills, including for this new computer, which I really wish I hadn’t needed to buy!)
Here’s a (totally non-exhaustive!) list of things that many parents are dealing with right now. No wonder we are all going mad. Please add your own additional reasons in the comments! I know I forgot some!
Also, beyond the paywall I’ll share free gift links to my latest pieces for The New York Times, which dig into whether LED face masks actually reduce wrinkles and redness as well as the surprising science I uncovered on how often you and your kids should be getting dental X-rays.