Gail Cornwall

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Someone keeps texting me while I’m at work, even after I asked her to stop, and I can’t block her, because she’s my 16-year-old daughter. A note sent during school lunch was about music lessons; she wanted to know what I thought about her switching from bassoon to cello. Another arrived in the middle of her third class: “For chem I need to bring in a half gallon of milk by Thursday.

Olivia Arthur / Magnum
Updated at 11:30 A.M. ET on August 31, 2021Carrie wishes that she’d never had children. She spent a few years feeling satisfied as a mother, but now locks herself in the kitchen and wonders, Who am I? What am I doing here? She can’t pursue paid work, because she has to shepherd her 12-year-old and 10-year-old to school as well as to therapy appointments for their disabilities. Carrie, who lives in the U.K.

Roshni Ray Ricchetti was 16 years old when she arrived at MIT with perfect SAT scores and “lots and lots” of AP credits. She said her parents pushed her to make the absolute most of her talents. “I was a very, very high-performing student who, frankly, crashed and burned. I dropped out of MIT. And I’ve ended up okay in spite of that,” the Illinois-based science editor told me.