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Hello and welcome to Mom and Dad are Fighting, Slate's parenting podcast for Thursday, January 30th, the I'm the Standard Edition.

I'm Alison Benedict, an editor at Slate, and the mother of Harry 5, Sam 3, and Wally 10 months.

And I'm Dan Coice. I'm also an editor at Slate, and I'm the dad of Lyra, who is 8, almost 9, and Harper, who is 6.

Hi, Dan. Hey.

On today's show, we're going to talk to Jennifer Sr. about her new book, All Joy and No

Fun, The Paradox of Modern Parenthood, and then Gap Years, should parents encourage their

kids to take a year off between high school and college.

But first, our parenting fails or triumphs for the week.

Dan, you go first.

I have a triumph.

All right.

Yeah. So this weekend, this past weekend, we had no plans, like no plans at all.

We have reached that time in winter where we have just completely run out of things to do to the point that Alia on Sunday actually did shrinkie dinks with the kids.

God bless her.

Yeah.

This is after a week of like no school, right? Right. Yes. Yes. But so on Saturday morning,

Harper just like out of nowhere just said, hey, daddy, when are we going to go back to the big

white building in the city where there are big rooms where people play music and we dress up

fancy? Hmm. And my parenting triumph of the week was that I figured out she was talking about rooms where people play music and we dress up fancy.

And my parenting triumph of the week was that I figured out she was talking about the Kennedy Center.

...