Weekly thread: What Do You Want Me to Write About?
Calling All Questions!
Hi everyone! I just got back from the University of Pennsylvania, where I served on a conference panel talking about science journalism. It was a fun whirlwind trip.
A quick reminder that I’m running a flash Father’s Day sale! Get 20% off paid subscriptions through Sunday! Buy one for yourself or as a gift.
Today I want to know what your parenting questions are. What are you struggling with or curious about in the realm of parenting or child development? What do you want advice on? What topics do you want me to dig into?
If you ask a question I’ve addressed somewhere in the past, I’ll share links in the comments. Otherwise, I’ll add them to my master list of things to tackle here in the newsletter in the near future.
And: Go!
Given that we talk about kids potentially being assholes here, I’m wondering if there’s a way to tease apart generational differences in how we define what an “asshole” is. I.e., I think many Millennial parents place a high premium on self-care for parents, so we don’t act like assholes to our kids. At the same time, some of us place less emphasis on compliance for compliance’s sake in our kids, because we want them to understand or even co-create the boundaries we’re setting. This may make them seem like assholes to our own parents, who were taught parenting methods that were really grounded in behaviorist thinking and “training” your kid to be quiet and obedient, maybe at the expense of their later mental health and self regulation. How can we bridge this divide? Could there be something in writing that we can forward to them that helps make this clear, diplomatically?
Can we have a flip on your recent getting girls interested in STEM? How can we get male-identified folks to value the arts, caretaking, teaching, traditionally “feminine” pursuits?