“My child must succeed! I will give her every opportunity to succeed! She will learn to write tricky words like ‘constitution’ in a lovely, calligraphic hand, but her vocabulary will never include ‘failure’!” It was such modest claims that inspired me to satirize competitive parenting in The Perfect Baby Handbook. Now, it turns out, that […]

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Everyone loves a clairvoyant. Especially when she predicts the future with as much bluster and certainty as Penelope Trunk, who pens a syndicated business column called the “Brazen Careerist”—and focuses her forecasting on one’s own beloved child. Trunk’s most recent projection, “What Generation Z will be like at work,” is irresistible. In a nutshell, it […]

» Continue reading "Why your baby will grow up to be a Scary Information Glutton"

It’d hard to be funny when you’re hanging out with tiny people who see no compelling reason to avoid gaping pits, ravenous dingoes, speeding Camaros, and large houses made of gingerbread. The parenting experience more typically facilitates freaking out, not the writing of a bestselling humor book. So when someone like the truly hilarious Stefanie […]

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So I just discovered that Michael Jackson’s daughter, Paris, was born on April 3. The good news: So was I; it’s a really nice birthday. The bad news: Someday, Paris is going to read about herself in The Secret Language of Birthdays, this infamously rude, famously “accurate,” best-selling astrology book—and find out that she’s “demanding, […]

» Continue reading "The fate of Paris Michael Jackson—according to the world’s meanest astrologer"

Newish photos of Michael Jackson’s children have revealed that the eldest—Michael Joseph Kingly Son of Jackson His Highness, Jr.—was, at one point, a cheap bottle blonde. Presumably not by choice. Although fresher scandals about Prince’s parentage, biological and otherwise, are arriving fast and furious, the hair thing has really touched a nerve among parents. Especially […]

» Continue reading "Michael Jackson bleached his kid’s hair…both cruelly and cheesily!"