Next week, my son, Freddy, turns 10.
I can’t wrap my head around the fact that I’ve been a mother for a decade. I keep on thinking about that scene from Grosse Pointe Blank where Jeremy Piven is asking John Cusack where he’s been since he disappeared right after high school.
“Ten years, man. TEN YEARS!” he exclaims.
They aren’t kidding when they say the days are long but the years are short—even if that’s the last thing you want to hear when you’ve got a very small child and you’re trying to kill time during that interminable stretch between 4:00 p.m. and bedtime on a Saturday afternoon in February. In some ways, the past 10 years have flown by, and in other ways it feels like the longest decade of my life.
I by no means think of myself as a parenting expert. Ken and I were joking recently about how absolutely crazy it is that we’re parents because we really have no clue what we’re doing. We’re just making it up as we go along. And we got super lucky to end up with an awesome kid who we love like crazy.
That said, I am a Lady on the Internet with Opinions™, and longtime readers of The Purse may know that I like to write in order to process my feelings. My son’s 10th birthday feels like too big a milestone to pass up, so I hope you’ll humor me as I share my thoughts on a decade of parenting.
Feel free to take this essay—and all parenting advice—with a grain of salt. Raising a kid is a lot like managing your finances: It’s deeply personal and very emotional. Plus, there are thousands of self-proclaimed experts on social media who do a really good job at playing into our darkest fears and insecurities.
I love being a mother, but I will always acknowledge how privileged I am. I have a healthy, happy kid; a committed spouse who’s an A+ dad; devoted grandparents who live nearby; enough money to afford more than the basics; and wonderful friends who make up my amazing village. All of these things make it much easier to be a parent, and I am so grateful for the support.
With that big caveat out of the way, here are 10 thoughts on motherhood and raising a child in this wild modern world we live in.
1. My world has expanded in ways I could have never imagined.
I remember when Freddy was first born, and I had a moment of sheer panic that my world was shrinking. With a tiny infant who needs you basically 24/7, it’s hard to imagine ever leaving the house again. (My postpartum anxiety certainly didn’t help!)
But as he’s grown, so has my world. I discovered new authors, artists, and music through Freddy. I’ve made wonderful new friends. I fell back in love with baseball. I’ve had so many adventures, and I’ve laughed so, so much. It sounds like a cliche, but letting yourself see the world through your child’s eyes is amazing. And I feel so lucky I get to hang around my super cool kid as he experiences things for the first time.
2. Kids are really smart. We should treat them with more respect.
One of the greatest joys of parenting has been watching my child learn. I especially loved the age when Freddy was learning new words every day, and I got to spend so much time providing him with definitions. It helped reawaken my own love of words and learning.
Kids are awesome. They are funny and brilliant and resilient. But in general, I don’t think society gives them credit for just how cool they are—or how important. Literally, they are the future. We don’t do a good job of listening to their concerns. We make them do far too many dumb worksheets at school and then wonder why they’re bored or restless. We make sweeping generalizations about how they behave (or don’t behave). And a lot of people make a lot of money creating total slop for kids to consume.
We need to do better by our kids. We need to make our world safer for our babies. That includes vaccinating our children, banning guns, and making the streets safer, just to start. These shouldn’t be political issues. Every child deserves to have a safe childhood, but it’s up to the adults to make that a reality.
3. We shouldn’t downplay the feelings of boys.
It’s been interesting—to say the least—raising a boy, especially since most of my professional work is focused on women. I’m convinced the universe gave me a boy on purpose in order to open my mind and expand my perspective. I hate much of the #boymom culture, and yet I absolutely love being a boy mom.
But I bristle at how quickly people dismiss the feelings of boys. When I’ve expressed concerns over how Freddy will weather adolescence, people are often quick to tell me not to worry, that it’s easier for boys than it is for girls. But why would that be? Boys are also going through big hormonal changes. They are navigating complicated social dynamics and trying to understand their place in the world. That doesn’t seem easy to me!
It’s so controversial to say this—please don’t pull out your pitchforks—but I think our society would be a better place for women if we were more thoughtful about how we raise our men. It doesn’t do anyone any good to simply write boys off as incapable, incompetent, and unfeeling—or worse. We can build up boys and girls. One gender doesn’t have to be the winner while the other is the loser.
It’s 2026: It’s beyond time to lose the “boys will be boys” tropes and let our sons be their sweet, empathetic, emotional, silly, wonderful selves.
4. We need to be thoughtful in giving advice to other parents.
Forget politics, money, and religion. I’d say the three most controversial parenting topics are sleeping, eating, and reading.
These are three areas that cause a lot of stress, and as a result, parents can spend a lot of money trying to get their kids to sleep, eat, and read. And if you’re a parent in the throes of raising a child who won’t sleep, doesn’t eat, or can’t read, I’m going to guess you’re not looking for advice from the peanut gallery. You’re stressed enough without Aunt Kathy weighing in.
Freddy is a great reader, a pretty good sleeper, and a terribly picky eater. There are few things that irritate me more than when someone suggests that all I need to do is just feed him what I’m eating and eventually the picky eating problem will solve itself. Do you think I enjoy preparing two dinners every night? Unless you’re an expert with actual helpful advice—or a parent who’s survived a similar situation—it’s best to keep your opinions to yourself.
5. It’s OK to feel jealous.
But it’s also important to remember that social media isn’t real life.
I find my jealousy flares most often around the holidays, when my Instagram feed is filled with seemingly happy families posing around the Christmas tree. It’s hard to explain—I have a happy family!—but over the past 10 Christmases, I’ve never felt like I nailed the magic of the season the way I remember it as a kid. I worry we don’t have any enduring family traditions. I struggle to manage all the expectations of our extended family. I get very overwhelmed by all the toys! And scrolling Instagram just exacerbates these feelings of inadequacy.
I’m a work in progress here! But a decade in, I try to remind myself that jealousy is normal. And at the end of the day, sometimes the best thing to do is delete Instagram from your phone for a while.
6. Look for mothering role models.
On the flip side of the jealousy coin is finding women whose parenting skills you admire. (And preferably, they are people you know IRL and not women you follow on social media.)
My mom is at the top of my list. She was a kickass working mom when I was growing up and is now a stellar grandma. My boss Caroline at Refinery29 always reassured me I could do all the cool career things I wanted even though I had a baby at home. (And with her support I wrote a whole book before Freddy turned two!) My friend Jen is one of the most dedicated moms I know, and she’s always going above and beyond for her two boys. My high school bestie Margaret got started having kids a decade before me, and I was so grateful to tap her knowledge as she coached me through the roughest moments of learning to breastfeed.
Thanks to Freddy, I’ve made friends with a whole new crew of cool moms who make me laugh and offer support when I need it most.
Also, when you see a mom doing a great job in the wild, give her a compliment. Moms supporting moms is the best!
7. The idea that you only get 18 summers is silly. But…
I loathe the social media meme that you only get 18 summers with your kids so you better make the most of them. What guilt-inducing drivel! I’m 45, and I still take summer vacations with my parents.
That said, I do think a lot about the fact that one day—sooner than I would like—Freddy will go off to college. I’m already beginning to get little peeks at what that future will look like as he spends whole weekend days hanging out with his friends. I won’t be in full-time mom mode forever.
That’s why it’s been so important to me to try to maintain my own life—my career, my friendships, and my marriage. I don’t worry that I’ll only get 18 summers with my kid, but I do recognize that I won’t always be the center of his world. (Sob!)
I don’t want to wake up one day and regret that I wasn’t pursuing my own passion projects while raising my son. Making time for my work and my adult relationships has always been important to me, and I think it has the added benefit of sending a good message to my son that our independence is important and makes us all happier, healthier individuals.
8. Choose your battles.
In many ways, I think I’m a pretty laissez-faire parent. I don’t really care what Freddy wears—he has a penchant for bright colors, and he hates pants with buttons, and that’s cool. I don’t obsess over what he likes to read—I let him read The Hunger Games last year even though I knew it would be a little scary. And he probably spends way too much time watching YouTube and playing video games. Goodness knows, I watched a ton of TV as a kid.
The things I do care about: that he’s kind and generous. That he respects authority but doesn’t blindly follow the rules. That he puts the seat down and washes his hands (with soap!!) after using the toilet. That he picks up after himself and is a good citizen of our house and the world. (We’re working on most of these, haha!)
I learned this lesson from my parents, who were strict in some ways and lax in others. They had no problem letting me stay out late with friends in high school as long as I was clear about where I was and who I was with. But my brother and I were always getting in trouble for not covering our mouths when we yawned—my dad thought there was nothing ruder. He always emphasized the importance of good manners.
At the end of the day, I choose my battles carefully. I’ve found with parenting that most of the time, the phases pass. Just as you’re about to lose your mind, your kid changes and changes again. But at the heart of our family, I want there to be deep respect and trust that goes both ways between parent and child.
9. Let go of the guilt.
I don’t have a lot of working-mom guilt, and I think that’s in part thanks to my mom, who worked when I was growing up. We have an incredibly close relationship even though I spent hours being bored to death in after-school care when I was a child, and one time she forgot to pick me up from Girl Scouts.
Look, every mom has to make the choice of how they're going to manage work and raising their babies. It’s impossible to do it all. But I really believe in quality over quantity when it comes to the time we spend with our kids. I’m not like Emma Grede, who thinks it’s sufficient to only spend three hours a day with my son. I like to go to every little league game (even this spring when I was reviewing CFP flash cards on the sidelines). But I also like to work, exercise, hang out with friends, go on a date with my husband, see the occasional movie, and generally be a human in the world and not exclusively a mom. I think this is positive for everyone in our family. It puts a lot of pressure on a kid if your whole world revolves around them, and vice versa.
So let go of the guilt. It’s probably manufactured by the patriarchy and capitalism anyway. There are better things to worry about.
10. It gets better and better.
When Freddy was eight weeks old, I took him with me when I voted for Hillary Clinton for president, and then we came back home and crawled in bed, and I nursed him until he fell asleep. I remember feeling so sad that day at how quickly time was passing and knowing he would only be a tiny infant for a short while longer.
Three years later, I was sitting in my parents’ house in Cape Cod, with Freddy in my lap, and his legs stretched out beyond my knees. I remember feeling heartbroken once again over how quickly he was growing up.
At his second birthday party, a fellow dad made a passing remark about how one day, we would pick up our kids, and it would be the last time, and we wouldn’t know it. The idea just about gutted me—I couldn’t imagine something sadder.
But all these years later, I’ve come to realize that it’s silly to worry about the last day you pick up your child. It might sound weird to those of you with small kids, but in some ways, I’ve lost the desire to pick Freddy up. I want him to grow, and if I was still carrying him at 10, something would be really wrong. His independence, strength, and long legs are wonderful—not something to be sad about
While I feel deeply sentimental about Freddy’s baby and toddler years—I’m running late this morning because I spent so much time scrolling through old photos of him on my phone. I have loved every stage of his development for different reasons. I have heart-emoji eyes for this boy—I can’t ever get over just how beautiful he is. I’ve adored watching him grow during his elementary school years, and while I can’t believe he’ll be off to middle school next year, I’m pretty excited to see what comes next.
What else we’ve published on The Purse this week:
A fun conversation about what we’re not spending money on
Lindsey Stanberry
Alicia compiled these helpful cost-saving tips from our Meal Plan writers
Alicia Adamczyk
