Award-win­ning jour­nal­ist Jen­nifer Senior iso­lates and ana­lyzes the many ways chil­dren reshape their par­ents’ lives, whether it’s their mar­riages, their jobs, their habits, their hob­bies, their friend­ships, or their inter­nal sens­es of self. She argues that changes in the last half-cen­tu­ry have rad­i­cal­ly altered the roles of today’s moth­ers and fathers, mak­ing their man­dates at once more com­plex and far less clear. Recruit­ing from a wide vari­ety of sources — in his­to­ry, soci­ol­o­gy, eco­nom­ics, psy­chol­o­gy, phi­los­o­phy, and anthro­pol­o­gy — she dis­sects both the time­less strains of par­ent­ing and the ones that are brand new, and then brings her research to life in the homes of ordi­nary par­ents around the coun­try. The result is an unfor­get­table series of fam­i­ly por­traits, start­ing with par­ents of young chil­dren and pro­gress­ing in lat­er chap­ters to par­ents of teens. Through live­ly and acces­si­ble sto­ry­telling, Senior fol­lows these moth­ers and fathers as they wres­tle with some of par­ent­hood’s deep­est vex­a­tions — and lux­u­ri­ate in some of its finest rewards.