If you’ve ever been in the hospital recovering from a surgery, you know the health care providers will ask you to “rate” your pain on a scale of 1 to 10, so they can administer pain relief if you need it. But assessing mental-health distress doesn’t have a simple 1-10 scale, because mental health isn’t as…

Actors have a saying: You don’t get 100% of the parts you don’t audition for. If you’re an artistic type, or a writerly type, or even just someone who’s looking for a job, you may have found rejections to be so painful that you’ve just stopped applying for things. Social media and streaming TV is so soothing—why would…

Unless you were hiking the Appalachian Trail this weekend, you probably know that Michelle Wolf delivered the standard “roast” at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night and delivered some choice lines skewering the Trump administration and the media. From the reaction, you’d be forgiven for thinking…

Later this year, Stockton, a city in California with a 25% poverty rate, will conduct an unusual experiment: Roughly 100 of its citizens will receive $500 a month for 12-18 months, with no work requirements and no strings attached. Researchers likely will regularly assess the recipients’ health, childcare…

A lot of eggs are being recalled! More than 200 million eggs, in fact, due to a salmonella outbreak that has been traced to a North Carolina farm. This farm has halted distribution of its eggs, which have sickened 22 people. Business Insider reports the eggs were sold primarily at Walmart and Food Lion in nine states:…

What happens if your picky-eating child doesn’t grow out of it? What if you’re begging a 15-year-old to just taste a green vegetable? After all, by the time they’re adolescents, kids have spending money, autonomy, and access to plenty of junk food. So what is a parent supposed to do when the strategies they used when…

When you have babies and small kids, people give you so much advice—breast-feed, bottle-feed, co-sleep, use an infant straightjacket, get an electric swing that achieves as much noise and velocity as a rocket—that you can’t even remember it all. But one thing I do remember is that everyone insisted we make time for a…

It’s college-acceptance-letter season, so if you have a kid in high school, you know that students across the country are anxiously waiting to find out whether they got into Dream U or will have to settle for something less. If you’ve got a high-school junior (or are a high-school junior), you might be thinking ahead…

Last week a vandal, presumably a right-to-life activist, spray-painted “Baby Killer” across the front of a women’s health clinic. The catch? In a plot twist worthy of The Gift of The Magi, it turns out that the clinic was actually a “crisis pregnancy center,” or an anti-choice operation dedicated to talking women out…

When I was a child in small-town West Virginia, there weren’t many options for entertainment after school or on weekends: I could walk to a friend’s house. I could watch TV on our 13 fuzzy channels. Or I could read. And so I read, and read, and read—hours and even whole days would pass with no interruptions. I didn’t…

The school shooting in Parkland, Florida has sparked a wave of student activism across the country: Teenagers are marching, organizing, and taking to social media to pressure their reps for meaningful gun legislation. In the last two weeks students have walked out of school to protest, and there are more protests…

High school and college students are suffering from unprecedented levels of anxiety, and anyone raising teenagers these days knows they’re coping with huge amounts of stress. This goes double for girls, who have what Rachel Simmons calls “role overload” in her new book Enough as She Is: How to Help Girls Move Beyond…

Yesterday, survivors of the mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School met their senator, Marco Rubio, at a CNN town hall meeting. It didn’t go well (for Rubio). In fact, he and NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch were “jeered and lectured” at the forum, which was attended by survivors of the shooting and the father of a…

The workday, for me, has a predictable arc: Those first glorious hours of possibility and productivity; lunch; dead-eyed stare/coma; revival in which a hour or two of work is accomplished; and then one final hour of trying not to click on Olympians curling with cats.

On Wednesday, a gunman murdered 17 people in Parkland, Florida, which brings the country’s 2018 gun-death tally to 1,859. Feeling helpless and enraged? You’re not alone—and you’re not helpless. I spoke to Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, for some instruction on concrete steps the average citizen can…

The first important decision a married couple makes is ... how to get married. Black tie at the Ritz? Clambake at the shore? Backyard potluck? Research shows you might be better off with a cheap—but well-attended—wedding. Scott Stanley and Galena K. Rhoades, professors and researchers for the Institute of Family…

We all have fantasies of hitting the lottery, right? The new cars, the boat, the...lawsuits, predators, and bankruptcies? The winning ticket isn’t necessarily the winning ticket for a happy life, which is exactly why the winner of January’s Powerball jackpot of $560 million wants to keep her name out of the public…

Bought anything from LL Bean in the last year? Not totally happy with it? Return it now. The century-old catalog retailer for outdoorsy types has changed its famously generous return policy: Previously, you could return anything, anytime, no receipt necessary; now you must keep your receipt and take your items back…

If you think your kids aren’t getting any kind of sex education, you’re wrong: They’re getting plenty of it—from pornography. Doesn’t that sound horrifying?

Everyone who has a child in a competitive hobby knows the types: the boy who disputes every call the referee makes, the parent who hurls invective from the sidelines, the girl who can barely bring herself to shake hands after her team loses. Playing sports and games is hugely valuable for child development: They learn…