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In today’s newsletter, the crippling stress of raising kids, and then:
Photograph by Jacob Aue Sobol / Magnum
The Real and Perceived Pressures of American Parenthood
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have presented sharply different proposals for alleviating pressure on families. But not all forms of stress are created equal.
The U.S. Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, recently issued an advisory on the troubled state of the nation’s parents, citing results from a survey by the American Psychological Association, conducted in 2023, in which forty-one per cent of respondents reported that “most days they are so stressed they cannot function.” In a nuanced new essay, Jessica Winter considers the many challenges facing America’s parents—including the costs of health care, child care, elder care, housing, and groceries—and draws vital distinctions between those parents who are facing crushing financial crises and others whose stressors, though still real, are more connected to ideas of parenting style and social expectations. “It’s easy to see why intensive parenting has garnered disproportionate attention in the media, on the parenting discussion boards, and in the group texts ever since Murthy published his report,” Winter notes, but she adds that “a conversation driven by matters of choice does little to address the real barriers that keep middle- and working-class families from thriving.”
Editor’s Pick
What does it mean for art works to “go back” to a country that didn’t exist when they were taken, and what meaning will they have for a population alienated from their history? These vexing questions animate Diop’s new film, “Dahomey.”Photograph by Robbie Lawrence for The New Yorker
Mati Diop and the Cinema of Impossible Returns
The French Senegalese director passed on big-budget Hollywood projects before making her latest film—a fantastical documentary about the restitution of art from Western museums to the places from which it was taken. As she explains to Julian Lucas, “I wanted to make a film that would restore our desire for ourselves.” Read the story »
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Daily Cartoon
“It’s nice not to think about politics for a minute.”
Cartoon by Liza Donnelly
More Fun & Games
P.S. The novelist, critic, and artist Gary Indiana died today, at the age of seventy-four. In a recollection of Indiana’s longtime home turf, the Village Voice, Peter Schjeldahl noted the critic’s fierce influence on the city’s art scene. “I wished to return to the Voice,” Schjeldahl writes, “but the fabulously acerbic Gary Indiana (who ended one column with this direct address to his readers: ‘Fuck you’) held the art-critic post by then. It seemed like every time I ran into Gary he said he was about to quit, but he didn’t quit—playing dog in the manger, in my exasperated view.”
