December 5, 2024

Six Stories on Love and Family

3 min read
A photograph of shadows on wall of mom playing with her daughter, framed by windows

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Spending time with loved ones during the holiday season can prompt some people to reflect on the roles that family and parenting have played in their life. In today’s reading list, our editors have compiled stories on make-or-break marriage lessons, how to raise confident kids, the plight of the eldest daughter, and more.


Your Reading List

Lighthouse Parents Have More Confident Kids

Sometimes, the best thing a parent can do is nothing at all.

By Russell Shaw

Why Parents Struggle So Much in the World’s Richest Country

Raising kids shouldn’t be this hard.

By Stephanie H. Murray

The Marriage Lesson That I Learned Too Late

The existence of love, trust, respect, and safety in a relationship is often dependent on moments you might write off as petty disagreements.

By Matthew Fray

The Plight of the Eldest Daughter

Women are expected to be nurturers. Firstborns are expected to be exemplars. Being both is exhausting.

By Sarah Sloat

Find the Place You Love. Then Move There.

If where you live isn’t truly your home, and you have the resources to make a change, it could do wonders for your happiness.

By Arthur C. Brooks

A Shift in American Family Values Is Fueling Estrangement

Parents and adult children alike often fail to recognize how profoundly the rules of family life have changed over the past half century.

By Joshua Coleman


The Week Ahead

  1. Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, an action series starring Jude Law as a Force-user who encounters four lost children trying to get back home (premieres Monday on Disney+)

  2. Y2K, a comedy-horror film directed by the Saturday Night Live alum Kyle Mooney about machines and technology turning against humans in the year 2000 (in theaters Friday)

  3. Havoc, a suspenseful novel by Christopher Bollen about an elderly widow whose past resurfaces when she meets a young mother and her son at a hotel (out Tuesday)

Essay

The green hands of the Wicked Witch of the West spark against Dorothy's ruby red slippers
Everett

The Fairy Tale We’ve Been Retelling for 125 Years

By Allegra Rosenberg

Oz persists primarily through the books’ many adaptations, which established the series’ enduring iconography. [The author L. Frank] Baum’s world is best remembered as it has appeared on-screen, especially in the 1939 musical film starring Judy Garland as Dorothy: a place bursting with songs such as “Over the Rainbow” and visuals such as the yellow brick road, which have become the franchise’s most memorable features. And with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’s 1956 entry into the public domain, allowing for new, noncanonical works, subsequent generations have iterated on these hallmarks to tell Oz stories of their own.

No transformation has been more vital to Oz’s longevity than Wicked.

Read the full article.


More in Culture

  • Kendrick Lamar makes his point clearer.
  • Thanksgiving should be in October.
  • “Dear James”: My home is a horror of unfinished tasks.
  • Taylor Swift is a perfect example of how publishing is changing.
  • The sense that most defines a culture

Catch Up on The Atlantic

  • Jonathan Chait: Moderation is not the same thing as surrender.
  • Revenge of the COVID contrarians
  • Caitlin Flanagan on the Democrats’ billionaire mistake

Photo Album

A photograph of a gray-ish, green-ish supercell and tornado in Silverton, Texas
A supercell and tornado in Silverton, Texas (Laura Hedien / The 11th International Landscape Photographer of the Year)

Take a look at the winning entries of the 2024 International Landscape Photographer of the Year competition, including a tornado in Texas, fireflies in a forest, and more.


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