"The summer I turned 39, my husband and I moved from Brooklyn to a darling little village in upstate New York. Our parents were thrilled..."

"... their unspoken hope that leaving the big city might be a sign that we were settling down—that as my fertility began to sunset, we’d turn one of our house’s three bedrooms into a nursery. And we were having that conversation, too. We owned a home with ample space and an affordable mortgage. I worked for myself and had maximal flexibility. He had good health insurance and a great if demanding job. Did we want to have a baby? As late summer melted into a vibrant fall and then into the cold of upstate winter, I knew my answer: No...."

Writes Jill Filipovic in "We Need More Good Men/Conservatives often lay the blame for declining fertility at women’s feet. They’re wrong" (Slate).

"If the bare-chested, muscled mixed martial arts fighters of the U.F.C. match that President Trump hosted on Flag Day were the poster guys for MAGA’s image of masculinity..."

"... then the pregnant women of Trump world are one half of their feminine counterparts. Along with the sheath-clad, lip-filled, pageant-haired Mar-a-Lago set, they offer an image of idealized womanhood that gives literal shape to the pronatalist movement. 'It almost feels like a memo went out,' said Jill Filipovic, the host of the 'Week in Women' podcast. 'They have quite intentionally opted to present themselves as, "I am really pregnant, and this is what women were chosen to do," and they are happy to say that both with their looks and their mouths.' If in doubt, simply consider posts on X and Instagram last month from [Katie] Miller, who was then some nine months pregnant. 'In honor of Mother’s Day,' she wrote, 'a reminder that peak feminism is having babies. The most radical thing a woman can do is embrace her biological destiny.' Along with her words came a portrait taken from the side, in which Miller is shown wearing low-slung, unbuttoned jeans and a black sports bra, her dark hair cascading in waves down her back. Like the stretchy and black knit Milly dress with a tulip on the front worn by Usha Vance for a military mothers celebration at the White House, and the form-fitting gowns worn by Leavitt and Miller to the White House Correspondents’ dinner in April, the photograph placed Miller’s rounded stomach front and center, enshrining her pregnancy for all to see...."

The NYT fashion writer Vanessa Friedman inspects the fecund right-wing bodies in "The Politics and Power of the Pregnancy Image/Usha Vance, along with Katie Miller and Karoline Leavitt, shows how much is said by an expectant silhouette, without anyone saying a word" (NYT).

Here's how Katie induced Vanessa to propagate adjectives:

"I was drowning, while all the other moms I interacted with seemed to be blissfully skipping through motherhood."

"'It must be me, I thought — I’m just not a natural mother.' She realized she was anything but alone after receiving her 'first random comment,' she said. 'That comment led me to that reader’s blog,' she added, 'and from there I discovered a whole world of moms. And these moms, unlike any I’d met before, actually understood me! They struggled and shared the same frustrations.' In addition to doing her own venting, Ms. Smokler provided those mothers a forum to anonymously confess their taboo thoughts and experiences...."

From "Jill Smokler, Who Blogged as Scary Mommy, Dies at 48/A mother of three, she turned a whim into an online powerhouse, sharing a warts-and-all look at parenting that attracted millions of readers" (NYT). (Smokler died of glioblastoma.)

"So I decided to ask them: Can you tell me what, exactly, you like about ultimate fighting?..."

"I couldn’t get my 18-year-old to talk about it, but my 15-year-old — a thoughtful kid who last week told me, 'U.F.C. literally takes up 99 percent of my brain space' — was happy to oblige. He explained in excruciating detail the various weight classes and fighting techniques.... 'I know it’s marketing, I really do, but their characters are so entertaining and their work ethic really impresses me.' Another thing he finds compelling about U.F.C., he said, is how 'real' it is. Most professional sports are 'fictional' made-up games in which people throw or kick or hit round rubber things in order to amuse themselves and a bunch of strangers. Fighting, he pointed out, is primal, 'in our blood'...."

Writes Hope Reeves, in "My Teenage Sons Love U.F.C. Here’s What We Saw at the White House Cage Match" (NYT).

This skirt is messing Obama up.

Barack Obama "is really messed up. I'm giving him some time because this beautiful skirt that my stylist Meredith Koop picked out that is my favorite portrait of my mom. He didn't know it existed until just a few minutes ago. I've had a few weeks to settle down"
- Michelle Obama pic.twitter.com/YbjPXRy0OS

— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) June 16, 2026

ADDED: I've seen faces on shirts but I can't remember ever seeing a face on clothing below the waist. I went looking and found this from Jean Paul Gaultier in the 1990s. I think it works because the faces are small and numerous, making it not that different from, say, a floral print.

One giant face, larger than the face of the wearer, feels quite obtrusive. But it's long been accepted above the waist. How long have those things been around? I remember the Che Guevara shirts, circa 1970, but what was the original T-shirt with a big face? My quick research says it was probably the Thomas E. Dewey 1948 U.S. presidential campaign T-shirt — Dewey's face and the slogan "Dew-it with Dewey."

How can Spencer Pratt put a happy face on his loss in California?

That might not be your question, but it was mine. It's the first thing I typed when I opened up Grok to explore how I felt about what happened.

Tell me what you think. Grok talked about spinning — "turn a loss into content, troll the establishment, and keep the spotlight... he's wired for this exact kind of spotlight-reality spin."

Okay. That's justified by the way I framed my question. But I had 2 other things in mind.

First, if he'd won he'd actually need to make good on his promises. He'd have to confront reality on the ground and facing lots of opposition. He wanted to round people up and institutionalize them. How would that have worked? This way, he can just keep pointing to the dream of a beautiful LA that might have been.

Second, his own mother said she wanted him to lose... for the sake of his wife and children:

"Many in the entertainment industry are creatives, they’re freethinkers, they’re out-of-the-box thinkers..."

"... and so, the idea that someone isn’t conventional is kind of part and parcel of how they move through the world."

Said Dr. Erica Anderson, "a clinical psychologist who specializes in helping children with gender identity issues and who is transgender herself," quoted in "Why do so many Hollywood celebs have trans or non-binary kids?" (NY Post).

These entertainment people are "freethinkers," according to Anderson, who also says, contradictorily, that "the prevailing politics are extremely progressive," so "they don’t feel safe to question an asserted identity by one of their children."

So what is it? Do they feel compelled to go along with whatever the child says — politically compelled — or are they — because of their inherent creativity — celebrating and encouraging unusual expression?

I'm seeing a mysterious merger of freedom and compulsion.

IN THE COMMENTS: Bob Boyd: "I think she means outside-the-box thinkers. Out-of-the-box usually means you don't have to do anything yourself, no assembly required." 

That's closely observed and correct. This is the case of a dying metaphor. What is this box we're talking about when we say "outside of the box"? Grok tells me the expression originated with the 9 dots puzzle:

You're an outside-the-box thinker if you realize you can connect the 9 dots with 4 lines if you go beyond what is only an imaginary box. Apply that metaphor to thinking about how to parent a child who doesn't fit the gender stereotypes associated with its physical form. That's what an outside-the-box thinkers would do. Now, compare the out-of-the-box thinker. This would be someone who has pre-determined ideas built in and really doesn't think at all.

"His alter ego on 'The Thick of It,' Stewart Pearson, was portrayed as a clownish figure who tries to push 'thought circles' on bewildered Tories and utters pablum like 'knowledge is porridge.'"

"The real Mr. Hilton became a larger-than-life figure, infamous among colleagues for walking the corridors of Downing Street shoeless and in shorts and proposing idiosyncratic ideas that made headlines, like using cloud-bursting technology to make Britain sunnier and abolishing maternity leave.... 'The actual policy proposal was to reduce the maternity to somewhere between six and four months; instead of the maximum yearlong leave in Britain, and to increase paternity leave, he said. 'A year is just way too long'.... By 2011, he became so widely known for his unconventional dress that American diplomats gave special instructions ahead of a visit from President Barack Obama. They said Mr. Hilton must either wear a suit or leave the building.... After being given a 'severe talking to,' she recalled, 'he did, in fact, put on proper clothes.' (Mr. Hilton remembered it differently. 'I think it was, "Yeah, you come to the meeting, you have to wear a suit." I was like, "Yeah, no, I don’t want to do that."') But it was Brexit, Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, that overshadowed Mr. Cameron’s tenure. Mr. Hilton was for it, and Mr. Cameron staked his career against it...."

From "He Was Satirized on British TV. Now He’s Trump’s Pick to Lead California. Steve Hilton grabbed headlines when he worked in conservative politics in Britain. His American political renaissance in the California governor’s race has bemused former British colleagues and rivals" (NYT).

"Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers always told their sons that, even though they had their children during their 11 years 'underground,' they stopped illegal political activity when they became parents."

"He learns in his research, however, that one of their early family camping trips was actually a stakeout of a federal prison — the Black Liberation Army had asked his parents to gather information to help them break Assata Shakur out of prison. His father then participates in Shakur’s escape; his mother uses her day job to steal customer identities for the underground to use as aliases. Bernardine did not bring him along as a 'beard' when scouting bombing runs, but he learns that she did do that with another Weather kid. Ayers Dohrn devotes special attention to his enigmatic mother... a 'distant, icy and determined' person who seems 'far removed from any traditionally feminine caregiving role, determined to sacrifice herself for the cause.'... [When] Bernardine is incarcerated for seven months for refusing to cooperate and testify against her fellow revolutionaries... [5-year-old] Ayers Dohrn is left 'sick with grief and loneliness,' so distraught that he begins wetting the bed.... He cannot understand what his mother is saying to him about the government or its treatment of rich people — he barely has a grasp on what 'rich people' are...."

From "What Happens When Militancy Conflicts With Motherhood/Two 'Weather kids' reckon with the unyielding political convictions that compromised their parents’ domestic duties" (NYT)(gift link/I'm using my last gift link of the month on this one because there's much more there and this excerpt will prompt questions that may be answered).

And here's the book by Zayd Ayers Dohrn "Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground" (commission earned).

"Do I really want a fifth person in my house? Not really. Do I, rather, want to feel as if I were the kind of mother who could handle another child..."

"... even though I know, thanks to the COVID years, that I’m likely not? Wanting to feel like you can do it is, it goes without saying, a stupid reason to have a kid. I remember telling a friend who was appalled at my desire for a third that I craved a repeat of that big explosion of Technicolor feeling that came with a new baby.... Our society is designed to enable and reward parenthood for some women and guarantees a thriving existence for basically no children. The work we do to fight these systems is reproductive labor even when there’s not a single baby in your house. So, really, the question I need to ask myself is not Who was that phantom baby? What might our life have been? It’s Who am I, now? And what can I do for the people who are already here?"

Writes Lydia Kiesling, in "Yearning for a Third/Did I really need another baby for my family to be complete?" (New York Magazine).

That's how the essay ends — with commitment to a cold left-wing platitude and italicized wistfulness about the life she decided the "systems" had denied to her. 

The author calls herself away from the question "Who was that phantom baby?" That felt so sad to me.

I don't know if this really connects, but what swirled up in my mind was the last thing Andre said in "My Dinner with Andre": "People hold on to these images: father, mother, husband, wife, again for the same reason: because they seem to provide some firm ground. But there’s no wife there. What does that mean, a wife? A husband? A son? A baby holds your hands and then suddenly there’s this huge man lifting you off the ground, and then he’s gone. Where’s that son?"

"...people hold on to these images: father, mother, husband, wife, again for the same reason: ’cause they seem to provide some firm ground. But there’s no wife there. What does that mean, a wife? A husband? A son? A baby holds your hands and then suddenly there’s this huge man lifting you off the ground, and then he’s gone. Where’s that son?"

"While devoting most of her time to her son, Monita Wong said she needs to maintain a little distance."

"On the second floor of the foundation building, she incorporated two small bedrooms, for [her husband] and herself. 'I am reluctant to go back to the condo,' she said. When the owner of the lot next to the condo chopped down the spruce that Matthew loved, she brought the stump to the foundation building. 'I could not stop them,' she said. 'But I thought it would be good to have it here. It is outside now.'"

From "A Grieving Mother Safeguards Her Son’s Artistic Legacy/The troubled painter Matthew Wong’s star was on the rise when he died [by suicide] at 35. His mother, Monita Wong, is making sure his work can still be seen" (NYT)(gift link so you can see more of the mother's story, some of the son's paintings, and photos with the captions "Wong's paint tubes, stained sneakers and even the light switch were relocated from his studio" and "Monita Wong carried over the clutter to recreate her son’s studio in the headquarters of the Matthew Wong Foundation in Edmonton, Alberta").

Quote from an art dealer: "He was a very attractive, tall figure, very well spoken. It was very refreshing the way he talked about art in general and not of himself. He was very direct and clear. I had no idea he was depressed. I had no idea he was autistic."

"Look, I'm 30 years old. Not one of my friends has children. Zero. No one. No one's having kids."

"Do you know how hard you need to abuse a mammal to make them not have children? Like, for real? Let's step back a moment, right?... Look, GDP goes up. People have enough food and whatever. No one's having kids. And this is across the world. This is across both the West, the East, everywhere it's happening. So why do I not have kids?... Do you know what dating app algorithms do?... They don't optimize for you to meet the love of your life. They optimize for you to keep coming back to the app.... We have treated technology as a wild west. Absolutely. Just everyone can do whatever they want. Oh, just sell all of our younger generations' dating lives to corporations for profit. And who pays the cost for this? Who has liability for every person who doesn't find the love of their life because the whole dating market is fucked up? Who pays for this? No one. There is no responsibility. It's completely worthless. And these dating companies, they're not even profitable...."

That's Connor Leahy, and I've got a problem with his abuse-a-mammal theory. Of course, he meant to say "Do you know how hard you need to abuse a non-human mammal to make them not have children?" But non-human mammals don't have access to birth control (and abortion).

"[Wendy] Duffy’s son, Marcus, died at the age of 23 after choking on a tomato that became lodged in his windpipe while he was sleeping."

"Nine months later, she tried to kill herself by overdosing and had to be put on a ventilator for two weeks. Ultimately, she said, no amount of medication or therapy can make her whole again and that she 'can’t wait' to die. She’s already chosen what she will wear on her deathbed and told the Daily Mail that Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ 'Die With A Smile' will be playing as she passes on.... [Duffy said] she paid Pegasos, a Swiss assisted-dying nonprofit organization, $13,500 to euthanize herself under its care... This time, she said she wants it to be 'neater.' 'I could step off a motorway bridge or a tower block but that would leave anyone finding me dealing with that for the rest of their lives,' she said."

From "Physically healthy mom to end life by euthanasia at Swiss clinic after death of her son" (NY Post).

Did you think it was possible to fall asleep while eating and choke to death? Sit up, pay attention, or don't eat. You could kill yourself and kill your mother.

Childrearing tips from Eleanor Roosevelt.

My son Chris sent me that clip, which I think is from "FDR: A New Political Life" (commission earned). Chris has a project of reading (at least) one biography of each of the U.S. Presidents. He's not reading them in chronological order though, and he's a lot closer to the end than it looks. Anyway, I'll correct this post if I'm naming the wrong bio. So hold off on snapping up that book until later in the day. And think twice about jury-rigging a chickenwire cage to hang your baby out an upper story window. Or are you the sort of busybody who calls the authorities on a very modern mother who just might be Eleanor Roosevelt?

UPDATE: The book is actually "FDR" by Jean Edward Smith. Chris says it has "a lot of anecdotes." 880 pages. That other one is a mere 284 pages. 

"The New York Times... says a boom of older mothers is coming to reverse low fertility, but the math is against them."

Explains Maibritt Henkel, at The Argument, with some devastating graphs.

"Tiger Woods Banned From Driving Trump’s Grandkids Around."

Hot news from The Daily Beast.

The headline seems ridiculous. The real news is that "even before his latest car crash, the Secret Service had barred Woods from driving around Vanessa’s children."

Imagine having 5 children and dating a man who can't be trusted to drive a car. But then he's also world-famous for his very high level physical skill at something most people can't do even decently well. The high/low conflict is mind-bending. I guess the tie-breaker is whether you truly love him. Or maybe if the kids — Kai Trump, 18, Donald III, 17, Tristan, 14, Spencer, 13, and Chloe, 11 — think you with him is good for them.

"The Birthrate Is Plunging. Why Some Say That’s a Good Thing. The political class is worried about the historic drop. But..."

"... the biggest change is among the youngest women, who are the least ready to have children."

Headline at the NYT.

I get the "good thing" interpretation, but it's also a bad thing, isn't it? The older women, with their greater emotional maturity and economic independence, are not only more able to care for children, they are also more able to think through the whole enterprise of child bearing and child care, to weigh the pros and cons and forgo it altogether. Isn't that what is happening?

A woman holding a baby is trending on X.

The report on the trend is title "Woman Who Didn't Want Kids Melts Holding Baby for First Time." And: "The TikTok video from @daniela.brkic shows the friend who swore off kids sobbing with joy...."

Sample response:

We all laugh, but what’s happening here is holy.

An instinct no ideology can suppress forever. Holding a baby rewires everything: your politics, your priorities, your purpose.

We’ve spent decades teaching women to resist this. Imagine a world where we stopped. pic.twitter.com/Kevz1N7hy4

— Josh Wood (@J_K_Wood) February 8, 2026

If that's true, it should also be true that men who observe that woman also experience rewiring. They see her as the beautiful ideal and long to center their life on a woman like that. If men don't respond like that, it is no wonder that women have put effort into resisting that and warning other women to resist.

I hit the Grok button over there and asked: "is the video a genuine response from a real woman or is this a setup with acting?" Grok says it seems genuine, and I'll assume that it is, but I won't assume that woman's reaction represents something inside all women that is pure and uncomplicated. It's hard to take care of a baby, a toddler, a school kid, a teenager, and many other emotions will well up — suddenly or chronically — and mother will need to soldier on, usually without anything close to the emotional high seen in that viral video. 

ADDED: I'm reminded of the time I held a little dog: "I love this little dog. I think this is the first time I ever held a dog on my lap." Yes, holding the dog released a distinctive feeling in me, 12 years ago. That might be seen as a reason to immediately acquire a dog (which is much easier to do than to have a baby). The instinct to possess a dog required fulfillment. No, it did not! I see other people's dogs every day. Sometimes I even interact with them. But I am quite happy not to have pre-committed so much of my time to a canine creature. 

"It’s a painful reality to comes to terms with but as a woman hell really can be other women sometimes."

"The experience of being obviously left out and then when pointing it out being met with feigned ignorance is definitely infuriating. I am very happily child-free by choice (a decision that I only take more joy in the older I get) and I can’t deny that being able to altogether avoid these kinds of dynamics with other women is a huge relief to me. I am very sorry for the author. This has to be a very sad experience. To become a mother is such a huge shift, psychologically and spiritually and in terms of identity. Admittedly any dreams I might have about finding a peaceful tribe of women to hang with have evaporated as I’ve gotten older. I enjoy my own company and the company of a few very dear, compassionate and wise friends, one-on-one. Letting go of illusions is liberating and I recommend it."

Writes "eggspoached" in the comments to "Breaking Up With My Toxic Mom Group/I thought I found my village. Instead, I was back in high school." That's the most-read article at New York Magazine at the moment, and there are lots more comments along the lines of "This exact thing happened to me!"

"G IS FOR PREGNANCY/A degrading punishment imposed on women’s bodies after they have given themselves to the love of a man…"

"... it transforms the lover into a disfigured progenitor who no longer inspires mad desire. It is the beginning of the deterioration of a couple’s relationship."

Wrote Brigitte Bardot, quoted in "Everything (and Everyone) Brigitte Bardot Scorned" (NYT).

She had one child. See "All About Brigitte Bardot's Estranged Son Nicolas-Jacques Charrier" (People):

"I'm not made to be a mother," Bardot wrote in her memoir.... "I'm not adult enough — I know it's horrible to have to admit that, but I'm not adult enough to take care of a child."... 

"I looked at my flat, slender belly in the mirror like a dear friend upon whom I was about to close a coffin lid,” she wrote....

Bardot also wrote that she had two abortions before the pregnancy she carried to term, one of which was almost fatal.... she also revealed that she attempted suicide.... "I wanted to free myself — in every sense of the word...."