In this subscriber-only episode (you can become a paid subscriber by clicking here), we explore something we’ve been wondering about for a while: Why do we care so much about what other parents do? Why are we inclined to examine other parents choices? What should each of our b****y, judgy alter-egos be named? Does it tame them to name them, like they sa…

We sit down with the whip-smart UK-based American journalist Stephanie H. Murray (a contributing writer for The Atlantic) to talk about the flawed baseline logic of American parenthood, freedom, control and the sacrifices we make to be part of a community. Murray explains that finding community may mean that we can’t “overindex” every little parenting decision, why ‘freedom’ as parents and kids might be more complex than it seems, why she wishes her neighbors would yell at her kids more often, and more. Plus: Book recommendations, parenthood and vigilance, Fanta in the UK vs. US, and Sarah demands permission to give your child the trashiest birthday present she can find.

Links:

* Stephanie H. Murray newsletter, Family Stuff

* The Isolation of Intensive Parenting

* Bring Back Communal Kid Discipline

* “No gifts” or “Yes gifts?” Edith Zimmerman and I hash out who is superior (from Evil Witches Newsletter )

* What’s On Her Mind: The Mental Workload of Family Life by Alison Daminger

If you love the work we do, please consider becoming a ✨paid subscriber✨ on substack. Paid subscribers get access to everything behind the paywall, like subscriber-only episodes, book reviews and more. Or, support us by following, sharing or reviewing our show here and everywhere else you listen to podcasts you love. Thank you!

Visit our Bookshop storefront to find all the books we’ve mentioned here and in previous episodes. When you shop there, we get a small affiliate fee (thank you!).

You can follow the podcast on Instagram (@themotherofitall).

Dr. Jack Schneider, Dwight W. Allen Distinguished Professor at UMass Amherst and and host of the Have You Heard podcast about education policy, joins us to break down the recent “schools are bad” media bonanza (links below). Dr. Schneider digs in to what’s flawed about the panic-inducing articles about the state of American public education, and shares tips on what to say to the person next to us at a dinner party who starts to s**t on our kids’ public school. Also, the questions to ask your kid if you really want to know if they’re school is good, and a thought-provoking take on Little Free Libraries.

Links:

* America’s Children Are Unwell. Are Schools Part of the Problem? From A.D.H.D. to anxiety, disorders have risen as the expectations of childhood have changed. By Jia Lynn Yang (New York Times)

* The Big Fail Student achievement has fallen off a cliff. And neither Trump nor the pandemic is to blame. By Andrew Rice (New York Magazine)

* Jack Schneider, educational historian and professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

* The Education Wars (Jack Schneider)

* Beyond Test Scores (Jack Schneider)

* Jack Schneider in The Nation

* r/Teachers: “What does this generation of students do better than others?” (via Evil Witches Newsletter )

* Scopes Monkey Trial

* Arizona Education Debit Card

* Teachers Have It Easy

* California Healthy Kids Survey

* The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich

* The City & The City by China Miéville

If you love the work we do on Mother Of It All, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers get access to everything behind the paywall, like subscriber-only episodes, book reviews and more. If you subscribe at the founding member level, we’ll send you one of our awesome tote bags. And it’s always free and helpful to follow, share, rate and review our show here and everywhere else you listen to podcasts you love. Thank you!

Visit our Bookshop storefront to find all the books we’ve mentioned here and in previous episodes. When you shop there, we get a small affiliate fee (yay, thank you!).

Visit motherofitall.com to send us ideas for a future episode or learn more about the show.

Follow the podcast on Instagram (@themotherofitall) or Bluesky (@motherofitallpod.bsky.social)

Happy New Year, sweet paid subscribers! Thanks for making us rich! Just kidding. Thanks for keeping the lights on, though. Your support means a lot, and we’re filled with gratitude as we cruise into 2026.

2025 was quite a year for mom movies AND dad movies and we’ve been dying to talk about it. Sarah saw most of them, and Miranda saw some of them, despi…

In this episode, Sarah and Miranda Rake kick things off with some Mariah Carey karaoke and a rundown of their favorite “laundry folding films.” Then journalist Courtney Martin joins to talk about the messy, tender, and often overwhelming realities of caring for aging parents while raising kids—the ultimate sandwich generation hustle. Courtney shares what it’s been like to relocate her whole family, the heartbreak and beauty of moving her dad into memory care, and how communal living and worker-owned elder care centers have shaped her journey. Grab a mug of tea, add another bag (Sarah’s jam), and settle in for a conversation that’s equal parts comfort and reality check.

Other Links:

* Learning in Public: Lessons for a Racially Divided America from My Daughter’s School by Courtney Martin

* What Our Intergenerational Household Taught All of Us About Care (Greater Good Science Center)

* Opinion: Whoever needs to hear this: It’s OK to put your loved one with dementia in residential care (SF Chronicle)

* Elder Care (Courtney’s Substack)

* On Vanishing: Mortality, Dementia, and What It Means to Disappear by Lynn Castiel Harper

* Creative Care: A Revolutionary Approach to Dementia and Elder Care by Anne Basting

* Travelers to Unimaginable Lands: Dementia, Caregiving, and the Hidden Humanity of Memory by Dasha Kiper

* Wise Unknown Podcast

* Slate’s How-To Podcast

* the examined family (Courtney’s Substack)

* Mother of It All Bookshop (Bookshop.org)

* Caring Across Generations (Ai-jen Poo)

* Doulagivers Elder Care Doula Directory (Doulagivers: Find a Doula)

* Home Care Cooperatives

* Holiday Movies We Love (Or Don’t)

* Mariah Carey’s Christmas Specials

* A Merry Scottish Christmas

* A Merry Little Ex-mas

* White Christmas

* Christmas in Connecticut

* Desk Set

* A Very Murray Christmas (Netflix)

* Freakier Friday

* Sarah’s Letterboxd

If you love the work we do on Mother Of It All, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers get access to everything behind the paywall, like subscriber-only episodes, book reviews and more. If you subscribe at the founding member level, we’ll send you one of our awesome tote bags. And it’s always free and helpful to follow, share, rate and review our show here and everywhere else you listen to podcasts you love. Thank you!

* Visit our Bookshop storefront to find all the books we’ve mentioned here and in previous episodes. When you shop there, we get a small affiliate fee (yay, thank you!).

* Visit motherofitall.com to send us ideas for a future episode or learn more about the show.

* Follow the podcast on Instagram (@themotherofitall) or Bluesky (@motherofitallpod.bsky.social)

Welcome to our ✨Holiday Special✨! In an episode that is ostensibly about Elf On The Shelf (or Mensch On The Bench — for Sarah), we explore our collective annual search for meaning and self with the great Meaghan O’Connell, author of And Now We Have Everything and noted Elf On The Shelf apologist.

Pressing items interrogated lightly include: Should Elf On The Shelf be a Dad thing? Does holiday magic necessarily include lying to our kids? What do we say when our kids ask if we’re Santa? What is the true magic? How do we even know what we enjoy and what we don’t in a season this busy, and should we take Miranda’s recommendation to do a witchy ritual to remind ourselves?

Links:

* Meaghan O’Connell’s book, And Now We Have Everything

* St. Nicholas day

* Mr. Willoby’s Christmas Tree

* ‘Lazy Mom’ Elf On A Shelf

* Elf on a Shelf Book

* The first Mother of it All holiday special, featuring

Sara Petersen

* Mensch on a Bench (“as seen on Shark Tank”)

* Sarah on Boo Baskets (The Cut)

* When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron

* Miranda’s Grandma Ruth’s Peanut Butter Balls

* Meaghan’s Substack

We’re joined by science journalist Melinda Wenner Moyer, author Hello, Cruel World! Science-Based Strategies for Raising Terrific Kids in Terrifying Times. Melinda’s work has long been a trusted source for parents, and here, we talk a little bit about a lot of things that are on our minds right now. Melinda shares thoughts everything from Botox and dying our hair to resilience & kids, to nervous-system regulation to whether divorced moms are quietly judging their married friends and so much more!

We end with an invigorating lightning round of a new game that Sarah Wheeler created called “Parent Advice Gut Check.” It’s complicated!

Links:

* How to Raise Kids Who Aren’t A******s (Melinda’s first book)

* Hello, Cruel World! Science-Based Strategies for Raising Terrific Kids in Terrifying Times (Melinda’s new book!)

* Now What? Melinda’s Substack

* The Facts of Lice in Slate

* What’s on Her Mind: The Mental Workload of Family Life by Allison Daminger

* The Emotional Lives of Teenagers by Lisa Damour

* Lily Allen’s West End Girl

If you love the work we do on Mother Of It All, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers get access to everything behind the paywall, like subscriber-only episodes, book reviews and more. If you subscribe at the founding member level, we’ll send you one of our awesome tote bags. And it’s always free and helpful to follow, share, rate and review our show here and everywhere else you listen to podcasts you love. Thank you!

* Visit our Bookshop storefront to find all the books we’ve mentioned here and in previous episodes. When you shop there, we get a small affiliate fee (yay, thank you!).

* Visit motherofitall.com to send us ideas for a future episode or learn more about the show.

* Follow the podcast on Instagram (@themotherofitall) or Bluesky (@motherofitallpod.bsky.social)

In this bonus episode for paid subscribers, Sarah and Miranda go long on the PTA (Sarah is this year’s PTA President for her school—something she thought she’d never do) — balancing anxiety about your kid with collective goals and getting involved without losing your boundaries. Also radio nostalgia and whether your clothes just look like pajamas.

Links:

Sarah and Miranda are joined by guests Christie George and Jihii Jolly to discuss how motherhood and creativity fuel or constrain one another, and how we navigate life as mothers who also want to make art, or artists who want to mother.

Links:

* Christie George’s Practice Practice

* Jijii Jolly’s Time Spent

* Christie’s book, The Emergency Was Curiosity

* The Mother Artist by Catherine Ricketts

* Scrap SF

* Ruth Asawa

* Designing Motherhood exhibit at the Museum of Art and Design

* We Live For The We by Dani McClain

* How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell

* The Cost of Performing Childhood for Your Parent’s Art by By Parul Sehgal (New York Times)

With the (yes, weird to make it a footnote but) footnote that the global environmental, cultural, social and real human costs of AI are massive, today we are zeroing in on just one question about AI: the impact of AI on kids and parents. How will the coming ubiquity of AI tools in our homes, schools and workplaces impact child development, parenthood and the world our children will inherit in their adulthood?

Our guest today is Doctor Dana Suskind, founder and Co-Director of the a Center for Early Learning + Public Health at the University of Chicago, Founding Director of the Pediatric Cochlear Implant Program, and Professor of Surgery, Pediatrics, and Public Policy at the University of Chicago. She is the author of “Thirty Million Words: Building a Child’s Brain” and “Parent Nation: Unlocking Every Child’s Potential, Fulfilling Society’s Promise.” Her next book, on AI and early childhood development, will be published by Penguin Dutton in the Fall of 2026.

In this meaty episode, we talk to Dr. Suskind about about how using AI impacts our minds and how she is thinking about its influence on developing brains in particular. What do we know right now about what happens when kids interact with AI?

From the episode:

“The vast majority of brain development happens, some 90 % happens within the first five years of life, and it is almost entirely dependent on their exposure to language and nurturing interaction. That’s what wires up the brain. We call it serve and return between caregiver and child. Nurturing interaction builds the social brain, and our ability as humans to connect. What does it mean when all of a sudden you have AI tools that want to step in and take over some of those serve and return? Infants’ learn not from perfect interaction, they learn from the imperfect. From that emotionally rich dance between parent and caregiver — those slight mismatches, our imperfect parenting. It’s actually biologically required to [help our children] become human that we are imperfect. This is an important moment. A.I. could fundamentally change who we are if we’re not careful.” - Dr. Dana Suskind

Two Princeton professors wrote in a paper on AI recently that AI will “supercharge capitalism.” Will AI also supercharge what is expected from us as humans, and as parents? If we want to insulate our kids from this technological moment, but we also want to raise nimble, adaptable kids who can get jobs in a world where using AI will be a must-have skill, how can we think about this cultural and practical tension in the context of parenthood without having a panic attack?

Dr. Suskind helps us think through this rapidly evolving moment with clarity and humor, and she shares a simple strategy from her forthcoming book that Sarah and I will definitely be implementing ASAP.

Links:

* Dr. Dana Suskind

* UNICEF and World Economic Forum paper: Children and AI: What are the opportunities and risks?

* Empire of AI by Karen Hao

* Your brain on AI (MIT study on ChatGPT’s impact on learning)

* Miranda on AI and kids in The Atlantic

* AI and colonialism (supertopic at MIT)

* Brian Scassellati, Ph.D. at the Yale Robotics lab

* Wait Until 8th pledge

If you love the work we do on Mother Of It All, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers get access to everything behind the paywall, like subscriber-only episodes, book reviews and more. If you subscribe at the founding member level, we’ll send you one of our awesome tote bags. And it’s always free and helpful to follow, share, rate and review our show here and everywhere else you listen to podcasts you love. Thank you!

* Visit our Bookshop storefront to find all the books we’ve mentioned here and in previous episodes. When you shop there, we get a small affiliate fee (yay, thank you!).

* Visit motherofitall.com to send us ideas for a future episode or learn more about the show.

* Follow the podcast on Instagram (@themotherofitall) or Bluesky (@motherofitallpod.bsky.social)