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Dear Care and Feeding, My wife and I (also female) want to start a family. The plan is for me to be the one to be pregnant this first time. We are very excited about this prospect but there is one dark cloud forming overhead. My wife’s parents have been divorced for 20 years, and they both have had new partners for at least a decade. While things have always been a little tense on occasions when everyone is present,­­­ it was manageable until grandchildren entered the picture. Both of my wife’s siblings now have children, and my mother-in-law, “Nancy,” is insecure around/jealous of...

Parenting advice on financial strife, helicopter parents, and stubborn friends.

Dear Care and Feeding, My second grade son has been called a bully by two classmates and their parents. Yet nobody, including his teacher, says that he has ever laid a hand on anyone, because we don’t condone violence in our household. My son is known to tease other kids, but that’s what every second grader does! Have we become so sensitive as a society that kids can’t poke fun at each other without being labeled bullies? If these kids can’t handle that, then the real world will eat them alive. How can I tell these parents that their kids need to toughen up?

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 con...

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 shou...