Before Lori and James's second son was born last fall, they devised a plan. After her short maternity leave, Lisa would return to work as a tech consultant while James would quit his job as a lawyer to stay home with the boys. "We knew that we wanted one of...

Julie always expected she'd quit her job as a technical recruiter as soon as she and her husband, Billy, had kids. Her mom had been a stay-at-home, and so were most of her friends. But once their first child, Mia, was born, Julie began to rethink the notion. Mia was...

Joanna had known for months that her job was in jeopardy. As creative director of a well-read city magazine, she was under tremendous pressure to create magazine covers that sold well on the newsstand and sparked advertiser interest. And although she didn't believe the fault was entirely hers, sales for...

9-year-old Harry knew his mother's rules, as age-old as the act of parenting itself: No ball playing in the house. And yet he couldn't seem to help himself. Again and again, his mother, Lisa, would find Harry tossing a baseball in their small galley kitchen or kicking around a soccer...

Change for women over the last decade is in the books. Roles have transformed. Opportunities have exploded. And a future of choice and empowerment is locked in.

For men, that future is a lot less certain.

A time of female transformation has been a time of male accommodation. The adjustment...

The bed and desk both want me.
The windows, the view, the idea of Paris.

With my minutes, I chip away at the idiom,
an unmarked pebble in a fast current.

-- Rachel Zucker, from "After Baby After Baby"

I've never liked the term "working...

Alex, a paralegal at a large firm, knew that her female department mates had been talking about her. Though she was the newest hire among them, she'd recently gotten a small promotion, which had been announced at an all-staff meeting. Since then, she felt as if the other paralegals had...

In the final, hyper-violent scene of the movie Kick-Ass, Hit-Girl, a 10-year-old vigilante in a purple wig played by Chloe Grace Moretz takes down more than a dozen armed men using two shot guns and a variety of exotic fighting techniques. As Joan Jett's "Bad Reputation" plays in the background,...

Depuis 20 ans, Amanda est une recruteuse très demandée pour des entreprises de technologie, et depuis peu, elle assure la supervision d'une douzaine d'autres recruteurs. Recruter peut se révéler très compétitif - la plupart des recruteurs sont payés à la commission - mais c'est aussi un travail de...

Amanda has been an in-demand recruiter for tech companies for twenty years, most recently as a supervisor to a dozen other recruiters. Recruiting can be highly competitive -- most work strictly on commission -- but also collaborative. She's often helped co-workers, as well as her reports, find leads, and they've...

Eight-year-old Henry lied about everything. It absolutely infuriated his mother, Sophie, if mostly because she couldn't figure out why he was doing it. Some of the lies she understood, as they'd clearly been issued to avoid mild trouble or reprimand, like the lies about whether he'd made his bed or...

When I met Sandy, a rising executive at a big-time digital media company, she had two children under two years old. She had been climbing ladders for more than a decade -- since the day she left college, basically -- but she still loved every minute of it. Sure, she...

Nine-year-old Joshua was being, as his mom described, "a bit of a jerk." Over dinner after the first day of their week-long ski trip he told her, actually, he didn't really like skiing, even though they'd been skiing together for years. Even though just a few hours earlier he'd been...

Vacation week was drawing to a close -- and Jamie couldn't be more ecstatic. She felt guilty, but she was desperate for her boys, six and nine, to go back to school. Their week had been a nonstop parade of activity: bowling, ice-skating, play dates, lunches out, family games, family...

Jill remembers the very first time Ben got called to the principal's office. The kindergarteners were standing in line waiting for the bus home when Ben pushed a classmate to the ground. Then he encouraged a few of the other kids to start kicking. The boy wasn't down for long...

Click here to read an original op-ed from the TED speaker who inspired this post and watch the TEDTalk below.

Back in the early days of my psychology practice, I remember hearing new mothers talk about the challenges of becoming a new parent. While I was...

By most measures, it's never been a better time to be gay. But all the encouraging steps toward a more accepting America may not mean much when you're called "faggot", and slammed into a locker.

Polling shows that America has never been on better terms with sexual diversity -- from...

Sam's parents like to say their son was eight when he found God, no real thanks to them. The family was sitting down to dinner one Tuesday evening when Sam asked if they might go around and talk about what each person was thankful for. Sam's mother, Nora, thought this...

Durant des années, j'ai bu avec application huit verres d'eau par jour. On m'avait dit que c'était bon pour moi. Je n'ai jamais vraiment su qui me l'avait dit, ni pourquoi. Je découvre aujourd'hui que c'était simplement une vague recommandation d'un rapport gouvernemental de 1945 ; lequel déclarait aussi que l'essentiel...

For many years, I faithfully drank eight glasses of water a day. I was told it was good for me. I never really knew who first said that, or why. Now I find out that it's just a rough guideline from a 1945 government report; which also pointed out that...