Since the New York Times never gets tired of running "Kids these days!" stories, I geared myself up for yet another one when I saw the headline "Students, Welcome to College; Parents, Go Home." But this time it was a twist on the usual narrative. Instead, we got a "Parents these days!" article. The article comically addresses the various ways that universities have tried to convince overly clingy parents to leave when they drop their kids off at college, but for once, the kids themselves are portrayed sympathetically.

Most articles I've seen in the past couple of years about "helicopter parents" address the anxious parents of very small children trying to get their kids into the best kindergartens and making sure that their coloring books get them diagnosed as geniuses. Boy, those kids aged faster than the kids on a soap opera, because now we have an article about parents of children 12 or 13 years older. But for all the hyperbole, the writer Trip Gabriel actually paints a touching picture of parents who've just spent the past 18 years making their offspring the center of the lives and now, having to set their cubs free, they don't know what to do with themselves. And so they find excuses to linger, even as the kids are eager to get on with it.

Empty-nest syndrome is hardly a new idea, but I don't actually doubt that it's become more profound, at least for the privileged classes that Gabriel focuses on. Quadrupling the expectations of emotional investment of parents is one of the many unexpected side effects of making reproduction a choice instead of simply what happens to you because you're a sexually active adult. This is basic psychology—when you make an affirmative choice to do something, you tend to invest much more in it than if it's something that just happened to you. I just don't understand why most of the coverage of the so-called helicopter parents has to be so negative.

I get that there's excess. I worked at a graduate-school program just as the millenials were beginning to trickle in as students, and I encountered a couple of overbearing parents around that time, when I had literally never seen a parent enter through the front doors of our office previously. Sure, there's something to be said about the lack of balance in the lives of many of these parents, who seem to use their children as a way to escape from living their own lives. But excesses aside, what's so wrong about parents telegraphing the message to their kids that they were wanted and they are cherished? What's so wrong with parents getting along with their children? Sometimes I think Americans are wed to the Baby Boom-era narrative about a heated battle between the generations. Now we've had two generations since then who aren't particularly interested in rebelling against their parents, and the tendency is still to treat this as abnormal and worrisome, or to write screeds accusing young people of immaturity because they get along with their folks. Maybe we could take a step back and consider the possibility that it's good that there's so much love between generations that letting go isn't so easy.

Tags: empty nest syndrome, helicopter parents, millenials

KJ, it's true that most people don't do a cost-benefit analysis before they have kids. Which is too bad, because if they want to be happy with their lives and marriages after kids come, they really should. A reader tip pointed me to further research into the happiness studies that show that the dip in happiness after the kids are born depends almost entirely on how much you wanted and prepared for them.

Stephanie Coontz describes the research:

The Cowans found that the average drop in marital satisfaction was almost entirely accounted for by the couples who slid into being parents, disagreed over it or were ambivalent about it. Couples who planned or equally welcomed the conception were likely to maintain or even increase their marital satisfaction after the child was born.

They also found that the more a couple hewed to traditional gender roles, the more unhappy they were. The reason seemed to be that no one appreciates anyone else's work when mom stays at home and dad works all the time, but I'm also forced to point out that staying at home and becoming defined as a domestic person is notoriously linked with the not-sexy. (Those of us who work at home as freelancers should take note; it's wise to get out of the pajamas and into real grown-up clothes, if only to keep things interesting.)

What I'm forced to conclude by reading all this is painful for me to report. Oh sure, I'm puffing up like Sue Sylvester after she ruins the day of the Glee kids, but that's just an illusion, since I'm crying inside for all the "family values" folks that will suffer reading this. And this is that feminists were right all along. "Every child a wanted child" is a philosophy that improves marriages, lowers the chance of divorce, and therefore is good for the kids.

Despite the widespread use of contraception and legality of abortion, this country is still ambivalent about switching to a system where not having children is the default, and having children is a decision that needs to be thought over carefully and only chosen if you're really sure. The old system, where people just get pregnant on accident and let chance decide their fates, still has a major hold on us, even though it's such a bad idea. People's unwillingness to give up on the old system is 50 percent fear of change and 50 percent anger that people might be out there screwing around without having to pay the price in baby snot and Cheerios.

Tags: children, Happiness, parenthood

Emily, I have no doubt that having children gives those who wanted them badly a sense of satisfaction. I agree that day-to-day happiness is not the only measure of life worth taking into consideration. But I do think brandishing happiness studies on the issue is an important public service; we can't have too much information when making an important decision like whether to have kids.

Perhaps it's because I have a background in sexual-health advocacy writing, but I tend to look at issues like this through the risk-assessment lens. Effective education around sexual health is rarely about telling people no or issuing hard-and-fast rules, since it quickly became apparent that people are going to have the kind of sex they want, even if you scold them for it. It's about giving people full information, so they can do a cost/benefit analysis. It gets comically detailed sometimes, with HIV counselors taking the time to explain to clients that it's probably best to hold off oral sex after you've eaten pizza that burned the inside of your mouths.

There's so much pressure in our society not to talk about the very real risks of child-rearing, usually because of superstitious fears that talking makes it true. But I tend to think that it's best if people walk in with their eyes wide open. If you know that the risks include strained or terminated marriages, constant stress, and the inability to move about freely for many years, and you decide those are risks you're willing to take, then that's great. And I certainly believe the sense of satisfaction will outweigh the headaches for that person.

On the flip side, I think it's important that people unwilling to take these risks avoid them. It doesn't do children any good to be born to parents who find that they're in way deeper than they could have ever imagined and whose stress and resentment levels are remarkably higher for it. Pointing out that having children gives you more opportunities to bicker, for instance, might be meaningless to a couple that doesn't bicker, but to someone who knows she's short-tempered, that's valuable information to take into consideration. I'm happy to see that choosing childlessness has become normalized for this reason; far more people who don't really have the stomach for child-rearing aren't imposing themselves on helpless children out of a misguided sense of duty.

Tags: children, choice, parenthood

A new report says that the past decade has brought an enormous increase in lawsuits against employers for discrimination on the basis of family responsibilities. A quieter, dramatic example of the child-care crisis is a recent postponement of the prison sentence of a mother of three, granted solely because she has no child care.

Janira Bueno was convicted in New York federal court, after a guilty plea to multiple fraud counts in a tax-fraud conspiracy, along with 11 other defendants (including her husband). She’ll serve her two-year prison sentence eventually, but has up to three years or even longer to find suitable care for her three children, the youngest of whom is two.

Judge Harold Baer decided that the “extraordinary circumstances” related to the care of Bueno’s children and the lack of an available caregiver demanded an unusual solution in setting the terms of Bueno’s sentence. In a compassionate opinion filed last week, Judge Baer wrote that he sought to balance the need to sentence Bueno appropriately with “the need to ensure that innocent children are properly cared for and do not become wards of the state, or in foster care.” He cited evidence of her devotion to her children and her lack of previous criminal record as factors in his decision. The youngest child will be kindergarten-aged by the time Bueno likely will have to surrender; the oldest of the three will be a teenager. From a child-development perspective, the adjournment of her sentence could, obviously, have (or avoid) dramatic effects on the kids. Self-described "sentencing geeks" find this kind of move interesting because it illustrates the effects of recent Supreme Court decisions that have given sentencing judges more flexibility in abiding by the notorious federal sentencing guidelines. The Bueno decision relies more on logic and on practical considerations than on a technical formula.

Too bad for workers—and for Bueno—that prison terms aren’t as easy to lose as jobs. Federal law forces employers to keep jobs available (sort of, if workers qualify, if and if and if) for a luxurious 12 weeks while you sort out child care and other family-related responsibilities. After that, better catch a windfall or find someone to watch the kids. The data reported by the Center for WorkLife Law clangs the bell: Lawsuits against employers on the basis of “family responsibility discrimination” are up 400 percent in the last 10 years, even while overall employment discrimination lawsuits decreased.

Herein lies the peculiarity of the outcome of the case of Janira Bueno. Meet and right that her kids’ welfare determined the terms of her sentence. But isn’t it weird that the American way of child care (expensive, inaccessible, both, or worse) is so gnarled that a federal judge has to tinker with details when the goal is to make sure a convict serves her time? Prison service shouldn’t be the call to arms that gets us to a reasonable solution for families who want to 1) stay employed and 2) secure care for their children. I guess, with a groan and lots of salt, we’re to ask W.W.S.D. (what would Sweden do)?

Photograph of children by Karim Sahib/Getty Images.

Tags: Bueno, childcare, law, prison, sentences, Supreme Court, workplace equality

This news that shouldn't surprise you if you've been paying attention: Children raised by lesbian couples tend to do better on average than children raised by straight couples. There are probably a million reasons for this, but the first that comes to mind for me is that it might just be better on average to have two moms instead of just one. That's two people who've been socialized from birth to identify as nurturers.

Gay or not, your average woman has had a lifetime of experience in the neccessary-for-parenting arts of boosting self-esteem, monitoring loved ones to see if they want for anything, and even minor things like choosing food for nutritional value instead of taste. Obviously, individuals will vary, but few women, regardless of sexual orientation, escape the gendered training to put others before yourself. One of the things that a sexist society does wrong by men is discourage them from learning these skills, and sometimes even shames them for doing things like caring too much or having feelings. For a lot of new fathers, there can be a steep learning curve in learning these basic skills. Some do a bang-up job of reaching the minimum mommy level, but some don't even bother, creating generation after generation of TV writers churning out story lines of grown adults feeling estranged from fathers, among other things.

The ugly truth is that women do more housework—including child care—than men, even in our supposedly enlightened time. When the average straight couples has children, her housework increases three times as much as his. Again, individual mileage may vary, but on average, it seems replacing men with women simply means more work (and nurturing) gets done. And children benefit.

Conservatives who trot out the "children need a mother and a father" line have a very specific and erroneous belief in play—that children are better off the closer their family hews to a traditional model in which the mother is submissive to the father, the mother does all the nurturing and the father does all the discipline, and children learn that gender roles are rigid opposites. I suspect the opposite is true, and that children do better if gender roles are flexible and all adults in their lives are nurturers. A similar study that compared traditional nuclear families with ones in which the fathers try to take on more of the mothering role would probably produce similar effects as this one that compared lesbian families to straight ones.

Tags: fatherhood, gay marriage, gay parents, motherhood

In honor of Mother's Day, XX Factor contributors discuss the moment they first realized that their moms had an identity in the world outside their place in the family. We invite you to join in the discussion and share your story below.

June Thomas: My mom left school at 15. This was typical in our town, but she had been expected to pass her 11-plus, the exam that, back then, decided if kids went on to an academic or a practical secondary education, so there was always an air of thwarted ambition about her. When I was growing up, she was a dinner lady at the school at the end of our street, and when I enrolled, I saw her rule the dining hall and playground with a will of iron. Some of her rules were random—kids could be sent to the corner for stirring jam into their rice pudding rather than taking dainty bites of each, as she insisted—but every dictator knows that instilling fear is far more important than being consistent.

Cecile Dehesdin: As a little girl, I was reminded every day of the week that my mom had this other life outside of being a mother to me and my brother when she would get dressed for work. We spent a lot of time together on weekends where she was always—and still is—dressed very casually and wearing no makeup whatsoever. But Monday to Friday, as I was getting ready for school, she would don a skirt suit, sheer tights, and heels, and I still remember watching her put on blusher and mascara, marveling at the transformation of my mom into this businesswoman whose exact job description I had a hard time grasping until I was in my teen years.

Jessica Grose: I realized my mom was more than just "my mom" in the world when I was 13 and saw her standing up in front of a town-planning committee fighting to keep her home office. My village’s old guard was trying to outlaw home offices—the blue hairs said they brought too much traffic into residential neighborhoods. Watching her appear so poised in front of a crowd was thrilling. It was also the first time I remember feeling proud of her.

Amanda Marcotte: When my parents divorced when I was 9, it was a crash course in realizing my mom had a life outside of being our mom. It wasn't just that we had more exposure to her work life and finances. It was also the realization that my parents had adult romantic lives, needs, and desires that had nothing to do with us. It made it the transition to being her adult child much easier for both of us.

Emily Bazelon: When I was 10 or so, I went to my mom's office—a rare event—and saw a dollhouse that had belonged to my sisters and me. She's a child psychiatrist and she'd brought it over for her patients. We were done playing with it. But I realized: She thinks about other kids! I was sort of proud and sort of nonplused.

Amanda Fortini: I realized my mom was more than just a mom when I won a college scholarship from her company (nepotism? maybe...) and, one school-day afternoon, accompanied her to her office to receive the little award certificate that had been prepared for me. There, I met several men who reported to her and were obviously in awe of her, even a little scared of her. I was 17 years old, and though I’d known for years that went to an office everyday—in the evenings, she’d lounge on the couch in her suit and pantyhose, which was all the evidence I needed—I’d never seen her businesswoman-boss self in action. It made me proud, to see my mother like that. I didn’t know any other mothers who were also business executives, and I felt our family, which consisted of my mother, my two sisters, and me, was unique. In a larger sense, though I didn’t realize it at the time, and she would never have explicitly said this, seeing my mother at work showed me that the gender roles and hierarchies I saw out in the world could be overturned, reversed, tossed aside: that a woman could be the boss, too.

Ellen Tarlin: When I was younger, realizing my mom was more than just a mom came with resentment. She was a Boston schoolteacher and was very active in the teachers' union, which meant she was out at meetings a few nights a week, which I hated, but I do remember stuffing envelopes with flyers that bore her face when she was running to be an officer in the union. I suppose I finally realized she had an emotional life that had nothing to do with motherhood one day when we were talking about a couple that had broken up because of infidelity, and I said something to the effect that she and my dad never had a hard time being faithful to each other and she said, "Don't be so sure." Wow. (My parents have been married for 47 years.)

Ann Hulbert: I'll date myself here when I say my mother, like so many women starting families in the 1950s, quit her teaching job to be home with us kids. So there was no office where I could watch her in non-mom mode. It was in bringing my friends home and hearing them talk with her, and then about her, that I realized how much she transcended the usual role: Their mothers were, by comparison, just mothers—who showed little of her unself-conscious, direct interest in people younger than she was. This dawned on me, I would say, in early teenage-hood, and I remember it as a very useful jolt.

KJ Dell’Antonia: Maybe because I was an only child, I don't think it ever occurred to me that my mom was "just my mom." She went back to college when I was small, and then to work as a teacher. I loved going with her over the summer to watch her arrange her classroom and be the only kid in a strange school. We'd see her students at the store, and they'd wave, kind of timidly, and I would feel so proud that a teacher (I loved my teachers) was also my mom. It was such a big part of her life, and, by extension, of mine that I can't remember ever feeling like she wasn't bigger than just the person she was at home.

Jenny Rogers: When I was in the 4th grade, the principal came to talk to our class about how we all have to work to make the school better. She pointed to me and said, “This school couldn’t run without Jenny Rogers’ mom.” I was blown away. I knew my mom was always going to PTA functions, but I hadn’t realized her work was so meaningful.

Hanna Rosin: I still don't think I fully realize that my mom is something other than my mom. How else to explain my sulky explosive preteen behavior whenever she comes over? My endless stream of contradictory, unreasonable demands and objections? (Yes, that shirt you bought me is too big! No, I'm not in a bad mood.) Did I mention that I just turned 40?

Tags: children, family, Mother's Day, mothers, parenting

For a lot of fans of the show Mad Men, one of the hardest plot twists to swallow for its sheer soapiness had to be Peggy Olson's "surprise" baby. The show played it so artfully—allowing the audience to believe Peggy was gaining weight in order to scare men away from harassing her—so that when she actually goes to the hospital complaining of stomach pains and is admitted to the maternity ward, we're as surprised as she is. "No way!" my friends I watch the show with yelled. "No way could you not know you were pregnant!" Well, turns out that "surprise" babies are more common than one would think, with studies in Germany and Ireland putting the rate at as high as one in 600 births.

If you're calling your doctor up to have your tubes tied so this can never happen to you, there's some comfort to be had in reading this article from the Times Online. The theory is that most women who don't know they're pregnant do in fact know they're pregnant but are in deep denial about it.  Perhaps the writers on Mad Men really did their research, because outside of the nervous breakdown, Peggy would be the textbook example of this phenomenon. It's not that there aren't any women who simply had no symptoms and no idea, but those cases seem to be the minority.

One thing this phenomenon makes very clear is that our relationship to our bodies is not so straightforward. The context and meaning we bring to our bodies has more impact on our understanding than I think most of us are comfortable admitting. If you know/admit you're pregnant, it's easy to perceive the rumblings in your gut as the fetus moving around, but if you don't think of yourself as pregnant, it seems like it's pretty easy to imagine that those rumblings are gas. This goes a long way to explaining phenomena like the placebo effect and the fact that different cultures seem to have different diseases and complaints from each other.

Photograph of pregnant woman by Cindy Singleton/Photodisc/Getty Creative Images.

Tags: mad men, surprise pregnancy

Last year when data first emerged about how men were experiencing job losses at far greater rates than women, some feminists wondered if it might mean more gender fluidity for men, who might be more willing to be stay-at-home fathers. In a piece about how the recession affects family relationships published in Slate last February, Emily Bazelon didn't think that men would be so quick to relinquish their gender roles, quoting a study that showed that unemployed men "spend more time sleeping, watching TV, and looking for a job," rather than helping out around the house or with child care. In today's New York Observer, Irina Aleksander offers a peek into a New Jersey-based group for men who lost high-paying jobs in finance and accounting, founded by a life coach named Paul Anovick, called Men in Transition. Her article confirms Emily's earlier suspicions.

These men still define themselves through work, or lackthereof. One group member, Steve, 44, a former director of business development at a marketing firm, says he was reluctant to join the group. "I didn’t want to come at first. ... I guess it’s a guy thing. I originally called it ‘miserable men,’ because I thought that’s what Men in Transition was: a bunch of guys who were talking about how miserable they were. I didn’t want to be with a bunch of losers. Nothing personal." To be unemployed and talking about your feelings means you're a loser, Steve is saying. Nothing personal! Aleksander is sympathetic to these men—it's impossible not to be; they're going through a rough time. But if they were able to define for themselves what being a man means, they might not need a life coach to tell them about how to properly "brand" themselves.

Tags: family, men in transition, new york observer, recession

Like you, Jessica, I was impressed by what an improvement the newest version of the NY Times raising the alarm about young people living at home was over previous versions they'd done of the story. The recession makes it impossible to paint twentysomethings who live with their parents as slackers and mooches. But what really impressed me was that they admit that parents might not be horrified at having their adult children at home, either: "[The research suggests] that parents need not be so concerned about becoming empty nesters when their children become adults."

My sister, mom, and I lived together for a time after I graduated for college. Now we're all in long-term relationships with men, so we don't live together any more, but I recall how the social shame put on adults who live with their parents made me feel at serious odds with myself at the time. The shame you're expected to feel doesn't match the realities, which are generally positive. My sister and I enjoyed paying lower rent than we would normally while we got on our feet economically, and my mom had the company of a family instead of just living alone. It was like having roommates without all the awkwardness you get living with perfect strangers and being unable to share basic things you share with family members or a live-in boyfriend.

It seems the shame of living with your parents has receded somewhat in the past few years. I was telling a story recently to some friends about how I had to get my first cell phone because my mother was like a teenager, always on the phone with her boyfriend, and I couldn't get a call in edgewise. It's a funny story, but I used to not tell it because I didn't want people to think poorly of me for having lived with my mom. But now they just laugh.

Part of the reason the stigma is receding is probably the recession, but I think a lot of it is the growing American consciousness about the problem of loneliness. Books like Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, TV shows that celebrate the importance of friendships, like "Sex and the City" and "Friends," and the growing impact of divorce and delayed marriage have inclined Americans to start questioning a culture that condemns the partnerless to solitude. Even this NY Times article reflects this shift in thinking, allowing that young people living at home could provide benefits to their elders, such as companionship and care for elderly relatives.

Photograph of family by Photodisc/Getty Images.

Tags: kids living at home, parenting, recession

Those of us on the left more inclined to see the value in old school tactics like collective action mainly like to cite effectiveness as the reason, with a side dish of increased opportunties to create alliances and friendships while breaking down arbitrary boundaries. But add one more reason to the pile: It could save your marriage. As someone who has more than a little bit of angst about personal responsibilities to be green, even I could not refrain from rolling my eyes at couples who are torn up fighting each other over moral purity rituals in the name of environmentalism.

Clearly, the government doesn't need to create such strict mileage laws as to ban SUVs strictly to save the planet; they need to do it to keep the peace in families, if holidays are being ruined over fights about whether or not someone is a goody-two-shoes-know-it-all because they get mad at the phallic-issues cases in their families who drive SUVs. That, or your family needs a few unrepentant racists and men who crack jokes about women drivers so you have something more pressing to fight about.

As long as environmentalism dwells in the no-man's land of consumer choice, I fail to see much value in bugging your significant other because the clash betweeen their commitment to the planet and commitment to personal comfort shakes out differently than yours. I've been a vegetarian for seven years and managed to get my driving down to nearly nothing even when living in Texas and dating someone less committed to the bicycle and more committed to the BBQ plate. Instead of this causing fights, though, I left him alone and he praised me for at least moving him more in the right direction. And I borrowed his car when I had a big grocery run. When you see yourself as less than perfect, it's easy enough to avoid riding someone else's ass for environmental imperfections. Especially since few of us are reducing our carbon footprint to zero by living off the land in mud huts. Plus, our choice to avoid having kids probably does more for our carbon footprint bona fides than all the cold showers and long bicycle rides you can imagine put together.

Then again, that's within the good ol' conjugal home. No matter how conflict-averse you are, if you're visibly "green" in any way, that will cause people who feel guilty to decide to jump all over you for being a goody-two-shoes, and this sadly often includes family members. It took years of stubborn refusal to eat meat and protection from my mother before some of my extended family stopped giving me hell over my holiday plates laden down with side dishes, even though I'm the queen of skipping the meat without saying a word. Even in my former hometown of Austin, which is generally a liberal place, bicyclists will occasionally get aggressive treatment from drivers who perceive a smugness in your cheery, exercise-receiving bicyclist demeanor.

If being green means anything to you, you have to learn to live with this. It helps to remember that they're likely acting out because they feel guilty. The mother in this story who claims that food tastes better off Styrofoam sounds infuriating because she's obviously in deep denial, but on the flip side, you have to laugh at the idea. It's almost as preposterous as saying that you prefer the smell of exhaust fumes to the clean air of the untouched wilderness.

Photograph of couple by Digital Vision/Getty Images.

Tags: environmentalism, going green, marriage