Voters in Ireland have rejected two proposed changes to the country’s Constitution that would have removed language about women’s duties being in the home and broadened the definition of family beyond marriage. The results, announced on Saturday, were an unexpected defeat for equality campaigners and for Leo Varadkar, the taoiseach, or prime minister. Mr. Varadkar, […]
Read MoreTag: Families and Family Life
Paid Family Caregivers in Indiana Face Steep Cutbacks
Kacey Poynter doesn’t have to commute far to clock in for work. She’s a paid caregiver and simply rolls out of bed to tend to her charge: her 2-year-old son, who sleeps in a portable playpen right beside her. Sonny was born with a congenital malformation that impaired his brain development and needs near continuous […]
Read MoreWith Addiction Recovery, It’s a Misperception That Nothing Works
This is the seventh in the series “How America Heals,” in which Nicholas Kristof examines the interwoven crises devastating working-class America and explores paths to recovery. .g-goldbergseriesinfo{ position: relative; display: flex; overflow: hidden; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 1.125rem 1.25rem 1.0625rem; border: 1px solid var(–color-stroke-quaternary,#DFDFDF); color: var(–color-content-secondary,#363636); max-width: 600px; margin: 1.3125rem auto 1.5rem; width: 100%; max-width: 600px; […]
Read MoreParents Are Highly Involved in Their Adult Children’s Lives, and Fine With It
American parenting has become more involved — requiring more time, money and mental energy — not just when children are young, but well into adulthood. The popular conception has been that this must be detrimental to children — with snowplow parents clearing obstacles and ending up with adult children who have failed to launch, still […]
Read MoreAfter the Quake: One Turkish Family’s Struggle
Finally, 106 days after the ambulances rushed their battered bodies to the hospital, the couple were cleared to leave. Ibrahim Karapirli hobbled back from physical therapy on crutches to protect his aching leg. His wife, Pinar, wrangled their twin toddlers, unsure how she would care for them with her one remaining arm. The couple were […]
Read MoreWhen a Spouse Goes to the Nursing Home
Even as the signals of approaching dementia became impossible to ignore, Joseph Drolet dreaded the prospect of moving his partner into a long-term care facility. Mr. Drolet, 79, and his beloved Rebecca, 71, both retired lawyers and prosecutors in Atlanta, had been a couple for 33 years, though they retained separate homes. In 2019, she […]
Read MoreMore Money for Parents? Both Parties Just Might Make It Happen.
At a time when congressional Democrats and Republicans seem unable to agree on almost anything, they may soon pass an expanded child tax credit, which gives money to parents. The credit, part of a $78 billion tax package that the House is set to vote on Wednesday night, is the rare family policy that has […]
Read MoreThe Quiet Luxury of South Korea’s Postpartum Care Centers
Four mothers sat quietly in the nursing room around midnight, breastfeeding their newborn babies. As one mother nodded off, her eyelids heavy after giving birth less than two weeks earlier, a nurse came in and whisked her baby away. The exhausted new mom returned to her private room to sleep. Sleep is just one of […]
Read MoreThe Mother Who Changed: A Story of Dementia
The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion […]
Read MoreLloyd Austin’s Hidden Diagnosis: Why Some People Keep Serious Illnesses Private
The U.S. defense secretary is facing scrutiny after failing to immediately disclose to the White House his recent prostate-cancer diagnosis and a related hospitalization, a breach of protocol for which he has apologized. But while the secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, as a cabinet member, faces certain expectations about what he must disclose publicly regarding […]
Read MoreI’m Ady Barkan’s Widow. Everyone Should Have the Caregiving Options We Had.
My 7-year-old son, Carl, realized that it was Tuesday and asked why Robert was not coming to our house that day. Robert had been a caregiver for my husband, Ady Barkan, for more than five years, helping with Ady’s day-to-day activities as he became progressively paralyzed because of the neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or […]
Read MoreA Midwestern Republican Stands Up for Trans Rights
As 2023 slouches to an ignominious end, some news came Friday that gave me an unexpected jolt of hope. I have spent much of the year watching with horror and trying to document an unrelenting legal assault on queer and trans people. Around 20 states have passed laws restricting access to gender-affirming care for trans […]
Read MoreI Promised My Sister I Would Write About How She Chose to Die
On the day before my sister Julie died, I lay down on her bed and held her gingerly in my arms, afraid that any pressure would hurt her. She had lost so much weight that she looked like a stick figure I might have drawn when we were kids. As her body had wasted, her […]
Read MoreWhy Some Parents Give Their Children a Last Name Other Than the Father’s
When Judy Pellarin had her daughters three decades ago, she and her husband gave them her last name instead of his. A generation later, her daughters also broke tradition — one gave her daughter her surname, and the other created a new name, a blending of her and her husband’s middle names. Though some families […]
Read MoreFamily, Food and Memories From the Midwest
My parents split when I was young; I don’t really remember the time they were together. My mom and dad’s new partners, both kind, gentle, generous men, brought their own culinary flair to the family; respectively, pot roast braised with off-brand Coca-Cola and tater tot casserole. Together, my parents, my brother and I remained a […]
Read MorePope Francis’s Blessing For Same-Sex Couples Left Me Thinking Of My Mom
What I liked most about church was that it was our thing together, mine and my mom’s; my dad golfed on Sundays and my brother, Gerry, who was 11 years older than me, didn’t like Catholicism or the lecturing priests. Later at home, my brother would crack Mom and me up by imitating the priests […]
Read MoreLoneliness Is Inescapable. So Let’s Talk About It.
The Opinion video above gives voice to the lonely. We are publishing it at the end of a year in which loneliness started getting the kind of attention it has long deserved — an effort led, in large part, by the surgeon general of the United States, Dr. Vivek Murthy. In a guest essay last […]
Read MoreTenement Museum to Feature a Black Family’s Apartment for the First Time
For the past 35 years, the Tenement Museum has told the stories of immigrants and migrants who lived in New York City in the 19th and 20th centuries to help visitors better understand the city through the lives of its working class. For the first time in its history, the museum will soon feature the […]
Read MoreJewish American Families Confront a Generational Divide Over Israel-Hamas War
Marc Kornblatt prepared uneasily last month for his daughter, Louisa, to arrive for 10 days with the family. Her homecomings once brought the comfort of movie nights and card games, but this year was different. Mr. Kornblatt sang under his breath some lyrics from “West Side Story”: “Get cool, boy.” He and his wife discussed: […]
Read MoreGrief During a Holiday of Gratitude
It’s also a remarkable amount of work, a second (or third) job. My partner, Ian, and I have sat down with groups and met with counselors. We have joined Zoom sessions, read the words of those who have come before us. Together with our surviving daughter, Hana, 10, we recently traveled to a conference at […]
Read MoreA Thanksgiving Road Map
Last Thanksgiving, just as a jubilant Santa Claus was making his way across 34th Street on TV, I noticed something alarming in the kitchen of my childhood home. The oven I had preheated for my stuffing had not, in fact, heated. My dad, flashlight in hand and flanked by a gaggle of panicked observers, crouched […]
Read MoreCaregivers Worry About a Lack of Resources for Long-term Care
Natasha Lazartes 39, therapist, Brooklyn I am 39 years old. I had to care for my father, who passed from cancer in 2019; my mother, who passed in November 2021 from cancer; and since her passing I have inherited the care of my grandmother. She is 97, diagnosed with moderate dementia and is considered high […]
Read MoreThe Only People Who Understand What a Caregiver Goes Through
On Thursday mornings, Julia Sadtler and Debora Dunbar log onto Zoom to talk about caring for their husbands with Alzheimer’s disease, in hourlong conversations that are usually informative, sometimes emotional and always supportive. Both men are patients at Penn Memory Center in Philadelphia, which began this mentorship program for caregivers in September. By design, the […]
Read More‘Our Family Can Have a Future’: Ford Workers on a New Union Contract
Before autoworkers went on strike in September, Dave and Bailey Hodge were struggling to juggle the demands of working at a Ford Motor plant in Michigan and raising their young family. Both were working 12-hour shifts, seven days a week, to earn enough to cover monthly bills, car payments and the mortgage on a home […]
Read MoreTwo Families Got Fed Up With Their States’ Politics. So They Moved Out.
Steve Huckins, a native of Oregon, was preparing to move across the country when he went on Facebook to post a goodbye letter of sorts to his home state. “I had planned to die here,” Mr. Huckins, 59, wrote. “It’s a beautiful state. The mountains, the lakes, the rivers, the beaches. All are overshadowed by […]
Read MoreThe Americans Most Threatened by Eviction: Young Children
“Especially with young children, the disruption strains parenting unbelievably, and when parents are strained, so are children,” said Patrick Fowler of Washington University in St. Louis, who studies homelessness and its effects on children. When families are forced to move often, he said, “kids are just constantly taking a hit on well-being, on cognitive development, […]
Read MoreStriking U.A.W. Workers’ Views p Industry Vary by Generation
On Friday morning just before 10, Steve Kellums, 54, and his son Keegan, 24, sat side by side in the older man’s living room in Westland, Mich., a short drive from the Ford Motor assembly plant where they both work. One week into the strike by 3,300 workers at the plant, they were anxiously awaiting […]
Read MoreIn Romania, the Traumas of a Bloody Revolution Still Cast a Long Shadow
After attending a ceremony in May commemorating her dead son and others killed in Romania’s 1989 revolution, a despondent mother — driven to despair by more than three decades of fruitless efforts to find out who murdered her 12-year-old boy — made a final plea for justice. She left the park where the ceremony had […]
Read MoreThe Moral Theater of Social Justice Parenting
I didn’t know what to make of the dolls. There were a half-dozen Black Barbies, Bratz and more arranged neatly on a windowsill. My wife and I were moving to coastal Maine, and as we walked through an open house, the toys in the child’s room bothered me in a way that wasn’t rational but […]
Read MoreThe Rise of Single-Parent Families Is Not a Good Thing
It is an economic imperative to break the vicious cycle of a widening class gap in family structure — and more generally, a high share of one-parent homes outside all but the most highly educated groups in society. That won’t be easy to do. For decades, academics, journalists and advocates have taken a “live and […]
Read MoreThe One Privilege Liberals Ignore
American liberals have led the campaign to reduce child poverty since Franklin Roosevelt, and it’s a proud legacy. But we have long had a blind spot. We are often reluctant to acknowledge one of the significant drivers of child poverty — the widespread breakdown of family — for fear that to do so would be […]
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