Best Parenting Essays of 2025

PARENTreads Issue No. 8: Essays on growth, resilience, and the moments that shaped parenting in 2025

The final PARENTreads issue of 2025 brings together parenting essays that captured growth, named hard truths, and reflected the real work of raising humans in a year that asked a lot of families. These stories were chosen—largely by the writers themselves—because they mattered, and together they offer a layered portrait of parenting as it was lived in 2025.

To help you find what resonates most, essays are grouped across five themes: Raising Humans, The Hard Stuff, Growth & Turning Points, Wisdom Worth Carrying Forward, and Family Systems & Relationships.

But before you dive in, as I plan for the year ahead, I’d love your quick take on how to serve you best.

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✨ Featured Writer

Bridget Young, creator of Black Sheep Mom, writes about parenting through incarceration with candor, compassion, and just enough humor to make it bearable. A psychologist and mother of four, she reveals the human cost of the system—and the resilience it quietly requires.

A Diagnosis Did Not Help
A confession on how all of the diagnostic clarification in the world and all of the mental health supports that our money could buy did not stop my son from using drugs to the consequence of long-term incarceration.
» Read here

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🔦 Spotlight Essays

I Can’t Let You Hit The Dog: The Boundary Script I Use Ten Times A Day - by Claire McDonnell | Your Capable Baby
Most of us learned boundaries as sudden, scary explosions from adults who’d let resentment build up. I wanted something different—a repeatable script that respects kids while giving parents tools to draw on in our most stressful moments.
» Read here

The Unseen Weight of Parenting—and the Audacity to Set It Down - by Erin Miller | unpopular PARENT
Seven days after my youngest moved out, I realized the silence wasn’t just grief—it was relief. This piece names the invisible mental load we normalize, how it slowly erases us, and why choosing less may be the most honest, life-giving move, no matter your season.
» Read here

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Raising Humans

Ranking Insufferable Adults Found at Kid’s Sporting Events - by Shelly Mazzanoble | Middle-Aged Lady Mom
The worst part about kids sports isn’t the cost, time suck, or carpool group text-- it’s the parents who are mentally still in a middle-school gym whipping kickballs at their classmates faces.
» Read here

How to help your child’s teeth grow straight - by Guen Bradbury | Growing up WEIRD
Did you grow up with wonky teeth? Want to give your child a different mouth to your own? This article has practical tips to help your child grow a jaw that comfortably fits their teeth.
» Read here

What our daughters should know about sex - by Kathleen Robinson
This post critiques unbalanced messages around sex and urges parents to have honest, grace-filled conversations that present sex as a good, purposeful gift from God with healthy boundaries.
» Read here

The shopping cart was soaked - by Jonny Wills | Bananas
You think you know what potty training is like. But you don’t. Because nothing can prepare you for the places your kid might use the bathroom or how you’ll respond when they do.
» Read here

A week of Lunchboxes (and 6 tips to help your kids eat more veggies) - by Marina Strigari | The Geewees
Kids nutrition is something I am really passionate about. I work full time and I take a lot of shortcuts but I eat 90% whole ingredients.
» Read here

Shouldn’t They Know How to Do That by Now? - by Lara Carlson | The Parenting Edge
I spent years trying to teach my son to do things the way my brain works. This piece explains why kids aren’t lazy—they’re missing skills—and how finding the missing step changes everything.
» Read here

The Hard Stuff

Why you stopped liking the person you’re parenting with - by Morten Ruge, MD. | Parenting through psychaitry
When your child is suffering through a psychiatric disorder, your relationship comes under pressure. I name the dynamic that leads to most frustration and a perspective to get back on the same page.
» Read here

I Refuse to Be the Ghost That Haunts My Children - by Derek Moeller-Smith | Paternal Progress
ADHD, depression, and BPD make parenting harder—but not impossible. You don’t have to be flawless to be a good parent. You have to keep fighting to be present.
» Read here

Deeply Feeling Kids, Autism, and The Dr. Becky Controversy - by Kate Lynch | Atypical Kids, Mindful Parents
Inside the parenting movement that celebrates empathy but risks perpetuating ableism. When does “deeply feeling” describe emotional sensitivity, and when does it mask unmet developmental needs?
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Heart and Heartache: When Your Teen Leaves Home Before You’re Ready - by Dad on the Rocks
Parenting isn’t just about the laughs and milestones—it’s also about the moments that knock the wind out of you.
» Read here

When You’re Afraid Your Teenager Isn’t Going to Make It - Lori K Walters | Peace In My Parenting
A tender, honest look at the very real fears we face parenting teens, and how the quiet, intentional practice of cultivating hope becomes a sustaining force.
» Read here

Aftersun - Some Loves Don’t Save You. - by The Long Take
An intimate and personal reflection on Aftersun, fatherhood and inherited sadness. How children archive what they can’t yet name and how understanding arrives too late.
» Read here

Growth & Turning Points

Forgiving My Father at 35,000 Feet - by Matt Fogelson | Fine Tuning
A condolence note read three decades late reorients me.
» Read here

Falling for nature, again - by Helena 'Ellie' Huizenga | The Green Pen
A reflective essay on how motherhood reshapes outdoor adventure, exploring both the physical and emotional burdens we carry as parents.
» Read here

The Night I Quit Dating—and Met My Wife Over Putt-Putt - by Maury Wood | Grit & Wit
A tired prayer, a reluctant hangout, and a game of putt-putt led me to the woman who felt like home. When I quit dating, God quietly introduced me to my wife.
» Read here

Your Kids Are Watching You Quit (And That’s Actually Good News) - by Leo Rule | Align Your Fam
Your kids don’t need another lecture on why they shouldn’t quit. They need to see you be persistent in challenges. Here is one thing you can do today to build a culture of resilience in your family.
» Read here

Wisdom Worth Carrying Forward

Legacy, Love & the Long Vision of Parenting - by Mary Kate Shepard | guest of unpopular PARENT
This conversation explores the soul of intentional parenting—legacy, hope, and the quiet purpose that pulls us forward. Less formula, more feel. A reminder that parenting is something we “season as we go,” and that what lasts is what’s lived.
» Read here

What I Do On Sundays to “Help My Future Self” - by Amanda Brown - Type A Mom
As a mom to 3 the biggest way I “help my future self” is by taking time each Sunday to set up for the week ahead. This essay shares what I do that helps our week go smoothly!
» Read here

So, the Anatomy Scan Brought Hard News — You’re Not Alone - by Anna | Tender & True
A comforting letter to parents who receive a limb-difference diagnosis at an anatomy scan — acknowledging grief, sharing facts, and reminding them their child is whole, loved, and not alone.
» Read here

Zen and the art of falling off a bicycle - by Marni Van Dyk | I Can’t Wait For This To Be Funny
Teaching my son to ride a bike forces me to confront my own stalled bravery as I avoid writing about my divorce. Accepting falling as part of the process is how we both find courage to move forward.
» Read here

Motherhood changed me - by Zoe Pickburn | Cold Coffee with Zoe Pickburn
And that’s okay, actually. This essay explores ‘mothering outloud’ as an act of feminist resistance.
» Read here

Love and Liberation in the land of Rebecca Yarros - by Ryan Rose Weaver (she/hers) | In Tending
Activist-moms need art that inspires us to fight oppression, and examples of resistance movements that center women. While hospitalized, I found this in a surprising place: the world of romantasy.
» Read here

Family Systems & Relationships

Estrangement Is Older than Our Hot Takes - by Kathleen Smith | The Anxious Overachiever
This essay examines family estrangement through an evolutionary and systems lens, moving beyond blame. It explores why cutoffs happen, how families manage stress, and how taking a long view can lead to more thoughtful choices.
» Read here

Why Does My Loved One Act So Weird When I Go Away Temporarily? - by Lissa Rankin, MD | The Body Is A Trailhead
This essay unpacks a relationship that shifts when distance enters—exploring attachment wounds, unspoken fears, and why one partner punishes while the other walks on eggshells. A deep look at how old patterns hijack love.
» Read here

We’ve Been Subverted—And It’s Showing Up in Our Families - by Rachel Haack, MA, MFTI | Thoughts from a Therapist
This essay examines estrangement as a cultural pattern, not just a personal choice—arguing that therapy language, boundary culture, and despair are reshaping families, and asking what we lose when cutting off becomes normalized.
» Read here

The Science Behind the Good Enough Parent - by Laura Dimler, PhD | Development Decoded
Good enough parenting isn’t about lowering the bar in parenthood. It’s about raising children who know that love includes repair, not perfection.
» Read here

Stop Waiting for a Village — Build One Instead - by Anita Rogacs | A Mother’s Blueprint
A village is built through shared work. Each yes strengthens the web around a mother—and gives her kids what matters most: a lived sense of belonging.
» Read here

But, do you like me? - by Aaminah | Aaminah Through the Screen
No film has adequately depicted the mother-daughter relationship, like Lady Bird. The characters of Christine and Lady Bird represent the love, resentment and complicated nature of that relationship.
» Read here

PARENTreads combines editor-selected essays with a few sponsored placements that support the digest.

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