Courtesy of Nicole Schildt.
For years, I thought being a good mother meant being a fair mother. And being fair, I assumed, meant treating all of my children exactly the same.
With six kids, this seemed especially important. I didn't want anyone keeping score — or, more accurately, I didn't want to give them anything to keep score about. If one child had a certain bedtime at 9:00 p.m., surely the next one should, too. Chores should be divided equally. Consequences should be consistent. Privileges should come at the same ages.
Equal meant fair. Except it didn't.
The longer I parented, the harder it became to ignore what was right in front of me: I wasn't raising six versions of the same child. I was raising six completely different people.
One of my children thrives when given independence. Give them a responsibility and some space, and they'll usually rise to the occasion. Another needs more structure, more reminders, and more check-ins. That doesn't make one child more responsible or the other less capable. They simply need different things from me.
The same is true of privileges. I used to think that if one child earned a later curfew at a certain age, every child should automatically receive the same privilege when they reached that age. Now I understand that age isn't the only factor. Trust is built through choices. A child who has consistently demonstrated responsibility may be ready for freedom that a sibling at the same age isn't ready for yet.
My decisions can be hard to explain when the inevitable "But they got to!" comes flying across the room. And sometimes, if I'm being truthful, the difference has nothing to do with the children at all. My youngest gets more bedtime stories than my oldest did.
That realization could easily become another entry on the endless list of things mothers feel guilty about. But my oldest didn't have the same mother my youngest has. Back then, I was younger, less experienced, and more concerned with getting everything right. I rushed through routines because there was always something else that needed to be done.
Six children later, I understand how quickly those routines disappear. I linger a little longer now.
That doesn't mean I loved my older children less. It means motherhood has changed me. The mother raising my youngest has learned things the mother raising my oldest hadn't learned yet.
For a while, parenting my children differently felt like admitting I was inconsistent. Now I see it as evidence that I'm paying attention. My 8-year-old, who has always been an early riser, requires more sleep than some of his siblings, so he is the first to go to bed, while his younger siblings stay up a little later. It is unusual from the outside looking in, but it is what best meets his needs.
Fairness doesn't always mean equal chores, identical consequences, or the same privileges at the same ages. Sometimes fairness means giving more guidance to the child who needs it and more independence to the one who is ready for it. It means recognizing that one child may need encouragement while another needs accountability.
My children still notice the differences, of course. They are children. Keeping track of who got what seems practically written into the sibling job description. But I no longer feel compelled to make everything even.
My job isn't to make sure all six of my children receive exactly the same childhood; It's to know each of them well enough to give them the childhood they need. After years of trying so hard to be equal, I've finally realized that might be the fairest thing I can do. I won't always get it right. I'm still learning these six very different people as they grow and change—and trying to grow and change with them. Maybe good parenting was never about getting everything exactly right. Maybe it's simply about paying attention, loving them well, and doing the best I can with the mother I am today.
Courtesy of the author
I remember vividly how hard the preschool years were.
My world was turned upside down while my husband's life remained virtually unchanged. I was swamped with diaper changes, feeding, bathing, and preparing for my fifth-grade class the next day.
He accepted a longer commute so we could live closer to my work and both of our families for support. His impediments consisted of challenging weather and swerving to avoid wildlife, but mostly he enjoyed driving to his tunes without kids whining or fighting in the back seat, something I would have traded my right arm for on many occasions.
He came home to a home-cooked meal and continued playing hockey with the guys a couple of nights a week. He was no deadbeat, though — he put in long, physically demanding days working outdoors in all weather. Then on weekends, he kept up with the seasonal demands of our 23-acre property.
In those early years, his help with household chores and children was minimal. It was our system, and not uncommon in our generation.
Thankfully, gender roles have changed since then, and a generation later, my sons have taken on more significant parental duties. It is not for me to judge whether they do their fair share, but they certainly do more meal-making, cleaning, and childcare than their dad did.
I also remember my delusion of believing I would be a better mom than my mom was. I thought I could be more emotionally present, able to provide and respond to my kids' every physical, mental, and emotional need.
Courtesy of the author
I juggled raising three rambunctious boys alongside my often absent husband while aspiring to be a perfect mom and teacher. Something had to give, and I refused to let it be family, so when my burnout was diagnosed and labeled as depression, I took a sick leave from work. Creative workshops, me-time, time with family, and a diet-and-exercise reset helped me recover enough to return to work, choosing part-time to avoid the same pitfalls.
This is the point where I became more forgiving of my mother for not meeting all of my emotional needs growing up. I finally understood that I could not be all things to everyone, and despite my resistance, I still needed my mother's support to deal with all of it. I felt both too proud to ask for help and humbly grateful to accept it.
My mom never judged me. She calmly listened and offered support, something I have always deeply appreciated. I was too proud to confide my deepest insecurities, and she never pried. I hid my low self-esteem and low self-confidence by projecting false bravado to the world, but I'm sure she saw right through me. Her unconditional love and support generated and now drives my need to honor her by paying it forward to my own kids.
My kids are approaching this same point in their lives. Their perfect parenting honeymoon is over, and they often find themselves in survival mode. It is hard to watch as I remember those times well and how hard I fell. It must have been just as difficult for my mom to see.
As I listen to my sons and daughters-in-law share their challenges, I remember how the business of meal prep, naps, bathing, grooming, and potty training takes up so much mental space. Previously able to eat and sleep according to your own goings-on, you suddenly pivot to adapting to the kids' needs and current schedule. Although I hear them proudly declare they are handling it, they underestimate my ability to read their betraying eyes.
I am careful about offering unsolicited advice. I want to be supportive without meddling, so heeding the fact that I have two ears and one mouth, I try to listen twice as much as I speak. Instead of voicing my opinion when I would do things differently, I hold my tongue as I am certain my mom did when she questioned my way of doing things.
So many times, I had to be brave, reading the fear in my sons' eyes as they experienced various growing pains, both physical and emotional. I learned to transition from hand-holding to standing by their side to finally letting them go to live their own journey. I must be brave again as I now watch them struggle with their own children's growing pains, knowing that their problems and wounds will increase in direct proportion to their age and physical growth. I will stand by as my mom did, watching my pain, powerless to protect me, knowing I had to learn on my own.
I am also mindful not to forsake my whole life for them. It is important to me to be an honest role model by being just as kind to myself as I am to them, as the analogy goes: put the oxygen mask on yourself before you can save others.
Courtesy of Rebecca Lillian.
Resting by the heated pool in my cowboy hat, breathing the fresh mountain air, I watched my daughter laughing with her new friends and felt something I hadn't in years: a sense of peace.
Earlier that year, my husband and I inked our signatures in separate rooms, ending our 16-year marriage. Our divorce was one that could be labeled "volatile," and not just for us, but for our 8-year-old daughter.
When it came time to plan our first summer vacation with just me and her, I knew it would likely be a splurge, but I needed it to be special. We needed activity. We needed reconnection. We needed a dude ranch.
My research led me to an all-inclusive ranch in Colorado. The website had footage of horses running across a bridge over a winding stream. It looked perfect.
Although I was apprehensive about the two of us traveling from Texas during the week of July 4th, I inevitably found it liberating. Wheeling luggage stuffed with heavy cowboy boots while lugging backpacks through airports, shuttling to the rental car, and navigating unknown mountainous switchbacks could have been disastrous, but we managed it well. It was our first accomplishment in independence.
Courtesy of Rebecca Lillian.
"You have arrived," the navigation system announced in our rental as we turned onto the dirt drive lined with quintessential log cabins with thick white chinking, set on manicured lawns before the Rocky Mountain backdrop. Each porch had bright pink, purple, and red petunias hanging in baskets above shellacked wooden rocking chairs. It was just like we imagined it.
After parking our red Wrangler, we were greeted by ranch staff in full cowboy gear who guided us past the soft pink peonies nestled between the grayish-white aspen trees to check in.
At check-in, while planning our next seven days, I discovered that children eat dinner most nights with the other children and their counselors and take separate trail rides twice a day. This concept is great for families, giving mom and dad a chance to reconnect over gourmet meals, but I wasn't so sure how our new life would fit into this scenario.
Initially apprehensive about the separation, my daughter and I soon discovered this daily dose of division was liberating, forcing us to foster new friendships.
Later, we met the director of equestrian operations, and she asked about our riding experience and personalities to best match us with one of her cherished horses. We were excited to meet our horses the next day.
Meanwhile, our newly renovated western chic room was complete with leather-branded throw pillows, a fireplace, and a welcome basket full of healthy snacks, a red bandana, and a bottle of wine.
We quickly fell into a daily routine, bonding with our horses, riding and grooming them each day, and creating connections with other guests. We also tried out fly fishing (I caught three trout), hiking, archery, and ziplining. I especially enjoyed relaxing at the outdoor spa in luxury tents built over the creek, immersed in nature's music of bird calls and horse neighs.
The whole trip was exceptional, and our favorite event was an evening barn dance. We dressed in full cowgirl fringe and ended the night with an elaborate fireworks display just for the resort. Sitting on the lush green grass watching red, white, and blue explosions just a few, yet safe, feet away, she and I weren't just celebrating our country's freedom, we were celebrating our own.
Courtesy of Rebecca Lillian.
I had not realized until that moment I was introducing my authentic self to her — the woman I was before my marriage unraveled — and reminding myself of that version of me. Free. Capable. And full of adventure.
Fjord is a movie about having your children taken by the state. The tone is calm, clinical, measured, and by the books. No violence is depicted on screen. People rarely even raise their voices. Everything unfolds in the distant and impersonal style of bureaucratic procedure.
But the movie, which won the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, is utterly enraging, a fierce, ferocious, gut-punch of a film. It's a haunting portrait of the consequences of unchecked state power, especially the kind that purports to be for one's own good.
Much of the film's power comes from the fact that it simply depicts what happens when a person, or a family, comes under suspicion by the state. There's no commentary, no lecturing, no big speech at the end. Instead, writer-director Cristian Mungiu, a Romanian filmmaker whose sympathies are clearly with the family, simply shows us, unblinking, what it's like to lose one's rights and freedoms at the hands of a bureaucracy that respects no power and no authority but its own.
When the film begins, the Gheorghiu family—a mother (Renate Reinsve), father (Sebastian Stan), and their five children—moves from Romania to a small town in Norway. Soon, school authorities notice the children have bruises. We in the audience know the bruises weren't caused by the parents, but the children, who don't speak Norwegian, give conflicting statements. After being brought in for questioning by the police, the father admits to sometimes spanking or lightly slapping his children on the behind, for correction. In order to go free, he's required to sign a statement that contorts his words, making his admission of spanking sound like something more sinister and violent.
He's also a conservative Christian, which has caused some social tension: He's played Christian music, without singing the lyrics, on a piano at school, a no-no in a state that strictly curbs proselytizing. School officials are concerned that he requires his children to pray and study the Bible; the children aren't allowed to play video games or watch YouTube. One of his children spoke out against homosexuality in school during a session on gender. There's suspicion among the teachers and administrators that he might be indoctrinating his kids.
So the school authorities alert Child Protection, Norway's powerful family bureaucracy. They remove the kids, including a breastfeeding baby, from their parents' custody and place them in three separate foster homes. At first the parents are allowed no visitation, and they are not told where the children are located.
Then they go to court, initially for a civil trial, but with a criminal trial for child abuse looming in the background. As the legal process proceeds, they are told repeatedly that essentially anything they do to fight for their children will make the outcome worse. The state wants compliance and admission that they wrongly abused their kids. But if they admit to abusing their kids, doesn't that give the state evidence they are unfit to parent? Doesn't that make the criminal trial more likely to go against them? As their own, mostly sympathetic lawyer, informs the two parents, "Frankly unless you convince them that you understand and regret it, the risk of you going to prison is considerable."
Later, at the trial, a representative from Child Protection calmly says there's no reason to believe children might be better off with their biological parents, noting the family's restrictions on video games, internet, and YouTube. In their view, the state knows what's best for the kids; the culturally backward, religious conservative parents do not. It's not for nothing that one character, a conservative political figure from Romania who has come to help publicize the situation, analogizes the power of Child Protection to the power of the Soviet state.
Part of what makes Fjord so effective is its lack of sermonizing. You don't have to be a trad, a conservative, a family values evangelical, to see that what's happening to the Gheorghiu family is simply wrong. They are railroaded by an imperious bureaucratic state that distorts reality to turn them into villains, with the goal of separating children from their parents and each other. Who are the real child abusers here?
The story is fictionalized, but not hypothetical. Fjord is based on the true story of the Bodnariu family, conservative Romanian immigrants whose five children were taken from them by the Norwegian state in the 2010s on similarly flimsy justifications. The family eventually left Norway. After watching Fjord, it isn't hard to see why.
The post Family Separation Drama <i>Fjord</i> Is a Haunting Depiction of Unchecked State Power appeared first on Reason Magazine.
Courtesy of Emese Maczko.
It was an hour into our hike through Southern Konnevesi National Park in Finland, and neither of my 7- and 10-year-old daughters was complaining. It was glorious.
Normally, within the first hour, I would have already heard the question "How much longer?" One of them would also declare, "It's boring. We're just walking."
So what was different about this hike? Why weren't they complaining? It's because I took a different approach to this hike than I have with past ones — and it worked. Here's what I did.
For this hike, we had a local guide with us, and my kids hung on her every word. They were asking questions non-stop and following her down the trail without a single complaint.
I almost laughed when I saw them literally stepping in her footprints and mimicking every move she made. This is not what my husband and I were accustomed to.
When she leaned on a rock to hear "the whispers of the forest," my kids did the same. When she found edible berries, my kids rushed there to try them first.
I do my best to make hikes interesting for my kids, but I am also a first-time visitor to most of the places we explore. No matter how much I research beforehand, I usually can't predict what they will find interesting along the trail. By contrast, this local guide knew exactly how to keep them excited, which kept them moving along.
I also noticed that the guide occasionally gave them "crucial" jobs along the trail. Who could find the next patch of berries, who could spot mushrooms growing on a log, or who could hear a bird singing?
When we are alone, I try to do these things too, but I cannot always answer the questions that ultimately follow: "Are these berries edible?" "What kind of mushroom is that?" or "Which bird is singing?"
I know my kids are naturally curious, but I wondered why my kids seem uninterested when it's just us. I began to realize they stopped asking me questions because they knew I didn't always have answers. Since our guide did this time, they asked her. They were eager to learn.
I also noticed they had not asked the dreaded question, "How much longer?" Not even once on our 2.5-mile hike.
I kept thinking about my usual responses. I say things like, "Look at the beautiful forest. Just enjoy the view and breathe in the fresh air," or, "Come on, we're almost there. It'll be worth it when we arrive."
Kids care about what's happening in the next five minutes in a way that's different from how my husband and I approach things. I was expecting them to hike like adults, getting from one point to the next. If they can discover something new at every step, they will relish the journey and won't feel time passing slowly. That's something I'm planning to incorporate into our future family hikes.
On a different trip, we tried forest bathing with a local guide in Austria, which lasted over three hours. When it ended, my kids frowned and said, "That was so short. Can we keep going?"
After these experiences, I became much more careful about which trails I choose when hiking with my kids.
I know now that the best trails for my kids are the ones that offer exciting experiences along the way: a lake where kids can swim with tadpoles, a stream to cross, or rocks to scramble over.
I've also learned not to rush the stops. My daughters love spending time throwing rocks into a lake, sending leaf rafts down a stream, balancing on fallen logs, building hearts from flowers, or watching frogs or insects.
The biggest change for me has been to stop measuring a hike's success by how far we get and start measuring it by how much fun we had.
In Finland, I realized my kids already enjoy hiking. They just enjoy different things during a hike than I do as an adult. I should never forget that sometimes the part they remember most has nothing to do with the trail itself.
For Boston Magazine, Kara Baskin explores a growing subculture of tweens and teens who don’t feel entirely human. Some identify as one animal, like a cat or a dog; others identify with multiple animals. One kid Baskin speaks to, Sol, says she “doesn’t summon the animals, but rather they come and go on their own schedule.” These young people call themselves therians (distinct from furries, who are fans of anthropomorphic animal characters). Baskin provides a fascinating glimpse into a world where adolescents can express themselves and explore their identities.
Bafflement is the baseline condition of raising kids right now. The adolescent quest for self-discovery is timeless—but today’s parents experimented in ways that were analog: new hairstyles, inscrutable music, beer snuck in the woods. Their own parents might not have liked it, but they could at least relate.
Now the landscape of adolescent discovery is literally foreign, thanks to social media, which has turbocharged once-obscure subcultures like the furry fandom—and, at its rarer edge, therianthropy—and redefined what “fringe” even means. Even if a kid is the only therian at school, she can find 400 more people just like her online. That’s one of the biggest challenges for parents in the algorithm age: The world your kid actually lives in is one you can’t enter. It touches the fear in every parent, therian kid or not: What happens when our kids inhabit a world we don’t understand, with idols we don’t recognize?
During one of his son’s hockey games, Nick Paumgarten watches as his eight-year-old is hit from behind, only to rise to his feet and use his stick to hit the side of his opponent’s head. Alongside his concern for his son’s head and neck, Paumgarten, who has written about his own hockey-related concussions, rapidly processes the outcomes of the exchange: a game-deciding penalty, his own reflexive rationalization, and the evaluation of other parents who “held me in some way responsible, as both father and coach, for the violence and loss of self-control.” Paumgarten’s essay is rich with such moments of parent-coach double-consciousness, and sensitive to the numerous ways, some of them awful, in which those two identities intrude upon each other.
That Sunday, it wasn’t yet 8 A.M. when a Rye player shoved James from behind into the boards. James went down awkwardly and stayed prone a moment, then leaped up and, with an implausible ferocity, cross-checked the other kid in the ear. The Rye boy collapsed to the ice, and the other kids poured in and began grappling with one another, while parents shouted and pointed. Soon there was a pile of mites, with the two referees pulling players off and flinging them aside like puppies. Through the windows, you could see that the sun had risen over the Long Island Sound. I thought of my son’s fellow second graders back in the city, likely still asleep or watching cartoons in their pajamas or getting dressed for church or whatever the unrinked got up to on weekend mornings, but here at Playland my boy had instigated a munchkin brawl.
Login