When my wife Anne accepted me into her life, she also graciously accepted my "luggage": three wonderful kids aged 9-12. They love her and she loves them, with clear affection traveling in both directions. But Anne rejects the label "stepmother" for reasons that have nothing to do with parental responsibility,...

Cynopsis Kids, the childrens' media news site, notes that, for the week of August 8 (but many, many other weeks as well), MTV's Jersey Shore was the #1 show for teens 12-17.

I don't watch Jersey Shore, but I certainly know Snooki, The Situation, Ronnie, JWoww, and Sammi...

"So, what do you do?" my dermatologist asks, scanning a form on which my job clearly occupies a box.

Dr. Skin is a middle-aged man with a full head of hair, a remarkably leathery and pocked face, and a striking lack of sideburns.

I'm sitting cross-legged on a paper-covered...

Traditional Father's Day gifts -- ties, books, wallets, gadgets, golf-themed junk -- ironically have little to do with kids. It's as if the very point of Father's Day is to distract Dad from the fact that he is one.

But for divorced and remarried dads in particular, Father's Day represents...

I attended the Academy Awards in 1991 and 1992. You may remember them as the years Dances with Wolves and The Silence of the Lambs took home top prizes, but it's more likely you don't remember them at all. I didn't go as a nominee -- that kind of honor...

Old habits die hard, but when it comes to Valentine's Day traditions you had with a former spouse, die they must.

When you're in a subsequent marriage or relationship, it's imperative to burn the old playbook and write a new one -- especially one customized to your new...

What holiday is less connected to its historical roots than Valentine's Day? Jesus gets a strong shout-out here and there on his birthday. President's Day may be the perfect occasion for an underwear sale, but at least Washington's face graces the newspaper ads. Even Punxsutawney Phil got a movie deal....

Excerpted and revised from "The 40-Year-Old Version: Humoirs of a Divorced Dad"

Somewhere in Africa, there's a goat with an unsuspecting Kenyan family's name on it. I adopted the animal for the family after coming across the idea in a holiday catalog from the non-profit group

(Excerpted from my book The 40-Year-Old Version: Humoirs of a Divorced Dad)

I'm looking at a photo of myself topless.

I'm five years old, playing the role of an Indian in my kindergarten Thanksgiving Day play, red war paint on my chest and cheeks, and a paper...

The stepmother is probably the least-defined role in the contemporary family structure: She is a parent, yet not the parent. A caregiver but not always a care-getter. She donates considerable time, space, attention, resources, and family income to people from another life. She has not only willingly opened her private...

When I first sought advice regarding my own divorce in 2007, I went to the source of all reasonable and well-informed insight, Google. What I found was a chorus of certain doom: I'd go bankrupt, my kids would see shrinks forever, I'd never find the "woman of my dreams," and...

This essay is excerpted from my book, "The 40-Year-Old Version: Humoirs of a Divorced Dad", and based on a version originally published in The New York Times Magazine.

To my naïve 40-year-old eyes, my parents' third-floor condominium was just a place to sleep while my first wife and...

When I recently saw The Town in New Jersey, fellow moviegoers shouted back at the screen as if they were watching a football game or at a contentious Thanksgiving dinner. To be honest, I expected it -- in the battle between the well-mannered...

Hey Charlie,

It's late as I write this -- even the cats look sleepy -- but I was just watching a documentary on HBO that made me think of you. It was about kids your age all over the country who are having trouble fitting in at middle...

Last Tuesday, New York City CEO (and acting mayor) Michael Bloomberg eloquently defended a proposal to build a mosque and community center near the World Trade Center site. In his speech, Bloomberg compared Muslim efforts to construct a house of worship with the plight of other historic groups...

From PBS Parents

Father's Day -- at least as Hallmark and Wikipedia define it -- doesn't mean all that much to me, even though being a dad is one of the most important jobs I have.

For one thing, consider Father's...

"Man up!"

This is the essence of the backlash I got for revealing the suffocating depression I experienced when my first son was born in 1999. I wrote about my emotional plunge last year in a Newsweek essay, as well as in my...

A recent Dartmouth University study claims that deterring kids from watching R-rated movies will help steer them away from alcohol and drugs and "a lot of other things that parents don't want them to do." The study, which involved New England middle school...

USA Today says this about the upcoming documentary Babies, "If you were enraptured by just-hatched creatures of March of the Penguins, wait until you see Babies." Call me cynical, but it seems very Homosapien-centric to compare what amounts to a global...

Do you remember what you were told being a new parent would be like?

Your childless friends and family said having a baby would be endlessly blissful and constantly life-affirming... as if they really knew or remembered.

Your friends with children said -- maybe with encouraging smiles on their...