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‘Tis the season for all things Halloween, and honestly, you can’t have the holiday without Disney. Some of the most iconic Halloween characters and movies are from the brand, and that means the Disney Store has plenty of Halloween decorations, costumes, and even cozy sleepwear to represent your faves. If you’re looking to hunker down in your favorite spooky gear, then you’re going to be the first one to shout, “THIS IS HALLOWEEN!” when you see the newThe Nightmare Before Christmasslippers — and Romper has your first look.
Joining tons of other merch featuring Jack, Sally, and the rest of the Halloween Town gang, starting Sept. 30, you can grab the perfect black-and-white stripped slippers featuring the one and only Pumpkin King right on top. But Disney Store has also brought out more slippers for the season, including a perfect villainous pair inspired by Maleficent, the Mistress of All Evil from Sleeping Beauty, and even a Pizza Planet-themed pair of slippers from Toy Story.
If you’re hoping for a full sleep look, there are also some jammies inspired by The Nightmare Before Christmas and an ultra-cozy Maleficent-themed nightshirt.
Disney StoreDisney StoreDisney Store
Both the Maleficent slippers and the Pizza Planet slippers are $34.99, while the Nightmare Before Christmas slippers are $24.99. All three of them are super plush and cozy, and I’m honestly obsessed with the retro vibe of the Pizza Planet ones. Doesn’t that ankle cuff remind you of the slippers you had as a little kid in the ‘90s?
Even if you aren’t a big fan of slippers around the house, these are great options for easy Halloween costumes, a pajama day at school, or if you’re wanting to just be on theme as you hand out candy to trick-or-treaters. I’m especially a fan of anyone preparing to give birth near Halloween taking a pair of these in their hospital bag so they can be cozy and festive.
You can purchase these slippers starting Sept. 30 online at DisneyStore.com. You can find all kinds of other cozy sleepwear pieces, too, including festive Mickey Mouse jammies and Nightmare Before Christmas looks for the whole family.
Back-to-school season is here, which means that the workload of many moms has doubled — nay, tripled! During this busy time, it’s all too common for moms to let their own health and well-being fall by the wayside. This can have serious consequences, especially for those with chronic health conditions like severe asthma.
The arrival of fall asthmatic triggers, such as sudden weather changes and increase in ragweed pollen counts, may lead to an increase in asthma attacks and worsening of symptoms around the start of the school year.¹ As your children mingle with other students at school, you may also be at risk of contracting cold and flu viruses that may worsen your asthma symptoms.1,2 In fact, the third week of September is known as “Asthma Peak Week” in the United States. According to Dr. Payel Gupta, M.D., a triple board-certified doctor and allergy specialist, this is the time of year when hospitalizations and emergency room visits for asthma are at its highest.1,3
We talked to Gupta about her advice on navigating back-to-school season for parents living with asthma, and what actions to take to plan ahead to manage triggers during this time.
1. Understand The Basics Behind Asthma And Signs of Severe Asthma
Before fully diving into how to navigate living with severe asthma as a parent, it’s important to understand some general information concerning asthma, which affects over 20 million adults in the United States.⁴
Not an actual patient
“Asthma is a chronic lung condition that causes two things in the airways,” Gupta explains. “It causes inflammation of the airways itself and causes the muscles around the airways to tighten more easily”
While there is currently no cure for asthma, it can be managed and people can have better control with various medication options such as quick-relief inhalers, inhaled corticosteroids, oral steroids, and biologics.⁵
2. Determine Whether You Have Severe Uncontrolled Asthma
A patient classifies as having severe asthma when they require a high-dose inhaled corticosteroids along with a long-acting bronchodilator to keep their asthma controlled. In some instances, these patients can be diagnosed with “severe uncontrolled asthma” when their asthma remains uncontrolled despite using their prescribed medications.6 Around 1 million people within the US are diagnosed with severe, uncontrolled asthma.4,7,8 But even making time to figure out if you have uncontrolled asthma may seem like another chore to add to your list of mom duties. There are online tools like AIRQ, a questionnaire to help assess asthma control for people 12 years and older who have been diagnosed with the disease. Gupta says AIRQ is a great tool to use as a starting point. “It asks you a set of questions and then gives you a score that you can discuss with your doctor to let you know that, ‘You know what? It does look like I could have uncontrolled asthma.’”
Some signs for severe uncontrolled asthma may include the following: having asthma symptoms or using your quick-relief inhaler more than twice a week, waking up at night due to symptoms more than twice a month, and refiling your quick-relief inhaler more than twice a year.⁹
3. Identify Your Asthma Triggers
Asthma attacks can occur when you encounter different triggers including pets, allergies, germs, weather, and air quality.10 That’s why it’s crucial to know your triggers before they lead to an asthma attack.
“When somebody has an exposure that causes more inflammation to occur and the muscles around the airways to tighten up, we can get into a situation where it becomes more difficult to breathe,” Gupta explains.
For busy moms, this can be scary, as they are constantly running around and catering to their family’s needs and may not always be thinking about their own health, or looking out for which triggers to avoid. Gupta encourages moms to be aware of their triggers and prepare for situations where they could be alone with their children and experiencing an asthma flare up.
4. Ask Your Doctor About Treatment Options For You
Gupta encourages people to seek out the advice of a specialist, such as an allergist or pulmonologist, to learn about those options. “Sometimes, if you don't see a specialist, you're not given recommendations for those different therapies,” she says.
Not an actual patient
While there are certain tests and measures that can only be done in person, providing a history of symptoms and answering certain questions can help a doctor figure out if you have uncontrolled asthma.
“Even checking in with your asthma doctor virtually can really, really make a difference,” Gupta explains. “It’s just as important to take care of yourself and to take care of your asthma.”
If your asthma remains uncontrolled despite standard medications, it may be time to talk with your doctor to see if biologics are right for you. One biologic option that is available for severe asthma patients is TEZSPIRE® (tezepelumab-ekko), which is an add-on maintenance treatment for people ages 12 and up with severe asthma.11 It is not for sudden breathing problems. TEZSPIRE may cause allergic reactions. Get help right away if you have swelling of mouth, face, tongue, trouble breathing, rash, itchy or swollen eyes. Additional Important Safety Information is provided below.
With these tips as a guide, know that you have options.
“I always tell my moms that you don’t always have to be limited by your asthma,” Gupta says. “We have so many different types of therapies that are available, if you're under the care of a good specialist, you can have better control.”
Do not use TEZSPIRE if you are allergic to tezepelumab-ekko or any of its ingredients.
Do not use to treat sudden breathing problems.
TEZSPIRE may cause serious side effects, including:
allergic (hypersensitivity) reactions, including anaphylaxis. Serious allergic reactions can happen after your TEZSPIRE injection. Allergic reactions can sometimes happen hours or days after you get a dose of TEZSPIRE. Call your healthcare provider or get emergency help right away if you get any of the following symptoms of an allergic reaction:
rash
breathing problems
hives
red, itchy, swollen, or inflamed eyes
swelling of your face, mouth, and tongue
fainting, dizziness, feeling lightheaded
Before using TEZSPIRE, tell your healthcare provider about all of your medical conditions, including if you:
have ever had a severe allergic reaction
have a parasitic (helminth) infection.
have recently received or are scheduled to receive any vaccinations. You should not receive a “live vaccine” if you are treated with TEZSPIRE.
are pregnant or plan to become pregnant.
are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed. It is not known if TEZSPIRE passes into your breast milk. Talk to your healthcare provider about the best way to feed your baby if you use TEZSPIRE.
are taking prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, or herbal supplements.
Do not change or stop taking your other asthma medicines unless instructed to do so by your healthcare provider.
The most common side effects of TEZSPIRE include: Sore throat, joint and back pain. These are not all the possible side effects.
APPROVED USE
TEZSPIRE is a prescription medicine used with other asthma medicines for the maintenance treatment of severe asthma in people 12 years of age and older whose asthma is not controlled with their current asthma medicine.
TEZSPIRE helps prevent severe asthma attacks (exacerbations) and can improve your breathing.
TEZSPIRE is not used to treat sudden breathing problems. Tell your healthcare provider if your asthma does not get better or if it gets worse after you start treatment with TEZSPIRE.
It is not known if TEZSPIRE is safe and effective in children under 12 years of age.
Allergy & Asthma Network. "10 Ways to Stay Healthy During The September Asthma Peak Week." https://ift.tt/qxOhtXV Accessed July 2024.
Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA). "Respiratory Infections, Flu, and Colds." https://ift.tt/gM81y7m July 2024.
Services, AAFA Community. “Brace Yourselves: The Biggest Week for Asthma Attacks Is Coming.” Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America,https://ift.tt/qxOhtXV . Accessed July 2024.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Most Recent National Asthma Data." https://ift.tt/e9I3SAn July 2024.
“Severe Asthma.” American Lung Association,https://ift.tt/cPsZMHS . Accessed July 2024.
Global Initiative for Asthma. 2024 GINA Report: Global Strategy for Asthma Management and Prevention. 2024. Global Initiative for Asthma, https://ginasthma.org/2024-report/.
Kupczyk M, Wenzel S. U.S. and European severe asthma cohorts: what can they teach us about severe asthma? J Intern Med. 2012;272:121–132.
Chastek B, Korrer S, Nagar SP et al. Economic Burden of Illness Among Patients with Severe Asthma in a Managed Care Setting. J Manag Care Spec Pharm. 2016; 22(7): 848-861.
American Lung Association. "Asthma Control." https://ift.tt/Qf4UOdZ . Accessed July 2024.
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. "Environmental Triggers of Asthma." https://ift.tt/ANh3bTf July 2024.
TEZSPIRE ® (Tezepelumab-ekko) [prescribing information]. Thousand Oaks, CA: Amgen Inc.; and Wilmington, DE: AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP; May 2023.
My daughter is making me learn about plants. By that I mean she will literally stop in the middle of a walk, hand me my phone, and ask me to look up the name of a plant she’s not familiar with. And I have learned so much! I finally know what rhododendrons are, I have a favorite rose (the Mme. Paule Massad), I know that it is (too) easy to grow lettuce, and that sunflowers can hit heights of up to 14 feet. I have learned all of this because my daughter has been obsessed with growing things since she was old enough to speak, and her obsession was surprisingly infectious even for me, a city kid who until recently couldn’t tell the difference between a cherry blossom and a dogwood, and who only knew what oaks were because I once lived on a street named after them.
Plant lore isn’t the only thing I’ve picked up from my daughter. I never had much interest in graphic novels before she came along, my small artist. Now we read them together. It’s been genuinely fun to buy her art supplies and learn about digital art, too. And, talking to parents my age, online and off, I'm struck by how not-even-close-to-alone I am in this. Maybe it's because we spent so much time with them during the Covid pandemic, confined to our homes, but parents seem more delighted than ever to not just support their kids' hobbies — be they sports, the arts, Studio Ghibli movies, or boy band fandoms — but share them, too. And with gratifying results.
“For me it’s musical theatre,” says James Kolchalka, a cartoonist. “I never cared about it before my kids got involved with it and now I act in a production each year and have been fantasizing about writing my own.”
Kelly K. plays Pokemon Go competitively, traveling the world with her two daughters. “We even named our dog Eevee,” she says. “I never thought a video game would take over my life like this!”
Austin Gilkeson was never that into sports, but his son plays on both a little league team and a select team and is a huge fan of the Houston Astros. "He is an absolute baseball fanatic," says Gilkeson. “I've come to know and appreciate the game a lot more —especially the skills of the players. When I'd go to MLB games before my son was born, I went mostly for the beer and hot dogs and barely watched the game. Now when we go, I'm rapt. I even watch it on TV! It's a real gift my son has given me.”
University professor Gigi Gronvall spent so much time on the sidelines of her kids' games, she taught herself sports photography. “It gives me something to do, and now all the teens want the pictures for their Insta.”
“Following where their interests go has been one of the best, unexpected, and life-expanding parts of parenting."
When I was a kid, my parents and my friends’ parents were (usually) supportive — they’d go to the games and the concerts and sometimes even have a good time. But I didn’t know many parents who took up activities alongside their kids. And while I know my generation tends to helicopter, and I was concerned that adapting my kid’s interests could be another way of hovering over her, discovering new interests through my kid has been one of the most surprising and rewarding things about being a parent. Heather Ray, a children’s book author, agrees: “Following where their interests go has been one of the best, unexpected, and life-expanding parts of parenting."
Being a parent is more difficult and more isolating in many ways than it’s ever been, but the life-expanding aspects of parenting can make all the difference. You know, those aspects that exist outside of capitalism, that don’t demand productivity, that have nothing to do with the daily grind. Especially the kind of wholesome, low-stakes, often wildly creative and collaborative interests that kids tend towards.
The kids often outgrow these hobbies and interests. But for us, sometimes they stick. Lauren Ferris says her child briefly went through a mushroom phase. “I love the outdoors and had a casual appreciation of them, but she got really into them and then so did I. Now she’s moved on to something else and I’m out here buying foraging books and constantly on the lookout on every hike.”
Zarine Mohideen is a writer and artist whose then-3-year-old got her really into arts and crafts. "Eventually he outgrew it but I never stopped. Now he’s 7 and I am a painter with a studio, show my art in galleries and exhibitions and do art workshops with elementary age kids.”
As for me? I’ll always be a city kid, but now I’ll be one who stops to smell the flowers, too. And not just the ones that smell good; thanks to my daughter I’ve learned there are corpse flowers in the Botanical Gardens that bloom a few times a year and smell like death. I can’t wait to go to and see it.
Amber Sparks is the author of two collections of stories,And I Do Not Forgive YouandThe Unfinished World, and her fiction and essays have appeared in American Short Fiction, Paris Review, Tin House, Granta, and elsewhere. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband, daughter, and two cats.
Nail girlies, it’s time. The first big holiday in far too many months — Halloween — is now upon us. That means ‘tis the season to break out all the spooky, weird, colorful, terrifying Halloween nail inspo pics you’ve been bookmarking up until now. The ideal Halloween nails for 2024 are on trend but still festive, and unique. Now that nail art is more popular than ever, you don’t want to look over in the checkout line and see someone with basically the same manicure going on.
There is truly endless nail content on Instagram, so there’s no shortage of inspiration photos to scroll through. Don’t be afraid to get specific with your search terms. Is red your go-to nail color? Then look for red and black Halloween nails. There are manicures posted online inspired by every classic movie you can think of — Hocus Pocus, Beetlejuice, Scream, and more — and no less than one bajillion takes on ghosts, mummies, spiderwebs, and witchy imagery. And, if you look through them for a while, you’ll be able to spot some nails that are super festive, but also on trend, incorporating fun textures and in-fashion colors or abstract designs. So, if you’re in the market for the cutest, on-trend Halloween 2024 nail ideas, simply scroll on.
Crystal Ball Halloween Nails
Blooming gel designs really had their moment this year, and this natural base with swirling green on top is a great example of how to make the trend festive. It looks like peering inside a crystal ball, or into a cauldron where a very powerful potion is brewing.
Neutral, Modern Halloween Nails
You know those stores that only sell cowboy boot matchstick holders, cheeky greeting cards, and squiggle-shaped mirrors? These nails have that vibe. They’re cutesy, bold, a little retro, and just generally irresistible.
Matte Skeleton Halloween Nails
OK, is this burnt orange color too good or what? And how someone can paint all the tiny bones in these skeletons is beyond. If you like a toned down, but still festive, nail look, this is the set for you.
Green Velvet Skeleton Halloween Nails
When you think of autumn green nails, your mind probably goes straight to forest, olive, and emerald hues. But an electrifying lime green velvet glitter mani like this is so fun for Halloween. And if you have an artist who can paint on 3D skeleton accents, why wouldn’t you ask for that?
Beetlejuice Halloween Nails
Short nails should get to have some fun too, and this nail art inspired by sand worms and Beetlejuice’s signature stripes are proof it can be done. Plus, how cool is that three dimensional green ooze?
Unique Halloween Nails With The Cutest Floral Designs
Those folksy little skulls? The Jack-O-Lantern flowers? We need this as a wallpaper or something, stat. These nails are so cute, and would be a great jumping off point for your nail artist to paint their take on your tips.
Black & White Halloween Nails
Stars, flowers, spiderwebs, ghosts — all the elements on these nails might sound like too much to fit on such small canvases, but they actually couldn’t look cooler. You could easily swap in a color in place of the black if you want something brighter.
Red & Black Halloween Nails
Alt moms, this one’s for you. The red and black checkerboard, bat tips, and skull and crossbones are all so good. Would it be too much to keep these on year-round...?
Hocus Pocus Halloween Nails
If you’re guilty of saying “Come! We fly!” every time you leave the house in October, you need these nails. The simple silhouettes are still totally recognizable, and you can choose any accent color your heart desires.
Bright, Bold Halloween Nails
Pink does not get enough love around Halloween, but these nails are giving it time to shine. The chromed out pink nail base with lime green accents is perfect for anyone who likes to go bold with their manicures.
Scarecrow Halloween Hails
Don’t these tips look like little zig-zag burlap edges you’d see on a scarecrow’s tunic? The orange Jack-O-Lanterns and flowers add a great pop of color to this matte nail look.
Scream Nails For Halloween
Horror movie fans probably already have their must-watch movies all lined up for the month. If Scream is your all-time favorite, you’ll love this bold black-and-white Ghostface set with detailed renderings of the antagonist’s spooky mask.
Subtle Witchy Halloween Nails
These lavender tips are such a pretty way to do purple Halloween nails. The little moon, stars, and serpent all have majorly magical vibes without being over-the-top.
Poison Apple Nails, But Make Them Cherries
Circling back to that lime green idea, you might have also noticed fruit nails were a huge trend this year — especially cherry nails. So, these little poison cherries are such a cute idea if you too were rocking juicy red cherry nails this summer.
Colorful, Sweet Halloween Nails
Pink and blue are not in the usual Halloween color wheel, but this nail artist made a strong case that they should be added with this set. The little blue ghosts on the glitter nails are just too good. And does that pumpkin actually have ridges? So cool.
Floral Ghost Nails
Little peekaboo ghosts on the tips of the nails are such a cute way to make a French manicure feel more festive. The tiny handpainted flowers in fall colors add the sweetest touch. This design would also look just as cute on short nails, too.
The Cutest Mix & Match Halloween Nails
If you’re stuck between a few different ideas of what to put on your nails, you actually don’t have to choose. This artist combined pumpkins, bats, and little ghosts, and made them all feel cohesive with a classic orange and black color palette and little accent stars.
Classic Orange & Black Halloween Nails
What’s not to love about this set? They’re the perfect almond shape, they have some fun and trendy abstract elements, and the bold colors make it clear you’re in the mood for spooky season.
So, which pics are you saving to show your nail tech? There are quite a few worth bookmarking here.
Last year, a letter in the medical journal Pediatrics argued that the frightening decline in mental health among American kids can be partly explained by a lack of independent play. When kids don’t get to solve their own problems, the researchers wrote, they develop a belief that they have no control over what happens to them, stoking depression and anxiety. Effectively, the prescription was: send them outside, without phones, to find other kids to play with.
Easier said than done. Forty years of changing parenting norms persuaded us that structured, supervised activities were the best and safest way to encourage kids’ development — and time use studies show that, on average, moms today spend two more hours a day hands-on parenting than our grandmothers did.
Still, every family knows the thrill of loosening the reins: the confidence it gives kids and the convenience it affords parents (once the panic and dread wear off). In the spirit of giving ourselves permission to be less attentive parents — for our kids’ sakes! — Romper asked our friends, our group chats, and our favorite parenting experts: What’s one thing you let your kid do, even though it scared you? How did it change your kid? How did it change you?
Let Them Find Their Own Way, Literally
Over and over, parents told us how transformative it was for their kids to have more autonomy in their daily commutes, from preschool to high school.
When kids don’t get to solve their own problems, research shows they develop a belief that they have no control over what happens to them. | Ariela Basson/Romper; Getty Images
My 3-year-old scoots to school
I don’t have a scooter and don’t want to have to run alongside him while he scoots, so I said to him, ‘Okay, here’s the deal. You must stop at every corner, every alley, every parking lot. And if you hear me yell stop, you have to stop. If you can’t or won’t do that, then there’s no more scooting.’ We had a hiccup where he didn’t stop when I yelled ‘stop,’ but I very calmly said, ‘if you do that again, there is no more scooting.’ He knows I mean it when I say something like that, and he never did it again.
I’m a military spouse, and my American family has lived in Germany for about three years. My daughter walks to school alone, which at first felt like so much. We don’t do this in the States at this age! But she walks in a group with tons of kids around, and German culture is like, all the grandmas watching out the windows. And being the Americans we are, we bought her airtags. But she’s so excited: She’s so proud of herself for walking to school and her after school program without a parent.
We started letting my eldest bike home from school on her own at the beginning of 2nd grade. It scared the crap out of me, but when I picked her up from school she was always in a bad mood and wanted to be by herself (restraint collapse). One day she took off by herself on her bike, and that was it, I couldn’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. It made me SO NERVOUS but other parents stop and tell me all the time how safe and responsible she is on her bike.
— Susan, Oregon
My 9-year-old takes the ferry
The school bus drops her at the pier. She had some anxiety about the social part of sitting alone on the ferry, or sitting next to someone she doesn’t know and existing there for 25-30 minutes. The first few days she would FaceTime me but now she gets out her homework and finishes it so she can meet a friend or chill once she’s back.
— Shelby, Hong Kong
My 12-year-old takes the light rail
We've begun letting our 12-year-old and his friend take the T from our neighborhood to Downtown on their own. They’ll hit up a toy store or Target for Pokemon or just hang out in a public square, people watching. Around the holidays they went to the ice rink and skated. It’s rewarding to see the ways we’ve encouraged our kids to trust themselves and their own judgment pay off in big adventures.
— Lauren, Pittsburgh, PA
If You Let Them Do It, You Don’t Have To
Talk to a bunch of parents about giving in to their kids’ demands, and you’ll be surprised how much of what kids want to do amounts to, basically, chores.
Every family knows the thrill of loosening the reins: the confidence it gives kids and the convenience it affords parents (once the fear and dread wears off!). | Ariela Basson/Romper; Getty Images
My 1-year-old brushes his own teeth
I started letting my little one brush his teeth. I know that sounds so trivial but when his pediatrician told me that he needed to brush them twice a day for at least two minutes, I wanted to get an A+ in that department. But my little man wasn't having it. He didn't want me anywhere near his mouth and it was such a big fight every morning and night. Finally I stopped fighting him and let him do it. Even if all he did was lick the tooth paste or gag on the brush which was nerve wracking as hell. I took a step back and let him do his own thing as I brushed my own teeth to show him.
Children are so observant anyway, and after a few weeks he began to mimic me.
— Jessica, Illinois
A toddler can care for a pet
Ever since our toddler was able to walk, we would allow her to feed our dogs. This started with her attempting to scoop one or two pebbles and bring it over to all three of our dogs’ bowls. She would attempt to pour it into the dogs’ bowls, with most of it ending up on the ground. Eventually it turned into more pebbles in the scoop, but with more pebbles all over the ground (which of course, the dogs would still happily eat). But now that she’s 2.5, she wakes up every morning happy and excited to successfully feed the dogs! We don’t even ask her, she usually takes it upon herself to do it.
While I help with heavier glass items and we skip anything sharp, he’s excited to clean up after himself (yes, he's a Virgo) and it’s helping him to learn that dishes don't just magically appear cleaned the next day. I was nervous about the safety around broken glass, but a few months in, while the risk is still there, it’s not as much of a guarantee as I thought.
I really like the independence it's fostering in him and also the trust it's building for me. As I see him pick up these tasks and (mostly) follow the parameters around these tasks, I start to trust him and his abilities, which is a cool feeling.
— Liz, Chicago, IL
A preschooler can retrieve her lost stuff
When our teenager was 3, we were outside the Seattle Art Museum, halfway down a flight of stairs, when we realized she had left her sweater in the museum’s restaurant. I explained that she should go back and ask someone working at the restaurant if they had seen it. She was nervous, but the wall and doors were glass. She could see me the whole time. Going in, she was clearly hesitant, clearly a bit out of her comfort zone. Coming out, she clutched that sweater aloft like Rocky with his heavyweight championship belt.
— Gail, San Francisco, CA
A 4-year-old can cut his own fruit
I found a Montessori-approved kid safe knife and cutting set with a cutting board. We did a few lessons before allowing him to try supervised. Since then it feels good to allow him to do this on his own with permission, even though it makes me sad he’s getting bigger!
— Deb Padgett, Evanston, IL
An elementary schooler can pour their own milk
My kids weren’t strong enough to manage a full milk jug on their own so I bought a dispenser that fits over the opening of jug so they can easily get themselves their own cups of milk or bowls of cereal before grown-ups wake up in the morning.
— Evie, Maryland
A 6-year-old can put up Christmas decorations
There are a lot of men in this world who don’t know how to do things, and I think that’s because their moms have always done it for them. I want to raise men who participate in the world and in their home. I bought an artificial Christmas tree this year, and my son Samuel, who’s now 6, was adamant that he do the assembly of the Christmas tree: ‘Mommy, hands off.’ It was a proud moment because he was taking care of me and taking charge.
When my children were in middle school, they would lie in bed next to me while I, say, wrote their head of school an email about why a particular math class didn't seem like a good fit; I would narrate what I was writing and why it was important to be gracious. Then there was a long period of coaching. Where the kids would write their own email and show me, and I would offer this or that suggestion. And then after that? They just did these things on their own, however important they were. The kids talked to their guidance counselors or sought clarification from colleges they were applying to or made an appointment with a teacher to discuss a problem or ask for a letter of recommendation.
A few months ago our son (11) asked if he could ride his bike down to Walgreens and back, alone, to buy something. There's just a lot of traffic around and there was the matter of locking his bike, handling money, and maybe engaging with panhandlers. My kid doesn't have a phone and my husband asked me if he should give our son a phone for the trek. I said no, because if anything happened, everyone else has a phone and when we were kids, we went out on our own without devices.
My son made it back safely and brought my husband a candy bar he bought him. I said, "You better eat that candy bar--he went out into the wild and hunted it and brought it back for you."
Because, as painful as it is, not stepping in to fix things for your kids is the best way for them to learn.
Ariela Basson/Romper; Getty Images
I let my kid go to school underdressed
My 7-year-old is responsible for remembering the things she needs every day. I have a checklist by the door. The other day, she didn’t wear a sweater under her snow jacket. I knew she’d forgotten it, and I was just like, ‘It’s going to be okay!’ She came home and said, ‘Mom, I didn’t put a sweater on, and I was really cold all day at school.’ If I’d done it for her, she wouldn’t have made that connection.
We live in a rural community in Ohio with a few other families on a country lane we call “the hoop” that runs between several far-flung houses. My 5-year-old son has a good bit of freedom in the woods, so when he asked to go for a walk I figured he would just go to our neighbor’s swings or the top of a nearby hill, as he usually does. When I realized he had been gone longer than I expected, I hopped on my bike to go searching. One neighbor said he had just passed, walking happily. When I got back home, he was happy and proud that he had walked the hoop alone. I just asked him to let me know when he was going to go around the whole hoop in the future... and he did.
— Anonymous, Ohio
We gave up on middle school altogether
With our twins, who are now in high school, we decided to view middle school as “The Mistake Years.” We wanted to remove the safety net and let them fail a little bit. The goal in sixth grade was to not take any zeros. Just turn your work in, period. Seventh grade was all about talking to adults on their own and advocating for themselves — no more mom emailing the teacher about a late assignment. In eighth grade, we decided to let them fail when they hadn’t put the work in and see for themselves how it affected their grades. It’s paid off. They own the relationships with educators now. Not us.
— Heather and Heath, Minnesota
I let my kid mess up an important school project
I didn't ‘fix’ the situation when my 11-year-old came into my room at 9pm sobbing that he wasn't going to finish his huge, months-long social studies project before the deadline (which was, of course, that night at midnight). He'd been working hard on the project but had over-committed in terms of the project's scope and under-estimated how much time it would take. Although I desperately wanted to swoop in and help him, or at least reach out to the teacher on his behalf, I didn't. I explained that grades don’t matter nearly as much as learning from the situation. I helped him brainstorm options for moving forward.
The Terrifying Times Our Kids Put Themselves In Physical Peril — And Survived
We are wired to physically protect our kids, but at some point they have to learn how to keep themselves safe, too.
In 2023, the medical journal Pediatrics argued that the frightening decline in mental health among American kids can be partly explained by a lack of independent play. | Ariela Basson/Romper; Getty Images
My two-year-old really wanted to tackle this enormous climbing wall
It was at the playground, probably 10 feet high. She got a few feet up and lost her footing and slipped. She was screaming, but I’m an EMT — screaming is a great sign. You always want them to be crying when it comes to injury. I didn’t see an arm out of joint, and she wanted to try again so I took that as permission to let her try again.
— Zan, Vermont
I let my kindergartener start fires
I first built a fire with my 5-year-old twins on a mommy-and-me camping trip when they were toddlers. My daughter Mikey has a strong interest in fire — at age 4, we were playing outside when she found a lighter and safely started her own campfire. At first I was horrified. My preschooler just started a fire! But I know grown men that can’t do that, so I began to give her a safe outlet for her interest. We now store lighters securely, but we give her chances to build and light fires whenever we can. We also read by candlelight each evening and she lights those candles for me. It’s a safe and cozy way to manage her interest, and while it stretches me as a parent, giving her this freedom (with some ground rules in place) has worked better than just saying no.
— Anonymous
Our 9-year-old joined the indoor rock climbing gym team
...which fucking terrifies me! The kid belaying her is also 9!”
— Hayley, Virginia
I let my kids out of my sight on hikes
My kids would run up ahead of me on short mountain hikes and I would immediately tell them to wait and let me lead. Eventually, when they were about 5 and 6, I decided to take some deep breaths and let them. I still get a little panicky when I feel like they are too close to a ledge or getting too far ahead of me. But, after a couple falls, I notice them stepping a little more carefully and looking out for each other.
— Sadie, Colorado
I let my 2-year-old cook
Like use a knife, mix things on the stove, get her hands dirty, really get in there (of course all under my close supervision). My husband still worries that she will burn herself or cut herself. And I'm sure she will. But she's so proud! She says, "thank you, chef" and "you're welcome, chef.” I love that we've turned this mundane, daily task of cooking dinner into something that gives her pride and makes her feel like a contributor to our family. Of course there are limits, but I've found the more I let go, the more she steps up.
— Nicole Wood, Chicago, IL
Answers have been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Like many moms of school-aged kids, JoAnna Garcia Swisher [Sweet Magnolias, Reba] spends a lot of her time in the car. Her daughters — Emerson, 11, and Sailor, 8 whom she shares with her husband Nick Swisher— are always off to somewhere. School, horseback riding lessons, cheer practice (“I’m officially a cheer mom!” she tells me on Zoom), but she doesn’t seem to mind too much. In fact, she relishes this time.
“Honestly, it's my favorite time with the kids, and I talk to so many moms and dads that feel this way too,” she says. “My husband takes the kids to school in the morning and I pick up— Nick likes to pump them up for the day and gets all of their thoughts and motivation and I get the debrief on the way home because those first few minutes when they get in my car, I learn more than anything.”
So her fondness for this particular time and space made her recent partnership with Kelley Blue Book (KBB) — in connection with their list of 12 Best Family Cars of 2024 — a no-brainer.
“[Being in the car means] there's no distractions and we're there and it's actual quality time,” she explains. (If you’re finding your car trips are less profound, never fear— KBB has released “Car-fessional” cards, open ended questions for your family discuss on your next drive. You can find them pinned on their Instagram profile.)
These daily conversations have also allowed the mom and actress to realize that even though her girls are only three years apart, the space between “11-year-old tween” and “still-a-kid 8” are profound.
“They're both in very different stages,” she says. “And I don't know that I would've said that a year ago ... Emerson is fully in her tween era where conversations are different and things are changing and it's really, actually...” there’s a little pause. “I didn't know what I would think of this because when they grow up they grow up so fast. But I always want to keep them my baby.”
But babies don’t have the kind of “meaningful and thoughtful” conversations her eldest is now having. As much as she misses that baby phase, this new one is fascinating and beautiful.
“You can see her putting things together and how she views the world. And it's just really interesting. ... She's really kind of come into this new confident little young woman and it's just really sweet to see. And I am very excited for her.”
And Sailor, in the tradition of little sisters can’t wait to catch up.
— Bob D'Amico/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images
But that’s not to say the sisters don’t have anything in common anymore. They both, for example, love watching their mom’s TV shows and movies.
“The stuff that I've done is pretty family friendly!” she says brightly. “They watched most of Sweet Magnolias, and they just got into Reba because it’s on Netflix.”
The faces are familiar. Garcia Swisher is still close with much of the cast of the show, and her girls have grown up with them as a sort of extended family. “It was exciting for them to see the people that they love so much that spoil them and love on them, see us all together... and me with blonde hair, that was also a highlight for them.”
Next up? Possibly Are You Afraid of the Dark, which Garcia Swisher was in when she was just a little bit older than Emerson. Maybe they can stream a few episodes together on their next road trip...
While promoting my first book at readings and book club gatherings and libraries around the country, I spent most of my time talking about abortion. I made jokes about my cervix; I cried (and laughed) with readers who so generously and movingly shared their own stories with me (and/or asked me to draw boobs in their copies when they reached the front of the book-signing line). I answered endless questions about seaweed and God and selective terminations and C-sections and abortion clinic candy drawers.
And I would always find a way to bring up the fact that we, as a culture, have been conditioned to understand abortion in certain narrow ways, for certain narrow purposes. We’ve been trained to frame our circumstances in a certain way with certain words when we argue for our basic human rights. For instance, “trimesters.” This is a revelation for many people, maybe even for most of us: Trimesters aren’t real.
When examining the text of, or the circumstances surrounding, 1973’s Roe v. Wade decision — as you may feel the unfortunate need to spend more and more of your one wild and precious life doing these days — you’ll see some interesting quotation marks, and note some interesting usage of terms like “crafted” and “devised.” You’ll see frequent mention of trimesters and viability, but not of their biological origins. This is because they were invented by a man named Harry Blackmun, who was not a doctor but a judge, a Supreme Court justice, who, even as he invented them, admitted just how arbitrary these concepts are.
Trimesters are the Easter Bunny. They are the Tooth Fairy. They are Santa Claus, if Santa Claus was a cop and also had failed high school biology.
This trimester framework is derived not from ancient medicine or common knowledge of the human body and reproductive systems but from nine guys who went to law school before women could get credit cards in our own name, and their assessment of when “the state’s interest” in our pregnancies might become “compelling.” I just love to compel people, don’t you? In other words: Trimesters are real — have to be real, for those of us whose bodies and lives are being legislated about — in the way that money and the stock market and the economy are real. In other words: They are figments of some crusty old male imaginations.
Trimesters are the Easter Bunny. They are the Tooth Fairy. They are Santa Claus, if Santa Claus was a cop and also had failed high school biology.
The sole purpose of Roe’s “trimester framework” (note the use of quotation marks, which allow us to just be out here saying any old thing we want!) was to permit different states to enact different categories of abortion regulations at different stages of pregnancy. That’s it.
“For the stage prior to approximately the end of the first trimester,” Justice Blackmun wrote, in his majority opinion on Roe for the court, “the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman’s attending physician.”
In the so-called second trimester, Blackmun went on to propose, the state could adopt abortion restrictions “reasonably related to maternal health.”
Then, Blackmun wrote, would come “viability.” After fetal “viability” — which, in the court’s mind, is some exact moment at which all fetuses could survive outside the womb, then associated with the third trimester but in actuality varies widely from pregnancy to pregnancy — a state’s interest in “the potentiality of human life” would support prohibition of abortion, as long as the law allowed exceptions for “the life or health of the mother.”
I have many questions for Justice Blackmun. Here are just a few:
At this mysterious moving target of “viability,” the fetus can “survive” on its own, how? On life support? With what medical interventions and for how long?
What, having survived, is then its quality of life?
What if the fetus will not survive any given length of gestation because of anomalies or genetic conditions?
And who is deciding, here, what “health” means? Or how close a pregnant person can get to dying before abortion care can be provided to keep them alive? Who is deciding what it means if they die later, from complications of the labor and delivery they couldn’t or didn’t want to endure?
Let me know, Harry!
One of the most crazy-making aspects of parenthood — and just plain old existence — in this country in 2024 is the legally mandated lack of imagination available to the rest of us. Yes, we seem to be told, this is all logistically impossible, and also breathtakingly cruel, but it has to be this way, you see. There is no other way! Day care has to be privatized and run by corporations, and it must charge mortgage-sized tuition fees while paying its teachers unlivable wages. You have to go back to work after 12 (unpaid! Deal with it!) weeks of parental leave, your child quite literally a newborn up until this very second, your body and brain still in the very beginning stages of recovery from their birth. We have to build highways and parking garages in lieu of functional public transit, and wars must be fought to pay for all the oil we just have to suck from the Earth and use in order to get to the jobs that have to be worked outside of our homes and on a separate schedule than our schools, which just, unavoidably, are full of guns. There’s nothing we can do about it, you understand.
Is it unfortunate that intrauterine device (IUD) insertions simply must be agonizingly painful? Sure. Is it tragic that every few hours there is a school shooting in America, and that the pollinators are dying off and the sea level is rising, and that nobody in power will lift a single finger to protect our children from this abject horror? We guess so! But them’s the breaks. That’s the way the cookie crumbles. Thoughts and prayers go out to you, though, for sure. So many thoughts and prayers.
So, too, must pregnancy be the (terrifying, nonsensical, wildly inequitable) way it is, in America. The state wields the unquestionable right and power to intervene in our pregnancies, we are told. Which interventions it chooses — and at which stages of those pregnancies — depends on our geographic, racial, and socio-economic circumstances. Normal! Fine! Can’t be any other way, even though abortion itself is one of many totally normal pregnancy outcomes and is older than the Catholic Church, the Supreme Court, and the United States.
Pregnancies just happen to be neatly divided into three little containers, you see, identical inside each body just as our children are then identical little robots who develop along predetermined and exact timelines once they are born.
Abortion is an act of imagination, too.
There are many, many reasons why the Roe v. Wade decision was possible in 1973 and wouldn’t be now. The ruling — which was, in actual practice and for all our invocation of its gifts, an abortion ban that dictated on a federal level which abortions were acceptable and allowable and which were punishable by law — was a product of a time rich in Men Making Stuff Up (see also: Henry Kissinger, Vietnam War), but also of a time in which abortion was not yet the enormously profitable political football and fundraising buzzword it has become today.
When Roe was decided, it was by a Republican-nominated Supreme Court. In fact, the seven out of nine justices who agreed that the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment (which says that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”) implies a right to privacy counted lifelong Republicans among their ranks. The Republican Party had not yet discovered that extremist and draconian anti-abortion policy was the key to unlocking enormous treasure chests of evangelical and Catholic money and lobbying power. When Roe was decided, William J. Brennan was the only Catholic justice. Today, six of the nine justices are Catholic.
In both of my own pregnancies, one of which ended with the birth of my child and the other with an abortion, I found myself having to work harder than ever to remember what is real and what is not. At 13 weeks and one day pregnant, in my so-called second trimester, I was devastated to find that I did not suddenly stop vomiting and start glowing, as every book and neighbor and nurse had assured me I would.
I had to remind myself, over and over again: These are not actually the terms set by my body.
At 24 weeks — the age at which the McCullough textbook says that my American fetus should survive outside the womb — I was enraged by the realization that said “survival” would require a level and volume of medical intervention that would ruin my life and finances forever, not to mention imparting the trauma of an uncertain stay in the NICU even without any other major complications.
I had to remind myself, over and over again: These are not actually the terms set by my body. That unlike the elephantine swelling of my feet or the hormones that make me sob for 45 minutes about a bird I saw that looked like it might be hurt, these terms are not actually real.
You see, these things aren’t inevitable or observed to be occurring naturally in our bodies or on our courts. These goalposts aren’t shifting themselves. These laws and statutes and amendments aren’t simply appearing on the magic erase tablets of our state constitutions. They are decided, designed, calculated, created, enacted and then enforced, by whichever nine or 12 or 4 or 535 people have enough money and free time — and enough control over their own reproductive lives and family structures — to get the jobs that give them power over the rest of us.
But, as I tell patients and doula clients and readers alike: Abortion is an act of imagination, too. It’s an act of creating an alternative path for yourself, instead of following the directions written by those who a) don’t know which way is up and b) don’t care if you live or die, as long as you make them money. Access to abortion care — whether we seek it for ourselves or help support and provide it for each other — is one of the ways we go off-script, abandoning the nonsensical plots they keep writing and re-writing for us, in a language they’ll never even be able to learn. They can make up all the little scenes and characters and rules they want. We write our own stories.
If you’ve ever gotten a mammogram and read through your results, you probably saw that section that says “you may have dense breasts, yada yada yada.” Well, telling someone they may or may not have something is... less than helpful. But starting September 10, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will require all mammography facilities to inform women, on their mammo results, whether they have dense breasts or not. Here’s everything you need to know about the new standard.
What does it mean to have dense breasts?
Breast density is basically just a measurement of how much glandular and fibrous tissue is in your breasts compared to fat. If you have a lot of it and not so much fatty tissue, you have dense breasts. Dense breasts are harder to see through on a mammogram, according to the American Cancer Society, which makes it harder for radiologists to spot cancer in your mammo images. Women who have dense breasts also have a higher risk of developing breast cancer than other women, though research hasn’t yet figured out why.
Women with dense breasts might need additional screenings, like an ultrasound or MRI, to detect breast cancer in its early stages. So, you can imagine why it’s important to be notified if you have dense breasts. “We haven't always told women about this information, and there are many advocates who experienced a late-stage diagnosis of breast cancer and said, ‘Well, wait, I just got my mammogram three months ago and it was fine.’ And the reason that they have a later-stage cancer is because their cancer just doesn’t show up on a mammogram, even though they’ve been going every year regularly,” says Dr. Wendie Berg, M.D., professor of radiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and chief scientific advisor for DenseBreast-info.org.
Where’d this new standard come from?
The National Breast Density Reporting Standard is a new federal legislation that requires all mammography facilities to notify a woman whether her breasts are “not dense” or “dense” on her results. In the past, only some states had laws in place to ensure mammogram facilities provided this information to their patients, but even then, the language in many of their notifications was confusing or less than helpful, says JoAnn Pushkin, executive director of DenseBreast-info.org. For example, some states will just add general information about dense breasts to a patient’s results without specifying that she has them — making it read like it doesn’t pertain to her.
Pushkin was diagnosed with breast cancer after years of faithfully getting her mammograms, and later discovered that her doctors and mammogram facility had all been aware she had dense breasts, but they never told her. Had she known, she says she would have pushed for more screenings each year. After the grueling treatment process, Pushkin took action.
“I lived in New York state, and I began to work on the introduction of a New York state breast density inform law, which was ultimately signed into law in 2012. We became the very first state in the United States to require that women actually be told after their mammograms that your breast tissue is dense, that it can hide cancer, does increase your risk, and certainly you should speak to your doctor about additional screening after your mammogram.” Many other states followed suit, and Pushkin reached out to the FDA in 2011 about making this notification a federal standard. Now, in 2024, it’s finally in place.
So you got your results. Now what?
For starters, pay close attention to the section about dense breasts on your mammogram results. The information there will be new and specific to you. “Women are used to getting some of these general notices and this will be very different. Heads up, pay attention, read it,” says Pushkin.
Next, talk to your doctor about what having dense breasts might mean for you. If you have other breast cancer risk factors, they might want you to get additional breast cancer screenings each year. The mammogram report that is sent to your doctor must now include your category of breast density, Berg says, so ask about yours. There are four categories: fatty or scattered, which will be labeled as “not dense” on your patient report, and heterogeneously dense or extremely dense, which would be labeled as “dense.” Your breast density affects your personal level of risk.
Do some homework. Experts don’t totally agree on the best screenings for women with dense breasts, so you’ll want to be ready to discuss what you think is best with your doctor. DenseBreast-info.org has in-depth resources about the pros and cons of each type of screening so you can be informed about each one, and flow charts and risk models your physician can use to help decide the best next steps.
Of course, additional screenings will mean additional costs. Currently, 33 states (and Washington D.C.) have laws in place requiring insurance providers to cover some diagnostic testing after a screening mammogram, but many plans are exempt. In order to make sure all women have equal access to the screenings they need, Pushkin and Berg’s organization is working with Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro on the Find it Early Act. “It would require all insurance, including all federal plans, to fully cover — with no copay or deductible — the cost of that additional screening and diagnostic testing up to the point of biopsy. That would level the playing field and should improve access greatly,” says Berg.
All in all, this standard is a huge step in ensuring women are notified about their own bodies and risk factors, and that they have all the information they need to make informed decisions about their health care. “This standard is something that allows the patient to at least then understand and think about what’s right for her with fewer surprises down the road,” Berg says. “I hate to see any woman come in with a lump due to cancer that could have been found earlier. She should have a choice, does she want to have the additional testing or not?”
“It has been many years of women fighting in individual states to try to prevent this tragedy from pulling up a chair to anyone else’s kitchen table. There are women who are no longer with us who were fighting for these laws in states while they were undergoing treatment who have died in the meantime. These are preventable tragedies,” says Pushkin.
Last fall I was sitting in my therapist’s office, crying about whether I would ever have kids. In my 20s, it had been so easy to swear I would never be this woman: obsessed with fertility, reducing her life and body to a steadily-ticking time bomb. But nothing humbles you like the passage of time, and there I was, 36 and single and crying. “Have you thought about freezing your eggs?” my therapist asked.
I’d encountered the question before, of course. I knew other women who’d done it, who said it had changed their lives. Taken a weight off of their minds. Allowed them to finally relax, date for fun, and not worry so much.
But I had always been resistant. There was the expense, first of all: usually in the neighborhood of $10,000, unthinkable on my freelancer’s income. But more than that, I didn’t want to have to admit to anyone — especially myself — that it was time to do anything other than wait and see. Having to freeze my eggs felt like a series of compounding failures: failure to be eternally young, to be wanted and loved, and, on top of that, to be like, totally chill about it all.
The reason I go to therapy is so that someone will look me in the eye and say: you sound really stupid right now, Zan.
I was forced to admit that I did. So I asked my parents to cover the costs of a round, and they agreed. (They can afford it, and would very much like a grandchild.) From there, it felt like fate took over: I mentioned the idea to a friend who went to medical school, and she lit up. Her favorite classmate had just started working at a fertility clinic and was looking for clients; she put us in touch. Dr. A assured me that actually, 36 was the perfect time to be doing this: old enough that the eggs we got were likely to be useful to me, but young enough that their quality would still be good.
I was buoyed by a sense that everything was falling into place; that I was on the path, as we say out here in LA. That even though this wasn’t exactly what I had wanted, it was at least going to be easy. I would endure a couple of uncomfortable weeks, learn how to give myself shots, watch my ovaries swell to the size of tennis balls, and then I would be done. I already looked forward to how I’d feel after: triumphant. Accomplished. And of course, that most sought-after state of all: relaxed.
I went in for an initial scan — a brief blood draw, a transvaginal ultrasound. A few days later, I got my results.
And that was where the fairytale ended. It turned out that my ovarian reserve was low — basically, I just don’t have that many eggs left. (I will never get over how uncanny it feels to talk about “my eggs.”) If I was trying to get pregnant the old-fashioned way, it wouldn’t necessarily matter — after all, for that, you only need one. But egg freezing is a numbers game. You want to harvest as many as you can at once.
I knew how devastating fertility struggles could be in theory. My friend Doree Shafrir made a whole podcast about the subject. But as I cried my way through the next few days— I am a champion crier — I realized that I had miscategorized this adventure in my head. I had not thought of egg freezing as a fertility treatment. In fact, I had unconsciously considered it as a shortcut away from the very situation I now found myself in. An insurance policy against fertility issues; a promise that I could simply buy my way out of running out of time.
I know I am not alone, and how could I be? The industry has a vested interest in maintaining this delusion. Business Insider recently wrote about how clinics are targeting increasingly younger women with the promise of a “set it and forget it” approach to having kids: the alluring notion that fertility is a problem that, thanks to modern medicine, can be easily solved.
But there are warnings, if you look for them. As I tried to figure out how many rounds I’d have to go through to get a reasonable number of eggs, I landed on a New York Timesheadline that read, “‘Sobering’ Study Shows Challenges of Egg Freezing,” which assured me that my low egg count could be a big, big problem. It turned out that it had been shortsighted at best not to do more research before plunking down some $12,000 of my parents’ money on something that might never yield meaningful results. Because if I wanted any real assurance of a baby someday, I’d have to do this — and spend that much — somewhere between two and five more times.
The length of that initial cycle, from first bloodwork to the final retrieval, was 12 long days, and I spent them swimming in confusion and grief. I had just convinced myself to try, only to be reminded, in no uncertain terms, that all of my effort might be in vain. I now felt not only old and unwanted but also stupid and wasteful.
Fertility presses on so many tender spots: it thumbs hard at bruises around what the “right” kind of body is, and whether you have one, and whether you could be doing more to achieve one.
When I had talked to friends before the procedure, we had all framed the decision to freeze eggs as sort of like getting LASIK, which I also did a few years ago. A little risky, yes, but ultimately common and barely noteworthy. I had not taken the possibility of failure, or even grief, into account.
And it's true that, even if someone had tried to tell me how wrong I was, I’m not sure I would have been willing to hear it. On some level I knew instinctively that once I stopped being casual about this, I would have to look at a tangle of complications I rarely want to acknowledge, let alone confront. The reminders that fertility, pregnancy, birth — they’re medical, yes, but they’re also something more.
Fertility presses on so many tender spots: it thumbs hard at bruises around what the “right” kind of body is, and whether you have one, and whether you could be doing more to achieve one. But more than that, it reminds us that for all of the signs of aging that we can forestall or hide — gray hair, wrinkled foreheads — we cannot stop the clock entirely. That there are certain things that you cannot hold onto forever. That one of them is, inevitably, your own life.
That sounds dramatic. But I just mean: my body has changed and evolved in so many ways in the last 37 years. There are yoga postures, for instance, that used to be as natural as breathing that, at some point, I lost my grip on. The difference is, if I really applied myself, I could probably get my flying crow back. But there is no amount of effort and training, or medical intervention — whether it be supplements or acupuncture or prayers or even egg-freezing— that will make my body have a baby it doesn’t want to have. If I haven’t already lost my fertility, someday I will. As surely as I will someday lose my breath.
Put another way: Since I got my first period at 10, I have had to grapple with the idea that my body had the potential to create life. How could losing that not feel like a kind of death?
You can see why having to pay $12,000 to figure all of that out really felt like adding insult to injury.
In the end, after those harrowing 12 days, my first cycle went well. The retrieval was smooth, and we got five mature eggs, which put my chances of having a kid from them at an estimated 36%.
And then, knowing everything I (now) knew, I decided to do it again.
This time, I paid for the cycle myself, with the help of a very good year at work and the Jewish Free Loan Agency, which made the money aspect of the procedure much easier to swallow. I got the exact same number on try #2 as try #1, which means I now have approximately a 50/50 chance of getting a child from those eggs. The flip of a coin. Somehow, that feels exactly right to me. It sits on the knife’s edge of possibility: a hope, but not a certainty. A door I’ve opened and may or may not ever be able to walk through.
I think of it like an ante, a way of putting skin in whatever game I’m playing with the universe. Saying, I want this very badly, and I’m willing to sacrifice something for it.
The egg freezing process is a lonely one, or at least it was for me. I got bloated and tired, but more than that I felt vulnerable, constantly aware of my swollen ovaries, of the promise and potential they held. Both times I burrowed down, spent the days mostly alone, witnessing my body as it took syringes of chemical intrusion and transformed them into — well, we’ll see what, eventually. It gave me a lot of time to think. And what I thought a lot, that second time, was: why am I doing this again?
It also gave me time to think through an answer. I have so little control in this situation. I can’t magically conjure a boyfriend or husband, without whom having a child is, for me, financially and logistically infeasible.
But time does continue to pass; my body continues to change. Freezing my eggs might help less than I want it to. But it has to be better than doing nothing. At the very least, I think of it like an ante, a way of putting skin in whatever game I’m playing with the universe. Saying, I want this very badly, and I’m willing to sacrifice something for it.
Trying is a loaded word around fertility — and what does it mean, to try to make a body do something? Biology is one of the more stubborn facts I’ve encountered in my lifetime. But also, this is something I want, and I probably have a few more years left yet. What is there to do but open up my palms, surrender to chance, and ask for help? Why wouldn’t I try whatever I can?
Alexandra Romanoff is the author ofBig Fan, thedebut romance novel from 831 Stories. She isalso a journalist, a cultural critic, and the author of three previous novels. She also co-hosts the podcast On the Bleachers, which examines the intersection of sports and pop culture. Her favorite member of One Direction is Louis Tomlinson. She lives and writes in LA.
I will forever miss the big holiday catalogs coming in the mail, but the Walmart 2024 Top Toys List coming out each year nearly fills that hole. With three small kids who don’t watch a whole lot of cable TV — and therefore miss a lot of commercials that they can shout, “Ooh I want that!” to — it’s imperative that I get a list of the top toys of the year to finish up my holiday shopping. Walmart’s Top Toys List is back this year with a whopping 66 must-have toys, including 25 toys on the list that are under $25.
And you don’t have to worry — the Walmart Top Toys List every year is full of things your kid actually wants (maybe they just don’t know it yet). Their favorite movies and franchises are represented, and all of the brands they already know and love, from LEGO and Hot Wheels to VTech and Disney are on the list as well. For Barbie fans, the Walmart 2024 Top Toys List also includes an exclusive collection from Mattel and Walmart called Barbie World, full of fun accessories and playsets. Basically, your entire shopping list for all the kids in your life is covered by the Walmart Top Toys List — and Romper has the exclusive.
You can find the entire list online, but here are a few of our favorite items on the Walmart 2024 Top Toys List.
These items are just a few of the toys on Walmart’s Top Toys List that are under $25, and the age ranges on the entire list will truly take care of everyone. There are also plenty of licensed favorites, and some of the toys on the Walmart Top Toy List will for sure be at the top of your kid’s own wish list.
If you’re looking for the one big item your kid’s going to lose their mind over this holiday season, the Walmart Top Toy List has you there, too. Here are a few favorite “big items” for all ages:
So go ahead and get your shopping lists ready. Toys for preschoolers and gifts all the way up to tweens and teens are available on the Walmart 2024 Top Toys List. It’s seriously all you need to make sure everybody gets what’s going to make them happy this holiday season — and you can use curbside pick-up for pretty much all of it. I know it’s just September, but if Santa can start work early, so can you.
The vasectomy party was a turning point. My husband had recently befriended a local dad crew, and Jonah, a father of two girls who worked in renewable energy and surfed on the weekends, was due for his. Jonah accidentally scheduled his vasectomy for a day his wife was out of town, natch, so Chris, a perpetually-delighted pediatrician and father of two, would pick Jonah up from the hospital and usher him to a local beer garden. There would be balloons, and a cake adorned with the phrase “There's no I in vasectomy.” As a kind, outgoing and extremely likable man with a penchant for high silliness, this was right up my husband's alley, and he was thrilled to be included. I was thrilled too, though in the bittersweet way I have come to associate with moments where the stark contrast between his intimacies and mine are revealed. I was thrilled because my husband had finally found some friends.
Because of my reproductive system, and because of my gender’s tendency to be socialized for connection, I have, by the age of 40, participated in countless vasectomy-party-like rituals. I’ve driven friends to their abortions, even paid for one. I have helped many a stranger deal with a period mishap or a nip slip. My sisters held my hips and cleaned up my shit (literal) at my two births. This is what women do.
But years into a relationship with a feminist man, when I issued the ultimatum that he go to therapy or else, I quickly came to understand that it was more than that. After all, it wasn't just therapy that made me someone who could talk about my feelings, who could turn a relational problem over and over until I cracked it and bring it back to him with an answer.
It was thousands, maybe millions of hours of deep friendship.
Once I viewed my husband as someone who just needed some good friends, I couldn’t unsee this as the source of a wide-range of marital issues between men and women. When something was amiss in our partnerships — an imbalance in parenting duties or an intolerable level of defensiveness in conflict — we passed over and over these issues, like river stones, with our friends. We got commiseration, acknowledgement, and love. We got advice. Then we took these insights back to our marriages like offerings.
But what did our husbands do, how did they try to better understand themselves, much less us? Where were their men’s groups and rituals and book clubs? Who was comparing couples counseling notes, giving Enneagram quizzes, summarizing self-help books, with them?
After that first vasectomy party, my husband and the rest of the dads joined a weekly ski-lodge-themed beer club for the winter months, and I happily waved my him off after bedtime on Mondays, almost giddy with compersion — joy from witnessing my partner’s joy.
Was it a bit condescending, to make playdates for grown men? It felt tender to me.
The dads took the train to Sacramento to see a basketball game and bunk up overnight in a hotel room. They helped each other with solo parenting jags, and took care of logistics for all-family get-togethers without having to be asked by their wives.
When I waxed on about this to my girlfriends, they asked if their husbands could join. We had all found ourselves tethered, often with great joy, to cis, hetero men in a culture that encouraged them to suppress, compete, and eventually find a wife on which to unload whatever emotional baggage they had the tools to unearth. Was it a bit condescending, to make playdates for grown men? It felt tender to me. These women, like me, were rooting for their dudes in a world where dudes were isolated, and where most of us had, condescension aside, already gotten in our 10,000 hours.
Eight thousand of which were probably earned in my women's group, where we talked for hours about our relationships and desires and dysfunctions, and which was already rich with connection and meaning-making when I was invited by a neighbor to join. And later my writer's group, which was also really a women's group. It was my sisters, whom I talk to about things that my husband does not talk about with his brother. It was the women at the coffeeshop I had never met before, but with whom I struck up conversations. It was the endless content I read from other women, examining ourselves and the people around us. Until this group, my husband had many friends, but I couldn’t really point to ways they rallied around him as a father or a husband.
But the Vasectomy Club seemed to shine a light on his best qualities: community, tenderness, a deep capacity for care. These aspects were always there but often only demanded of him by the women in his life. When I wondered if this phenomenon was unique, a guy friend explained that his friendship circles with men have a huge influence on his tendency to be the kind of emotionally in-touch man many wives pine for. “If I am in a place with a few strong examples around me, I’m pretty motivated to be a little more thoughtful, a little less selfish,” he observed. “The flip side is that I’ve found myself going with the flow in more competitive, more stereotypically guy-style environments.” In other words, men can influence one another to be shitty. But they can also influence one another to be better.
Finding such circles is another issue altogether, one that more men are interested in than you’d think. Another guy friend of mine, an exception to the rule who had a few seemingly open, expanding relationships with other men, told me that when he moved to a new city, his best strategy for making the guy friends he felt he needed was to go up to other dads on the playground and say, “Hi, are you in therapy?”
I don’t know what the dads talk about when they're alone, or if they’re all in therapy, but the groupthink for good that Garrett describes does seem to be at work with my husband. Since he made some friends, he seems happier, clearer, more like he’s giving me his second draft of himself than asking me to make sense of the first. When he got his own vasectomy this year, his friends rallied around him with a “Balls Voyage” cake and a toy gun that only shot blanks. I strolled by their little get-together to give my regards, and then I went along my way.
