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I was in my early 20s when Etan Patz first went missing. Children – anyone's – were the last thing on my mind. His disappearance kind of went in one ear and out the other. I didn't even know how to pronounce his name. I thought it was “Eaton.” I remember another editor at Good Housekeeping, where I was working at the time, mentioned his name and agonized over how horrible it all was. I gave her a blank stare. Almost four decades later, everything has changed. I now have a child of my own and though he's a teenager, that doesn't stop me from worrying. No one in their right mind would call me a free-range parent. I was a helicopter from the word “go.” I would barely let our son go down the hall to his bedroom by himself when he was a toddler. Thinking now of what these parents have gone through – How did we let him walk to school by himself? What were we thinking? We're the worst parents in the history of children – I can feel their guilt...

Though they both happened long ago, they are still among two of the worst experiences of my life. I'm talking about miscarriages.  Now a new study is finding that most people don't know the first thing about them, and what causes them.  It's not stress.  It's not doing something wrong.  It's not even alcohol or smoking.  It's almost always genetic -- something wrong with the chromosomes in the fetus. And even though this may soothe, somewhat, the women who suffer them, we still suffer shame, guilt and heart-breaking sadness.  The worst part?  No one talks about it. I remember after finally becoming pregnant with my son, mentioning in passing to a salesperson that I'd had two miscarriages (I can't for the life of me remember why!), and this huge look of relief spread over his face.  "My wife had one!" he said.  You don't tell people because you feel like you are defective.  Your body let you down, couldn't do it, especially some...

I knew it.  After my son was born I stopped working.  I felt lonely and depressed and put it down to being home all day with a needy baby, locked in the house (except for my morning run, which, thankfully, he didn't mind accompanying me on, in the jogger stroller -- not that he had any choice!). But over time, as he got more independent, learned to crawl, then walk, then amuse himself with Duplos and Legos, I was still depressed. It wasn't post-partum depression (well, maybe a little).  But it was because I had lost who I was. Before Phillip, and even after, my work was my life.  If I wasn't working, I didn't feel productive.  Or, worth anything.  Yes, the miracle of birth, yah, yah, yah, and I'd waited many heartbreaking years for this child.  But it just wasn't enough. Yesterday, in an op-ed in the Sunday Review, I finally saw why.  Writing for The New York Times, Stephanie Coontz revealed that studies have shown that women who stay at hom...

I remember dreading when my son had play dates with parents I couldn't relate to. Now that he's in middle school, I wish I just knew who his friends were .  I hear the names -- Michael and Nazir, Sofianne and Alex -- but who they are and what goes on in school with them and my son is a dark hole I can't seem to fall into. Maybe that's the point.  I've been reading this Mother's Day about women who worry their babies will grow up to share their neuroses, or like licorice, or the one mom who particularly got to me who worried who she was, now that her three sons were grown. (Of course, I have a ways to go.  Mine is only 12.) But I came to motherhood so late I was convinced I'd never be a typical mom, or a real one. Raising a child did not come easily to me.  I felt like people were laughing at me when I bought diapers or scrolled through the six months rack for onesies at Carter's.  What does she know about being a mother?  I even had to ask if the...

Think about this.  A three-week-old needs flexible tube through a tiny artery in her leg that winds its way to her heart to try to treat narrowed veins and arteries, the result of a congenital condition. So what do they use for this? An adult-sized catheter.  Sound insane?  That's right.  Medical devices for children are not being developed because -- are you ready? There's no money in this. The development of surgical tools and medical devices designed for children falls far behind device development for adults, The New York Times' Laurie Tarkan reports. "The lag, say experts, can be blamed largely on economics. The pediatric market is far smaller than the market for adults, making it difficult for companies to recoup research and development expenses for smaller devices," she writes. This child was subjected to a procedure that took longer, and was more likely to "injure her already abnormal blood vessels," her cardiologist cardiologist, Dr. Alex...