#parental-support

#parental-support

My company pays for the employees' health insurance and then the employee can add (and pay for) additional insurance, including for kids. "Kids" insurance costs the same if you have one kid or six kids. When Anna and Ben graduated college and started working, I kept them on my insurance because I was already purchasing the "Kids" insurance for Caroline. Anna switched to her own insurance at 26 and Ben will be 26 soon and do the same. Caroline now has a full-time job with benefits, including insurance. Her insurance is not free, but costs significantly less than "Kids" at my company. I never had a stated plan to insure my children until they were 26-it just worked out that way for my older children and didn't cost me any additional money. But it's clearly a benefit they received courtesy of me that Caroline won't receive.

To the surprise of no one with internet access, surely, we're still in a birthrate crisis. What with ecological collapse, incipient fascism, geopolitical instability, the lack of support for new parents, childcare costs and more, bringing new life into the world requires a radical act of hope. And who's feeling that these days? Plus, even if you do want children, pregnancy feels kind of risky at the moment.

Treating children and adolescents with eating disorders is a fragile undertaking. But there is nothing fragile about the eating disorder itself: it's a monster that has taken over the child's brain. Particularly for children - those in the treatment program I lead are as young as 8 - caregivers take on most of the battle.

Elayna experienced fear and anxiety following a school shooting incident on campus, which led her to consider taking a semester off from college.

Parents who grew up in environments where divorce is seen as taboo might perceive it as a failure, conflicting with their deep-rooted values and beliefs.