Dear Friends, I have not seen many of you in quite some time. It’s not because I don’t want to, or I don’t enjoy your company. I have two children. If you had children too, you would fully understand, and nod your head with a grimace and a knowing smile. But you don’t, so I owe […]
parenting
The Joy of Opting Out
During my Little League years, I was weirdly thrilled when inclement weather cancelled practice. Admittedly, I didn’t like baseball very much and my coach was kind of a dick. But the real source of excitement was my newfound freedom go home from school, hang out with my friends, and do whatever I pleased. I had […]
Parenting 201: Ignore or Intervene
I am on vacation this week in the Laurel Highlands of western Pennsylvania, famous as the location of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. It’s a quiet and beautiful four-season destination*, and our rental home incredibly lacks wifi and cell phone service. It has been a nice break. I am not alone: my wife and two children are, […]
Did We Wait Too Long to Have Children?
Our first child was born when my wife and I were 35-years-old, an age at which—in some parts of the world or in past centuries—we might have reasonably been expecting our first grandchild. We were even late to the childbirth party by contemporary standards: the mean age of first-time mothers in the United States in […]
The Great Debate: Go Part-time Now or Retire Early
Pictured above: Lalomanu Beach, Samoa. With our second little angel arriving soon, I’ve got family on the mind. Both my wife and I work full-time. Life is busy but not too insane: a majority of days we work 8-5, but there are occasional mornings, afternoons, or even full days off scattered throughout each of our schedules. We also employ a […]
A Parenting Book for Nihilists?
[This post turned into a book review, something I had not really planned but, hey, anything goes here. Hope you enjoy it (and check out the book)!] The literature on parenting is daunting (and inconsistent) at best, overwhelming (and wrong) at worst. I dabbled in it during months leading up to the birth of my son, but fatigue […]