Julie Nowell

I don’t know about you, but my little darlings have been going to bed super fucking late ever since the pandemic and I’m over it. In fact, the six-year-old almost interrupted “adult time” when he stumbled into my room at 11pm the other night. Our kids were 5 and 8 — just old enough to entertain themselves for a little while without us worrying that someone would eat a marble. I know it’s small in the grand scheme of things that people have lost over the past year, but I’m really mourning the lack of adult time and connection with my husband.

Now, there is Dr. Sears who says it is no longer acceptable to gradually push the baby bed away from yours farther and farther each day, so that the baby learns to sleep alone. Now it’s about the child getting into the best college, finding the best job and being basically the best at everything. Based on the theory that each generation takes the ridiculousness of parenting fads further and farther, I have come to the conclusion that the next logical step in this madness is this: Nuke ’Em Parenting. My hope is that for every such parent there will be at least one other person mocking parenting fads mercilessly and continuing to live a normal life, raising  normal kids in a totally boring normal way, without giving in to the madness.

Look, I’m sorry for walking into the toilet when you had the door shut. I thought that was a weird place for us, but it has been hard to find boom boom time with the kids at home. sorry you had the TV on loud, and I ran in to see if it was porn. I interrupted you watching service people surprise their loved ones by returning home unannounced.

With a job and H1B visa finally secured, we celebrated with an expensive bottle of champagne and a night on the town and then spent more money to send him back to the U. S. Embassy in London to have his passport appropriately stamped. (H1B’s are employer owned), additional legal fees to ensure we were following proper protocol and investment in a green card, a more permanent residency option secured through our marriage. –Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria, Liberia, Iran—and knew the financial and emotional sacrifice we’d made was immaterial compared to what many had given up to be present that day. He schedules doctors’ appointments, coordinates complex social calendars, folds laundry, and drops off forgotten school books, invested in the minutia that is daily parenting.