Commentary: A mother's plea to Trump: If you want to encourage a baby boom, give families a break
This column is the latest in a series on parenting children in the final years of high school, 'Emptying the Nest.' Read the previous installment, about last first day of school, here.
My third and youngest child is about to graduate high school and I am thrilled. If I have done nothing else in this crazy life, I have helped hoist three marvelous kids to legal adulthood and sent them all off to college.
For the last 12 months, I've been crawling to the finish line — why is filling out the FAFSA form always such a nightmare? — and here it is, shining before me! A world with no AP classes, basketball fundraisers or backpacks disgorging papers that I should have signed last week.
I've been dutifully chronicling all the various 'lasts,' hers and ours — last college application, last high school final, last Monday morning — and I haven't cried once, not even while taking pre-prom photos of her with her friends-since-kindergarten (though my stomach won't stop hurting and somehow I've tweaked my back twice). I'm totally on top of it — the announcements, the post-grad mini-break plans, the bin filling up with things she'll need in college (if only I could stop forgetting where I put things I just had in my hand).
Parenting most certainly will not end when she steps off that graduation stage, but it is lovely that all the emails from her college of choice are addressed to her. As a lowly CC, I am no longer the nexus of information or the potential recipient of furious commentary — 'Oh my God, mom, do you even read your emails?' (Someday, she too will know what it is like to have three email addresses, Slack and a phone that continually buzzes with texts and calls).
Where did I put my phone anyway?
Read more: To make peace with becoming an empty-nester, I had to be at peace with myself
Sure, there is a grimy section of wall outside our bedroom that I cannot bring myself to clean because it bears the rising height marks of my kids and, yes, I may have been staring at it a bit more frequently.
But I knew what I was getting into. Motherhood is a permanent gig, but if we're lucky, after 18 years or so (or in my case, a cumulative 27), much of it will be done remotely.
And not to steal my daughter's thunder, but I can't help thinking that her father and I should get matching watches or at the very least a cake. I'm about to sit through a bunch of speeches from 18-year-olds offering words of inspiration and advice, and it seems to me that graduating parents deserve their own ceremony (albeit with a tighter time schedule, more comfortable chairs and, for those who imbibe, an open bar).
Especially now.
As I contemplate the end of almost three decades of frontline parenting, many around the world are concerned about the fact that an increasing number of young folks are deciding to give the whole thing a pass. Declining birth rates have sparked such dire predictions of a collapsing workforce and shrinking tax base that President Trump recently announced that he and his administration are looking into ways to foster a new baby boom.
While I am not convinced that this planet needs more people stripping its resources and raising its temperature, I wouldn't mind (after a bit of a breather) having a few grandchildren. So as I emerge from the trenches, I have a few valedictory thoughts about how to make parenthood more appealing for my children and yours.
Read more: I thought I'd be happy to finish motherhood's many chores. Then I choked up over laundry
Take climate change seriously. Too many families have already been displaced — or worse — by fire, flood, tornado, drought and all the extreme weather events that are increasing as we hit our climate tipping point. You want people to have kids? Help ensure they will have a habitable planet on which to live. Young folks may have loved all those YA dystopian tales, but no one wants to populate the Hunger Games.
Make abortion legal in all 50 states again. At least 10-20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Since the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, many emergency rooms, fearing legal reprisal, are turning away women who are experiencing miscarriages while some states are prosecuting women whose miscarriages are deemed 'suspicious.' You can't have a baby boom if women are afraid to get pregnant.
Likewise, ensure that all Americans have decent healthcare. Having a child without insurance is too expensive and too dangerous. Full stop.
Mandate parental and family leave. The United States is one of only seven countries that does not have national policies guaranteeing parental leave (the others being Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea and Suriname). It is disingenuous of any elected official to posture about increasing the birth rate or valuing families while refusing to create or vote for national parental leave.
Fund affordable and licensed daycare. In more than 65% of two-parent households, both parents work outside the home, as do 75% of single mothers. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, American families spend an average of 8 to 16% of their income on full-time daycare for just one child. If the Trump administration is sincere in its desire to encourage at least one parent to remain in the home, it should offer a financial incentive (including benefits) comparable to outside employment.
Increase legal immigration and clear the path to citizenship. Not only does this grow the workforce and the tax base, but many immigrants come from countries where big families are still the norm.
Take care of the kids we already have first. According to the U.S. Department of Education, there are 400,000 children in foster care at any given time. Our national child poverty rate is 16.3% and, according to the USDA, one in five children experience food insecurity. Those graduating college this year face the worst job market, and some of the highest consumer prices, in recent memory. None of these things encourage reproduction.
Stop pressuring people to have children. Some people are just not interested and that is fine. Having a family, and keeping it together, is hard enough even when the parents are in it 100%. Every child should be wanted for their own wonderful, infuriating, adorable self, just as every family should be supported by any government that wants to see this country flourish.
Read more: Column: In defense of helicopter parents
I cannot imagine life without my children. But it is difficult and exhausting work to be in charge of vulnerable creatures whose bodies and brains are in ever-shifting stages of development. People who for years are literally incapable of reason, much less getting their own dinner or finding the six baby gerbils that 'somehow' got loose in the bedroom. People who see both going to bed and getting up as torture (except on weekends when they're up at dawn). Who beg for a dog and then look at you as if you're Miss Trunchbull when you ask them to take it for a walk.
For years, children rely on their parents for every single thing every single day. While we get ulcers worrying about jobs, bills and whether or not our fire insurance will be revoked, they are throwing fits over who sits where in the car or why their T-shirt feels scratchy.
And then, just when they are actually capable of, say, folding sheets, picking up groceries or helping us set up our new phone, they up and leave home!
Honestly, when you consider the job description (which, as it turns out, includes a mild but comprehensive physical breakdown when the last one graduates), it's a wonder anyone signs up for it at all.
So as I prepare to launch my youngest into the wide world with all the joy and bittersweet sorrow one mother's heart can hold, I am happy to give the president the most obvious piece of advice he will ever receive.
If you want to increase this country's birth rate, do everything you can to make it easier to be a parent.
And please, for the love of God, fix the FAFSA website.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
On r/collapse, people are ‘kept abreast of the latest doom'. Its moderators say it's not for everyone
The threat of nuclear war, genocide in Gaza, ChatGPT reducing human cognitive ability, another summer of record heat. Every day brings a torrent of unimaginable horror. It used to be weeks between disasters, now we're lucky to get hours. For many, the only sane solution is to stop reading the news altogether – advice often shared by therapists, self-help books and even newspaper articles. But to bury your head in the sand until the day the apocalypse arrives at your doorstep is not necessarily the most tranquil, nor moral, of postures. In the sprawling Reddit community r/collapse, people instead try to stare unblinkingly at the unravelling of civilization. For the roughly half a million members here, many of whom joined in the wake of Covid-19 pandemic and two Donald Trump inaugurations, the arc of history feels more like a freefall. This June, r/collapse was busy discussing the developing conflict between Iran and Israel, as well as 'wet bulbs' (a far more humid and deadly type of heatwave), the millions of air conditioners being bought in India as temperatures rise and Trump's plan to end Fema. Almost half of the members, when asked when they think collapse is going to happen, said that it's already happening Anonymous r/collapse moderator But one of the top posts tackled a more specialist topic: declining levels of phytoplankton in the North Atlantic. 'As if the North Atlantic fisheries wasn't in bad enough shape from overfishing of cod, now the base of the entire food chain has observed to be getting smaller each year for the past 60 years,' the poster wrote. A commenter added: 'Ocean acidification/die off is terrifying. Even if we solve all the other collapse problems (and we almost certainly can't) the oceans dying means the atmosphere becomes depleted of oxygen and poisonous. If humans survive those scenarios, life on Earth would more resemble that of a moon colony.' Much informed panicking ensued. There are lots of places on the internet, and especially on Reddit, that collate news stories around a theme: r/UpliftingNews, r/LateStageCapitalism and r/nottheonion (which posts news so ridiculous it seems like satire) to name few. But r/collapse is much more than a collation of links for people to feel outraged and nihilistic or warm and fuzzy about. What's striking about r/collapse is the clear-eyed, unemotional tone in which posts are written: neither pessimistic nor hopeful, just peering through the window at a relentless decline. 'We are not an activist subreddit,' one moderator, a retired history teacher, told me. 'We filter out people who want to organize and protest. We are also not inclined towards accelerationism, we're not seeking doom. We accept that perhaps it's going to happen, but it's not a conspiratorial subreddit. It's basically logic, rational and scientific.' That is thanks in part to r/collapse's 30 fairly active moderators – among them neuroscientists, environmental scientists, chemical engineers, government auditors and history teachers – who intensively maintain the subreddit as relatively objective a resource as possible. They even have a separate page, called r/collapse_wilds, for posts removed by the moderation team, usually because they did not provide high quality enough evidence. When a new moderator applies, the existing group screens them for mental health issues and ability to handle consistently distressing content, as well as overt political bias. It might sound like a lot of red tape to help run a subreddit, but when you realize what it takes to drench yourself in fatalistic topics day in, day out, you start to understand that a collapse moderator is a special kind of person. I spoke with 10 such moderators on a video chat, just as the national guard and marines were sent to quell Ice protests in Los Angeles. All are men based in North America, polite and turn-taking, though most insisted on remaining anonymous so their online roles wouldn't interfere with their real world positions. In their roles, they take the existential questions of civilization collapse seriously: What exactly constitutes collapse? Are we already experiencing it? Why aren't people reacting more strongly to its likelihood, and does either humanity or technology have the ability to prevent it? Practical questions, too: where is the best place to live, the most helpful job to have, as collapse happens? 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Most people associate thinking about collapse with pessimism because you're questioning the orthodoxy of our modern religion, which is faith in progress. And I think once you've made peace with the myth that we all grew up with being scientifically false, then you go through the stages of grief, then you build some psychological resilience to live in the world.' The group says that when the media or academia write about collapse issues, they often try to end on an optimistic note, so as not to depress the reader. 'It's really hard to find a mainstream publication that doesn't end an article about, say, renewable energy, with a section that says: 'things are difficult but let's have hope' and 'it's just a matter of building more solar panels,'' Etienne said. He cited reports, including an impactful study by Simon Michaux commissioned by the Finnish government, that say it's simply impossible to replace energy with renewable sources at scale. 'But we find there's much less coverage of that – of using less energy and degrowth.' The moderators also say that people who are concerned about societal collapse tend to think it'll come suddenly with a nuclear bomb or terrible pandemic. The subreddit is of a different mind. One moderator, an engineer who preferred to remain anonymous, explained the tenets of r/collapse like this: 'In the long term, it's going to be very difficult for us to maintain this very complex industrial society. We're looking at a type of simplification of industrial civilization. I think most of our members think this is what collapse is, which is why almost half of the members, when asked when they think collapse is going to happen, said that it's already happening. 'This is the idea of catabolic collapse: that what we're living through is a series of crises, sometimes followed by momentary resolution, but the long-term trend is downturn. It's not going to be a sudden event that's everything in a single day, which I think people like preppers are more accustomed to thinking.' *** Every week, r/collapse puts out a special newsletter called Last Week in Collapse, a one-stop shop for everything that has gone wrong in the world. Its author is an international affairs researcher, who requested anonymity because their background might 'color the reader's interpretation of the events'. They're not part of the moderation group, but began writing the roundup in 2021, inspired by what they had seen on the subreddit. 'It was part of a process of making sense of the storm of news around us – almost a form of writing therapy,' they told me over email. 'It is so easy to get lost or distracted by the next thing that we forget the big picture. So I decided to start organizing and summarizing other stories because I believed it would help other collapsologists and observers zoom out and take it all in.' It makes for a pretty brutal read. This week's newsletter, for example, began with a newly published study of tree rings that suggested 'irreversible large-scale forest loss' in the Amazon; featured a study saying climate change could reduce crop yields across the US and Europe 40% by 2100, which one scientist likened to 'everyone on the planet giving up breakfast'; touched on counterintuitive research showing that some glass bottles contain up to 50 times more microplastics than plastic bottles or metal cans; and reported that this is 'the sixth consecutive year that global peacefulness has deteriorated' per the Global Peace Index. These were just a few of around a hundred links. To paraphrase Trotsky: you may not be interested in collapse, but collapse is interested in you Last Week in Collapse author 'Collapse is hard to deny when it's all laid out for you every week,' says the author. Readers are now able to spend just five or 10 minutes reading one email 'and be kept abreast on all the latest doom'. I ask what differentiates just bad news from a news story that is actually about collapse. 'I have found that it helps to imagine likely realities for humanity, position your perspective in the future, and then look backwards for the telltale signs and milestones of future collapse,' the author says. 'What factors and events will seem obvious to someone living 50 or 100 years from now? We can look back at the 1930s today and the road to WWII seems much clearer. Scientists are publishing under-appreciated studies every day, and their relevance is fairly obvious. Yet our attention lies elsewhere entirely.' A weekly roundup does seem like a useful alternative to completely ignoring society's downfall. But if things are as bad as r/collapse believes them to be, does it do us any good to inundate ourselves with news of the end of everything? Aren't we just increasing our personal suffering without making anything better? 'Yes, I sometimes wonder about the overall mental impact of Last Week in Collapse,' says its author. 'I know some people find it to be valuable, informative and even soothing. Others can't bring themselves to read it. It's not for everyone, and that's fine. To paraphrase Trotsky: you may not be interested in collapse, but collapse is interested in you.' To that end, the subreddit provides online mental health resources as well as a separate community, r/CollapseSupport, where people talk about their struggles. 'Can't stop thinking about the children', 'feeling completely hopeless' and 'scared to death for everyone' are three recent post titles. Most of the moderators say that the thing they've found most helpful in dealing with the onslaught of information is moderating itself, and connecting with people who have similar concerns across the world: debating but also sharing cat photos and having meaningful discussion about how to lead a meaningful life in the end times. But they're aware they're not always the most fun people at a party. 'I don't want to be right about this sort of situation,' said one of the moderators, an electrical engineer from the midwest. 'But if you're open-minded and you're considerate of sources, and you're approaching it from a very methodical fashion, there is much cause for concern. Working through that grief was trying. I think there's a lot of people that come to this community that maybe had my same perspective, and if I can at least help a few of those folks work through that, or come to their own peace, that adds some small iota of value to the internet space at large.' 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4 days ago
- New York Post
This was the single most dangerous moment for B-2 pilots during their Iran bombing raid
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Yahoo
21-06-2025
- Yahoo
Your Phone Should Always Be Face Down When It's on the Table: Here's Why
Picture this: You're having lunch with a friend at the neighborhood cafe. They're sitting in front of you, but it feels like they're not even there. Why? Because they're staring at their phone. Everyone has probably had a similar experience, whether they're the one getting phone snubbed or doing the snubbing themselves. I've been guilty of paying more attention to my screen than my companion, and I feel bad about it afterward. There's nothing wrong with replying to an urgent Slack message or pulling up a funny TikTok to share. But I know I probably spend too much time staring at screens, and a lot of that time is unhealthy doomscrolling. These days, when I'm not using my phone, I try to be more deliberate about keeping it out of sight and out of mind. If I do need to keep my phone at hand, I always have it face down. I have a few reasons for making sure my phone screen is turned away. The first one is practical: Because my screen is face down and won't turn on for each notification, I can save a little bit of battery charge. A single notification won't mean the difference between my phone lasting the whole day or dying in the afternoon, but notifications can add up, especially if I've enabled them across all of my apps. If I'm in a lot of group chats, my screen might end up turning on dozens of times throughout the day (and that's on the low side since many teenagers have hundreds of notifications a day). Keeping my phone face down is also a good rule of social etiquette: If I'm hanging out with someone, I keep my screen hidden from view as a subtle way of showing that I won't be distracted by it. I don't want incoming notifications to light up my screen every few seconds, especially if I'm in a bar or other dimly lit setting. I want to keep my eyes on the person I'm talking to. "Eye contact is one of the most powerful forms of human connection. Neuroscience research indicates that when two people make direct eye contact, their brain activity begins to synchronize, supporting more effective communication and increasing empathy. This synchrony can be disrupted when attention shifts to a phone, even briefly," says Michelle Davis, clinical psychologist at Headspace. When I'm with the people I've chosen to spend time with, I want to be fully present with them. A sudden notification will tempt me to glance at, or worse, pick up my phone in the middle of a conversation. I also have a more personal reason for keeping my phone face down, and I suspect that other people have had this same thought: My phone takes up too much space in my life. I mean that quite literally. My phone is bigger than it needs to be. That's been especially true since I upgraded from my iPhone Mini to a "normal-sized" iPhone. Yes, I got a much needed boost in battery life, but I also got a screen with more pixels to lure me into the next news headline or autoplaying Instagram reel. A small smartphone isn't something that really exists anymore. My phone is bigger and better at grabbing my attention. It competes against my friends and family, books and movies, the entire world outside of its 6-inch screen. It often wins. But there's still one small thing I can do to minimize its presence: I can keep the screen turned away from me whenever possible. It can sometimes feel like there's no escaping from my phone. Whether that ever changes, or phones evolve into a new form factor, I can't say. I can't control everything about my phone, but I can control whether the screen stares at me when I'm not staring at it.
