Without state support for early parenting, being present in those precious early months is a class-based privilege, one that ultimately exacerbates the very class disadvantage that creates unequal access to the luxury of parenting in the first place.

"All that rot they teach to children about the little raindrop fairies with their buckets washing down the window panes must go. We need less sentimentality and more spanking." Or so said Granville Stanley Hall, founder of child psychology, in 1899

Each child was born with a different temperament, a different passion, a different way of navigating through life. I see traces of myself and my husband in them, but they are their own people.

It's easy to fall into the gendered trap of assuming that hammers and nails are the preferred territory of boys, but my 5-year-old daughter attacked this building project with more enthusiasm than I have seen her show in weeks.