You work hard. It keeps you busy. You are trying to provide for a family after all–to keep them safe and secure, so they never have to want or go without. That’s why you come home late, after they’re all asleep. That’s what has you rising early and heading to the airport, before anyone has…

It’s not easy, this thing we’re trying to do. You’d think it would be: Billions of people have done it through history and the survival of our genes literally depends on it…yet here we are struggling. In need of all the help we can get. Obviously, that’s the premise of the Daily Dad email. Seneca’s…

You’re stewing about that nasty thing your boss said at work. You’re carrying around anger at the contractor who has left your house a mess, at the idiots in front of you in traffic, at the insane mess that is our current political situation. The rage is understandable—all of these things are upsetting. But it…

One day many years ago, the comedian Andrew Schulz forgot to do his homework. They were on their way to school when he came clean and admitted it to his father. There could have been a fight. There could have been criticism. There could have been a lecture. Instead, his father simply asked, “Well, do…

When our kids mess up we say: Aren’t you a little old for that? And we have all sorts of rules of thumb for what things are age appropriate or not—what age they should stop having accidents, what age they should stop throwing a tantrum just because they’re tired, what age it stops being okay…

It’s the moment we dread. Our son is dating someone we know is bad for them. Our daughter is about to change college majors and throw away years of work. Our toddler has started biting or hitting or shouting some curse words. We know we need to stop them…and we think we need to do…

We’ve talked before about Ron Lieber’s clever way of capturing the goal of what we’re all trying to do as parents. “The opposite of spoiled,” he writes (in his book of the same name), that’s what kind of kids you want. That’s what ‘success’ is at this job. You want to raise kids who aren’t…

It can seem glib and easy to just say that we should be grateful. The family that’s struggling to make ends meet? The kid that’s being bullied at school? That just got dumped by their boyfriend or cut from the soccer team? They’re just supposed to be grateful? Because it’s Thanksgiving here in America? Well,…

Pretty much every parent wants to raise kids who turn out to be good people. Almost no father thinks: I’d love for my son to be rich, but awful. Or I’d love for my daughter to be famous, but vapid and cruel. It’s a given. And yet, when you look at most of what we…

We sweat so much. Whether we’re on our phone too much, when we could (and should) be playing with our kids. Whether their lunch yesterday was perfect. Whether we attend every dance recital and graduation. Whether we’re doing enough. Whether they’ll hate us forever for not letting them go to this school trip or that…