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Kathryn Jezer-Morton

Columnist, “Brooding”
See all their articles from across New York Magazine

Kathryn Jezer-Morton is the author of the column and newsletter series “Brooding” in which she explores topics surrounding modern family life. She has written about domestic life and digital culture for the New York Times, The Nation, The Guardian, and Jezebel, among many other publications. She got a PhD in Sociology from Concordia University in 2022.

  1. parenting
    Why Do Parents Obsess Over Kids’ Athletics?Being a committed Sports Parent™ is a path toward absolution of any guilt.
  2. parenting
    The High Stakes of the Group-Family VacationTo be fully seen, in all your dysfunction, and to stay friends afterward? Terrifying! And sublime.
  3. parenting
    How Do French Parents Raise Their Teenagers?Bringing Up Bébé is entering its teens. Author Pamela Druckerman discusses what’s changed about French parenting.
  4. parenting
    Mother Is a VerbMother’s Day should be about celebrating the mothering that we give and receive from other moms.
  5. parenting
    What Motherhood Looks Like in ‘Florida!!!’The matriarchs of Taylor Swift’s favorite state defy the identity scripts the rest of us are used to.
  6. parenting
    Parenting Through Our Control IssuesRaising our kids with too much control — of their moods, their consumption, their safety — makes it harder for them to transform and change.
  7. parenting
    When Kids Are Addicted to their Phones, Who Is to Blame?Parents can’t change their kids’ relationships to screens without also addressing their own.
  8. parenting
    Why Are Parents On TikTok So Angry?The barrage of online advice from experts promoting a “gentle” approach to child-rearing is getting to them.
  9. parenting
    How Dr. Becky Professionalized ParentingBecky Kennedy popularized buzzwords like reparenting oneself and co-regulation — it’s made her the most influential parenting expert since Dr. Spock.
  10. parenting
    How Should You Discipline a Kid in Trouble at School?There has got to be a way for nonauthoritarian parents to raise children with structure and respect for authority while maintaining their trust.
  11. parenting
    Can Parents Prevent Their Sons From Sliding to the Right?It might feel dangerous to let a teen explore reactionary and unformed pseudo-ideologies. But no one should get canceled at the dinner table.
  12. parenting
    How (and Where) Are Parents Supposed to Get it On?Being a highly engaged parent in a nuclear family, fulfilling as it can be, often requires that some intimacy between parents gets lost.
  13. parenting
    Why Are Parents Fixated on Core Memories?It’s supremely hubristic to assume that you can stage-manage the content of your children’s memories.
  14. parenting
    A.J. Daulerio Is Embracing Sober ParentingThe writer talks about recovery, becoming a father during the pandemic, and staying present.
  15. year in review
    The 10 Most-Read ‘Brooding’ Columns in 2023The stories from Kathryn Jezer-Morton’s series on parenting that most captured Cut readers’ attention this year.
  16. parenting
    How Much Nostalgia for the Holidays Should We Have?At best it’s a state of arousal that makes your life more vivid. At worst, it’s an unscratchable itch — a jones for a fix that does not exist.
  17. parenting
    What Do Kids Lose When Preschools Are Segregated?Sociologist and race scholar Dr. Casey Stockstill discusses the ways both affluent children and poor children of color miss out.
  18. parenting
    Why Does the Internet Tell Us to ‘Raise Good Humans’?The phrase is so general it becomes meaningless, but it has sinister, grandiose, and defensive undertones.
  19. parenting
    Does Anyone Feel Like an Actual Adult?Or are we all just cosplaying adulthood?
  20. parenting
    Childhood Independence Is a Mental-Health IssueWhat if we are inadvertently contributing to a decadeslong crisis?
  21. parenting
    Why Are We Always on Call for Our Kids?My children very rarely have to wait for anyone for very long — is it time to establish stronger boundaries around my alone time?
  22. parenting
    What We Owe Our Families — and What We Don’tJenisha Watts was raised by people who did not keep her safe. Here, she talks about parenting her own child in the shadow of that history.
  23. parenting
    How Will We Cope When the Elder Care Crisis Comes for Us?And you thought you had it bad with the childcare situation.
  24. parenting
    Is Tradwife Content Dangerous, or Just Stupid?The visual appeal of homesteading and hand-making overrides the conservative ideology living in the background — and that’s the point.
  25. family
    ‘My Mom Is Selfish. Do I Still Have to be a ‘Good Daughter’?’Having a living mom, no matter how self-centered, is important, writes Brooding columnist Kathryn Jezer-Morton. Even if frustrating.
  26. brooding
    When Lonely Children Go Viral, Should We Rejoice?GoFundMes and positivity will not actually help a child make friends — even worse, sharing feel-good content about them risks causing harm.
  27. brooding
    Will Teens Always Be Daredevils?It seems like an impulse that’s on the wane lately. Is that a good thing?
  28. brooding
    On Parenting Regrets and the ‘Right Time’ for KidsThis isn’t an advice newsletter — but you have questions anyway. So here are some answers.
  29. brooding
    Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road’ Is the Best Parenting Book of All TimeWhen all of the accouterments are stripped away, what does it mean to care for a child? That’s what McCarthy was really writing about.
  30. brooding
    Director Nicole Holofcener Can’t Tell You How You’ll Mess Up Your KidsStill, the You Hurt My Feelings filmmaker continues to be my guide to adulthood.
  31. brooding
    Is Going ‘Camel Mode’ Inevitable for Parents?When you’re caring for young children, you are crossing a metaphysical desert of the self. It’s emerging from it that’s the hard part.
  32. brooding
    Learning How to Parent from a Warhol Factory Girl at the Chelsea HotelAlex Auder’s mother Viva Superstar was a Warhol girl. As a parent, she thinks kids need less micromanaging by adults.
  33. brooding
    What Exactly Is the Magic of Disney World?Adults who love Disney hear a siren song returning them to a time they fully lived inside a secondary world. This is nothing to laugh at.
  34. brooding
    Busking As a Family BandAfter a spate of troubles finding housing, The de la Mottes, a family ensemble of nine kids who all play string instruments, have landed in Harlem.
  35. brooding
    Bless This Mess(y Fridge)Where better to display the uncurated floatsam of our actual lives?
  36. brooding
    Are Helicopter Parents Actually Lazy?Maybe they’re soothing their anxiety, maybe they’re just choosing the path of least resistance.
  37. brooding
    Are New Dads OK?Male loneliness can make for a powder keg of bad vibes.
  38. brooding
    Cup of Jo’s Joanna Goddard Opens Up About Her Divorce“There’s something really nice about waking up in a house alone. It feels kind of quietly revolutionary.”
  39. brooding
    What If You Just Didn’t Clean That Up?Our ideas about cleanliness are stuck in the mid-20th century. Today, women can afford to care less.
  40. spring fashion
    Starting Over With a Divorce Registry“We don’t see these things as gifts.”
  41. brooding
    How Am I Supposed to Teach My Kids to Be Generous?Especially when “paying it forward” is just a quid pro quo turned outward.
  42. brooding
    What If We Make Affordable Child Care About Wellness?Then we might finally see some change.
  43. brooding
    Was ‘Adulting’ Actually Good for Us?If the self-help top-seller were written now, its lessons would look a lot different.
  44. brooding
    Actually, It Takes Real Skill to Be a MomfluencerTransforming family life into something people want to buy is harder than it looks.
  45. brooding
    Are There Any Kids’ Books Out There That Are … Actually Good?Wizards and dragons need not apply.
  46. brooding
    Would Unschooling Actually Make My Kids Any Happier?To help kids take more pleasure in school, encourage them to do their own thing — not schoolwork.
  47. brooding
    Can a 40-year-old Really Call Themself an Orphan?The death of a parent makes you a child again, but also an elder.
  48. brooding
    My Family, My PlaylistsThe soundscape of a house is a shared space where we can expand into our feeling of belonging.
  49. brooding
    Why Does Giving My Son His First Phone Feel Like a Trap?My phone has amplified my worst qualities and dulled my best ones. I got the SIM card anyway.
  50. brooding
    Why Do Moms Love Fall So Much?After months of ad hoc caregiving and catastrophic weather, the season and all its decorative trappings offer moms a less chaotic reality.
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