“So, Dad, did you know Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are having a debate tonight?” “Yep.” “Are we watching it?” “Nope.” “Why not?” “For the same reasons we don’t watch German porn, or videos about how to treat gangrene.” “Dad.” “Also because I rented Jungle Book.” “Dad.” “Trust me—it’s the new one, with the digital …
Here’s an excerpt from my latest Image essay if you’re interested: Isaiah returned to the scene of the crime to survey his work. It was a damned atrocity. Paint ran haphazardly against the grain, tacky pools of it collected on the surface, and thick rivulets had crawled down the sides and hardened. “Look at it,” …
My youngest boys, Isaac and Isaiah (10 and 7), depart today for a week-long summer camp, which is a cause for excitement on their part, and quiet trepidation on mine. “Keep your money in a stinky sock,” I advise them. “If somebody picks on you, that’s the opportunity to forgive and turn the other cheek.” I …
“Isaac’s being a jerk,” my seven year-old, Isaiah, says about his older brother. They have been sledding over new-fallen snow. “Why do you say that?” “Because he keeps knocking me off my sled.” “Why do you think he did that?” I ask. I’ve been trying to help my children consider how sometimes they incite one another. “Because …
Some of you might appreciate my latest essay for Good Letters. Others of you may not like it at all. Maybe it’s proof that I’m no less angry today than I was ten years ago, when some of you first started reading my little missives. I’d like to think I’m angry about more important things …
Do you ever look on your children, and wish they had better than you? Back when we were shopping my embarrassingly confessional first book, my agent at the time told me I needed a ministry to accompany it. She said this as a realist, not an enthusiast. You need a platform to sell your wares. …
I come now to the question in my heart when I began: what can my sons say to a deceived and soul-sickened world? You might remember the story of a girl murdered that awful day in Columbine. As this story goes, one of the demoniac boys asked if she believed in God, and when she …
What is the cost of a calling? You can be called to be a parent; you can be called to be a plumber. But having a child, or picking up a pipe wrench, is not—in and of itself—to pursue a calling. The world is filled with parents and plumbers, after all, who don’t do their …
Many parents carry within our hearts—sometimes in a cramped and even despairing corner—a vision of what we hope our children will become. This vision lives deeper than our wish that they be doctors or NFL quarterbacks, deeper even than our desire for their happiness. Our heart-dwelling hope is that they will be good and true, that …
Every month, money flies from my checking account to the education savings accounts of my children, because I don’t want them to become hobos. This is one way I allay my fear the world will eat them up. It’s a mark of a good parent to worry over where—and whether—his child will go to college, …
My mother died while I was at the beach and so while my children spent their days on the shore, I spoke by phone with the many professionals who position themselves between the living and the dead. My thirteen year-old wanted to build a sandcastle. He has so many preoccupations these days, perhaps chief among …
The latest Conversations on Philanthropy is hot off the presses, and if you subscribe you’ll soon have a copy in the mail. If not, however, and you’re just dying to read my review of Anthony Esolen’s Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child, then you can click here. If you’re not sure about …
One of my sons asked about an historical figure, or maybe it was some living politician whom history will soon forget. My son wanted to know whether this man was a good guy, or a bad guy. This is our most fundamental typology for strangers. For all others, it is blood and love. Are you …
Because I am a father I think about the parents of that boy torn to pieces, of his sister whose leg was taken. I think about those parents in Newtown, whose biggest Christmas purchases were coffins for their sons and daughters. I think on the parents of the killers, too, and sometimes I am afraid, …
Hey you, with the crying baby. I understand that this little person is, in deeply emotional, psychological, physiological, theological senses of the term, an extension of your person. Please recognize, however, that this is not literally the case. In other words, the fact that you are warmed by—if research on the average American is to …
The intellectual consensus seems to be that having children is miserable business. This consensus is built on shoddy thinking and shoddier statistics. The latest example is brought to us by Why Have Kids? author Jessica Valenti, who notes that in the wake of Nebraska’s “safe haven” law allowing parents and caregivers to abandon children without prosecution, …
The last fortnight was chicken pox time for the Woodlief boys. I have acquaintances who are apostles of all things scientific and modern, and who are therefore appalled that my boys never received the chicken pox vaccine. It seemed like a good decision at the time, given that the vaccine wears off by the time …
Some of you might like my recent essay at Image’s Good Letters channel. Here’s an excerpt: “The vicissitudes of life may chink or scorch or even crack that die, but if your child doesn’t come with the self-restraint app, for example, the twin-studies data suggest you’re not going to build it into him. So don’t …
Some of you may like my latest essay at Image Journal’s section of Patheos, “Coming Home to Fatherhood.” Here’s an excerpt: “Or perhaps it’s closer to truth to say that nearly everything we do, so long as we love our children, keeps us moving closer to the full heart-knittedness that we yearn for with anyone …
When we don’t think we can control some things we take charge of what we can. This is why the functionary fastidiously maintains a constant distance between his stapler and his tape dispenser, and why the abused child has a ritual for pajamas and tooth-brushing and curling up tight that he enacts like the body’s …
My work with non-profits over the years has given me the opportunity to sit down with a number of philanthropists. I’m just now flying home from visiting Tucson, Arizona, where I met with several people who have led very different lives, but who share a characteristic that I wish were more true of me. Quite …
My first thought, upon hearing of Amy Chua’s now famous (or infamous) essay about the superiority of Chinese mothers, is that it’s irrelevant to me. The odds that I will go out and father a child with a Chinese woman are exactly zero. Further, even if Chua has brilliant mothering tips, there’s no way I’m going to …
On Tiger Mamas, bad art, and the heart of a child Read More »
Susan Stiffelman writes at ParentDish about the indignation some readers of mamapundit felt upon learning that, in the midst of writing about parenting, she was privately coping with a teenaged son’s drug addiction, which recently took his life: “The shame of exposing our truths to one another keeps many parents in the closet, hiding the …
Leo has hydranencephaly. This is some of what his father has to say: “From the beginning he has asked me to put my desires to death, so to speak. What I want for him is basically out of reach. I find that my desires remain but as my child he is telling me that I …
Thomas Spence, president of Spence Publishing, has a must-read piece in last week’s Wall Street Journal, titled “How to Raise Boys Who Read.” He takes aim at the latest fad, which is to get the video-game and television-besotted little cretins to read by dealing out books about farts and boogers, as if reading is itself …
As I write, there are nine minutes left in Father’s Day, which is just right, given that every father I know feels like he has so much left to do, and just a scrap of time in which to do it. I’ve had two and a half lovely days at home, and tomorrow as well …
U.S. children are posting sharp increases in drug use for chronic illnesses — one-quarter of all insured children and 30 percent of adolescents, according to a health company study. A large portion of these are antipsychotic and diabetes drugs. What are we to make of this? The doctor who led the study is fairly blunt: “All …
“Looking at children was the real shocker for us” Read More »
The thing you run into, when you are in the business of saving the world from itself, is that there is no lever marked: “PULL HERE TO SAVE WORLD.” It fascinates me to see intelligent thinkers reason out top-down solutions to symptoms caused by a soul-sickness that will not be fixed with federal programs or …
Mothers and fathers of America, give yourselves a pat on the back. And go out on a date. You must be exhausted.
Husbands, for the sake of your wives’ self-esteem, stop taking your kids to the park. That’s one conclusion we can draw from this study. A possible flaw in its design: could it be that many fathers who pick up more slack than their counterparts are doing so in response to actual shortcomings in the care …
