Jennifer Senior On Modern Parenthood And Its Discontents
I was amazed to read about the New York City newsboys’ strike in 1899, which ultimately improved conditions and raised wages. You had these armies of seven-, eight-, and nine-year-olds bringing the entire newspaper business to its knees. They organized and won. Today we don’t even let our nine-year-olds go on the subway by themselves.
It’s never been easy for me to talk openly with my father. Now I have to talk openly with him about an essay that describes, among other things, how difficult it is for me to talk openly with him.
The point is, I am not like the rest of you, who don’t spend every moment fearing the worst. I think you are ostriches with your heads in the sand, and I envy you for it. You wake in the morning and don’t imagine all the ways in which the people you love might die. Or perhaps you do. If so, call me, but not before 8 AM, or else I will think someone I love has died.
It wasn’t even lunch yet, and Helen had a plagiarism situation on her hands. Becky Fairchild: chipper with lots of teeth, field-hockey captain, hair ribbons in Hadley Academy colors every Friday, scones and effusive thank-you notes for teachers at Christmas, clothes from the kind of catalogs that Helen sometimes flipped through wistfully on the toilet.
The birth and development of a vocation needs space, space and silence, the free silence of space. Our relationship with our children should be a living exchange of thoughts and feelings, but it should also include deep areas of silence; it should be an intimate relationship but it must not violently intrude on their privacy; it should be a just balance between silence and words.
We’d traveled, we’d been to lots of parties, lots of movies and concerts, we’d slept in. We’d done all those things that people with children seem to miss so passionately. We didn’t want those things anymore. We wanted a baby.
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