It’s always an open question in my mind as to whether it’s more work to get your kids to do chores or just to do them and let the kids discover the horrible truth about how there are no laundry elves who magically clean, fold and replace clothes in closets at a later date. So far I have opted for nagging. My thought is that at least they will know how to do it, should the impulse ever strike. Also, I possibly quite like complaining. A colleague told me that she thought laundry was the easiest because kids eventually want clean underpants. I thought this was genius, but I discovered that (a) some males have a very high tolerance for not-clean underpants and (b) some daughters, when they run out of clean underpants, come for yours. And they take the good ones. As ever, I am yr humble correspondent at @luscombeland or belinda.luscombe@time.com
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roundup
This mom with a big successful career says one really good way to get it all done is to not do some of it. Make a list and cross off the non-essential stuff, like marinating chicken and reading emails from school. (Hmmm.) Motto
An interesting new Canadian study suggests that the road to reading success lies through bad spelling. Psychology Today
Is there a move away from gender equity in the home, especially among young people? Some studies suggest yes. More high school seniors believe that dads should make the big decisions than thought that in the 90s. Researchers are puzzled as to what changed. TIME
If you feel like all your 30-something friends are having kids, you are not alone. The rate of 30 year old mothers is the highest it has been in decades. Pew Research
This dad either had a pretty interesting way to coax his son into getting better grades, or he really wanted to see some sports live but his son was goofing off, so he multitasked. Either way, cameras caught him at games his son was probably watching on TV holding up signs urging the son to you know, turn off the TV and study. Your move, kid. TIME
Photojournalist Lynsey Addario was asked by a young refugee boy to find his mother. She did, while on assignment for TIME. What the boy's mother said and did is pretty heartbreaking. (I know all the click-baity websites say that, but this really is quite eye-opening.) The New York Times
PFFT: Parenting from Famous Types
Duchess of Cambridge, mother of two, one of whom will probably be King of England
"Nothing can really prepare you for you the sheer overwhelming experience of what it means to become a mother. It is full of complex emotions of joy, exhaustion, love, and worry, all mixed together. Your fundamental identity changes overnight. You go from thinking of yourself as primarily an individual, to suddenly being a mother, first and foremost.”
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