The People Behind Your Care

In my work with children and parents, I often help families navigate kids' gender and sexual identity exploration. Childhood is inherently a time of creative self-identification, but when a child shares new pronouns or a clothing preference, parents often freeze. How do you respond in a way that supports without rushing?

As our Clear Mind Psychology Reproductive Mental Health Team has begun to visit new mothers in their homes, or treat pregnant and postpartum parents virtually and in our offices, I am dismayed to hear the same stories of physical and emotional pain, misdirected shame, and disappointment in expectant and new mothers today that I, and my research subjects, felt over two decades ago. What?! Seriously?! No movement at all in the way new parents feel and the way they are supported by society? This is so hard to believe.

I’ve always had a soft spot for smiley faces, rainbows, and unicorns, but lately I’ve felt conflicted about the way happiness is portrayed in wellness and parenting culture. Like “success” or “being good,” happiness can become such a broad and unrealistic expectation that it stops being useful. After more than thirty-five years working in psychology, I’ve never seen such an intense cultural fixation on happiness — from self-help media to major publications like Time and The New York Times asking the same question: how do we become happy?