Dear Care and Feeding,
I’m part of a close-knit extended family whose members all live in the same town. I used to be extremely close with one of my cousins (we were born the same year and grew up two houses down from each other), but he married a woman who demanded he cut off all contact with his own family and friends. None of us know why: We’re a pretty normal, boring family with minimal melodrama. (I met his wife a few times while they were dating and I don’t remember any kind of major incident or even minor incident, for that matter that would cause her to insist he cut off contact.) Anyway, my cousin hasn’t seen his parents in eight years, ever since he snuck out while his wife was at the grocery store to go to his sister’s wedding. Since then, his wife keeps an even closer eye on him. He talks to his parents on the phone for about two minutes on holidays, and that’s it. We have all continued to reach out to him from time to time, but his wife gets an alert wheneve
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My husband and I are having some difficulty agreeing where to “send” our 5-year-old to school in the fall.
My husband comes from a small-minded family that wants to avoid Black people moving into the neighborhood, still refers to Black people by the N-word (never in front of our children), and generally acts as though people of other races/ethnicities/cultures are less than they are. My husband, unfortunately, absorbed some of these qualities, but I’ve been adamant that he be at least neutral towards BIPOC in front of our children and me, and he has been respectful of that so far. He went to private school from kindergarten until graduation.
Dear Care and Feeding,
My 16-year-old is basically writing porn. For context, they’re a relatively smart, compassionate teenager and they love to write and OK, I was snooping and I shouldn’t have been, but they’ve also been diagnosed with depression, and throughout quarantine it’s felt like they’ve been hiding something from me and, fearing the worst, I looked at their iPad while they were taking a shower and found it open to a page of drafts to some site. I haven’t realized until now that they’ve gotten into writing fan fiction, specifically on one particular, popular website, for multiple fandoms, and some of what they write is … fine. Has some swearing I don’t like them using, but I get that it’s a creative outlet for them some of them might actually be good if I understood the fandoms and such.
Dear Care and Feeding,
I’m a stay-at-home mom to 4-year-old twins, and my husband is an executive for a large company. He makes really good money, and his job allows us to live in a big house in a very nice neighborhood, have two luxury cars, and we will be able to send our kids to an elite private school next year. The problem is that he doesn’t lift a finger at home with our sons. No baths, no feedings, no story time, no playing in the backyard, nothing. Whenever I ask him about it, he gets upset and tells me some version of “Everything you and the kids have is because of me. You should be grateful! Taking care of the kids isn’t hard like my job is!” I get that he’s under pressure at work, but does that excuse him from being a dad? How can I get through to him?
Dear Care and Feeding,
As work intensified during the pandemic, my mother-in-law has been graciously helping out with laundry, cooking, and cleaning. With a toddler and a baby, we feel she’s been a godsend. The issue is around food. I grew up poor and with not so great a diet, so it’s been important to me to feed the kids well: limited or no processed food, no foods with added sugar, very rare sugary baked goods or candy. Also, I try to serve them fruit with their meals (as opposed to dessert). I never limit the amount of food they eat except for bananas (after one, they can have just about anything else).