#5SmartReads - March 23, 2023

Marisa on intensive parenting, rebranding of the morning after pill, and the new American "it" dog

March 23, 2023

Marisa is a corporate employee benefits account executive, a freelance writer, and a #5SmartReads contributor, but her favorite title is definitely "mom." Currently reading: On the Rooftop by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton.

Currently watching: Top Chef World All-Stars. Current life hack: Equilibria energy capsules

I read this article last fall and it has been stuck on a loop in my mind ever since. As a parent who (like all parents) wants the best for her kid, it definitely resonated with me. And as a parent who is currently spending an inordinate amount of time vacillating between public and private schools for kindergarten, who agonized over breast vs. bottle feeding, and who has her four year old signed up for multiple extracurricular activities, I definitely recognized myself in the intensive parent model described by the author.

What was really interesting, though, is the thesis posited by the author at the end of the article and in his book:

"Intensive parenting isn’t going away, because too many parents know it works—and the problem is not its high costs. The problem is that we impose these costs on the wrong people: individuals. This ensures that only the richest, most highly educated parents can manage everything without breaking their lives in half. What we should be doing is making it easier for all children to get the kinds of opportunities enabled by intensive parenting."

The details of this case are fascinating to me (and my more voyeuristic side definitely wants to know what went wrong behind the scenes), but this is an important read not for its sensational properties but for its practical ones.

If you are a nonbiological parent listed on a birth certificate and have not formally adopted your child for one reason or the other, take heed - that may be something you want to look into ASAP.

Honestly, I LOVE this.

Anything that makes contraception easier to access and less stigmatized is a win in my book. Especially as someone who lives in a state where mifepristone may be impossible to access before the end of the year, I think this work and these products are so, so important.

And if a pink logo and direct-to-consumer marketing are what it takes to get them in front of people, then I'm all in.

TW: Still birth and infant loss.

This read is long and important - but fair warning it may also be very triggering if you are currently pregnant or hoping to become pregnant, as well as if you've ever lost a pregnancy.

That said, there are some important takeaways for all of us:

1. you know your body and, in the case of pregnancy, your baby. If you think something isn't right, trust yourself. Don't second guess your gut.

2. If you don't trust your doctor, or if you don't find their reassurances convincing, ask for a second opinion. Go out of your way to seek one out if you need to.

3. Whatever you're dealing with (whether something hopefully joyful like pregnancy or something that is almost always scary like cancer), make sure you know and understand what are the evidence-based best practices around care for that condition. Not all tragic outcomes can be prevented, but the point is that some of them can.

When I saw the news alert yesterday that Frenchies have outpaced Laboradors as the #1 dog of choice in the US, the first thing I thought to myself was "I wonder what that says about us as a country."

I was picturing a world moving away from the suburban glory days of the yellow lab and towards a more urban, smaller footprint - but it turns out there's much, much more to it - and that it's not as benign as I was making it out to be either.

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