Jennifer Senior

Do children bring unmitigated joy to the lives of their parents? Jennifer Senior is not so sure. She talks about 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. Senior argues that the roles of today's mothers and fathers are radically different from the way they were 50 years ago. Her book All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood uses history, sociology, economics, psychology, philosophy, and anthropology to dissect old and new aspects of parenting.

Jennifer Senior talks about her article “Why You Truly Never Leave High School,” in the January 28, 2013, issue of New York. Researchers used to think that our early years were the key to our social and intellectual development, but now our future success appears to hinge just as crucially on adolescence, a time that involves one of the most toxic environments imaginable: high school. Senior looks at the hierarchies and power structures in high school and they ways they influence us long after graduation.

Jennifer Senior, contributing editor of New York Magazine, writes about the unexpected unhappiness of parenthood in her article "All Joy and No Fun."