Tag: first year
Why Parents Struggle So Much in the World’s Richest Country
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One morning a couple of years ago, during the awkward hour between my eldest daughter’s school drop-off and her sister’s swim lesson, I stopped at a coffee shop. There, I ran into the father of a boy in my daughter’s class. He was also schlepping a younger child around, and as we got to talking, I learned that we had a lot
The Kamala Harris Problem – The Atlantic
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On a Thursday morning in April, I met with Vice President Kamala Harris at Number One Observatory Circle, the Victorian mansion that, for the past two and a half years, she and the second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, have called home. She can be a striking presence when
What Stanford Law’s DEI Dean Got Wrong
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
I was overwhelmed by your responses to last week’s question on cars! So for now, I’m going to hold off on a new question and promise to send out your excellent thoughts in the next newsletter.
‘Breakup Chili’ Season in Brooklyn
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Kaitlyn: What is life but a series of meals, some of which are given dramatic titles to imbue them with random significance?
I once received an email from the comms team at Reddit promoting the company’s end-of-year data that made the claim that the top post of the preceding 12 months had been a recipe for something called “Divorce Carrot Cake.” Of course you’ve heard of Engagement Chicken, the roast chicken that
America Is on the Right Track
Negativity is by now so deeply ingrained in American media culture that it’s become the default frame imposed on reality. In large part, this is because since the dawn of the internet age, the surest way to build an audience is to write stories that make people terrified or furious. This is not rocket science: Evolution designed humans to pay special attention to threats. So, unsurprisingly, the share of American headlines denoting anger increased by 104 percent from 2000 to
What Squirrels Taught Me About Life After Divorce
Noah likes to feed the squirrels naked. I don’t know if he does it this way when I am not here. But like clockwork on the weekend mornings we spend together, the squirrels will start to tap on the window. And Noah will rise from the bed as if responding to a baby monitor. He will stumble to the kitchen, grab a handful of unsalted almonds from a jar in the cabinet, return to the bedroom, and crack the
The Joy of Learning to Drive at 37
Thirty-seven, I decided, was old enough. Even here in Britain, that is an advanced age to begin learning to drive, but somehow, I had never gotten around to it. And so I found myself, one morning last fall, trying to master the exact sequence of foot movements required to hit something called “biting point.”
That’s the sensation you feel when the gears connect to the engine—when your left foot, on the clutch, perfectly balances with your right foot, on the
Sheryl Sandberg and the Crackling Hellfire of Corporate America
In publishing, there are some books that are too big to fail. Very early on you get the message that this is a Major and Very Important Book. In 2013, that book was Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, which sold more than 1.5 million copies in its first year. She was the chief operating officer of Facebook, back when most of us had no understanding of the platform’s fearsome powers—in the halcyon
What It Feels Like to Lose a Child in a Mass Shooting
Nicole Hockley has done all of this before. The bewildering phone call in the middle of the day. The anxious drive, followed by the waiting, the endless waiting, alongside other frantic or frozen parents. Then, at last, learning the impossible, mind-numbing news: Your child is dead. The tiny person you made with your own body, whom you fed, dressed, and taught to say thank you, was shot to death in his classroom.
Hockley’s son Dylan was 6 years old
The Domestic Political Stakes of the War in Ukraine
Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine confronts President Joe Biden with complex challenges at a time when he is already beleaguered—but it also presents him with an opportunity for a reset on the core foreign-policy promise he made to voters during his 2020 campaign.
As a candidate, Biden offered voters not so much a change in specific international policies as an alternative approach to interacting with other nations. In managing America’s foreign policy, Biden pledged to be steady and stable,