Penelope Trunk

When someone tells me their child is autistic, I always end up telling them that they are too. Because autism is a family condition. At the end of these conversations people ask: “Do you have a reading list you could send me?” So here is that list. But first, an introductory complaint: In general there […]

The most shocking part of Sean Combs’ trial has been how many people were unmoved by the sight of domestic violence. Over and over again, we hear testimonies of people who watched Combs beat up Cassie Ventura and said nothing. Here’s the problem: what could they say? Given a horrific video of Combs beating her […]

It looked like a touching moment. Isaiah Hartenstein, fresh off an NBA championship win, carried his sleeping infant onto the podium to celebrate. Cameras panned. Fans cheered. But the sound levels on that stage were louder than a jet engine—reaching 120 to 130 decibels. That’s the threshold where irreversible hearing damage can happen in seconds. […]

There’s widespread anger that Sean Combs was only convicted of prostitution charges, not the more serious trafficking counts. But our outrage is misdirected. Yes, the law fails domestic violence victims, but before that, the law fails to protect children from the conditions that produce both predators and victims. And if we don’t hold parents accountable […]

Every single college-aged kid I know has a LinkedIn profile. You’d think: what’s the point? They have no career experience. But Gen Z treats LinkedIn like an extension of their college application, which makes sense since they worked hard to frame their accomplishments within compelling personal narratives for admissions. Gen Z sees that it doesn’t […]

One of my kids’ credit cards is maxed out. I planned on paying it, and then I didn’t have the money. I have mastered dissociation in the face of not having money for very important things. I mean, that’s been going on for twenty years. But this feels different. Worse. I’ve never had a steady […]

In 2016 a sharp divide emerged in the US in baby naming, and this divide sheds light on why the Democratic Party is failing. From the 1980s to 2015, androgynous names for girls surged across America. Taylor Swift’s mother perfectly captured the reasoning when she explained giving her daughter an androgynous name in 1989: “so […]

When I was younger and using my job to escape from the scary parts of my life, I did interviews all the time. I was always on my phone. So smart and scintillating. I don’t feel that now. I used to think it was my job to make everyone like me. So I’d be really […]

We are way past professors using AI to write their papers. Now professors feed a set of papers into AI and ask where the gap is in the logic so they can write a paper to fill it. When submitting, AI tells them who will likely be reviewing the paper for publication so they can […]

Patty says she’s been reading my writing for a long time and she’s sick of reading about parenting. So I feel like the time is ripe for me to slip in stuff I’d normally leave on the chopping block: The specialty of Gen X is to see a disintegrating mess and take advantage of it. […]