Jennifer Senior Books

Thousands of books have explored the effects of parents on their children, but this work examines the reverse: how children impact their parents. Award-winning journalist Jennifer Senior analyzes the myriad ways children reshape their parents' lives, affecting their marriages, jobs, habits, hobbies, friendships, and self-perception. She argues that the last fifty years have significantly transformed parental roles, making them more complex and less defined. Drawing from diverse fields such as history, sociology, economics, psychology, philosophy, and anthropology, Senior dissects both timeless and contemporary challenges of parenting, illustrating her findings through the experiences of families across the country. The narrative begins with parents of young children and evolves to include those with teenagers, presenting a vivid array of family portraits. Through engaging storytelling, Senior captures the struggles and joys of parenthood, prompting a reevaluation of cultural beliefs surrounding it. Meticulously researched and emotionally insightful, this work highlights how children enrich our lives and provide purpose. By focusing on the essence of parenthood rather than just parenting techniques, it offers essential insights for today's and tomorrow's parents.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning portrait of one family's search for meaning in the face of unspeakable loss. An Atlantic Edition, featuring long-form journalism by Atlantic writers, drawn from contemporary articles or classic storytelling from the magazine's 165-year archive. In this Pulitzer Prize-winning work, Jennifer Senior explores the contours of grief through one family's twenty-year reckoning with the loss of their son, Bobby McIlvaine Jr., on September 11, 2001. Devastating and expansive, Senior's portrait examines her own relationship with the McIlvaine family alongside intimate scenes of both mourning and recovery experienced by Bobby's mother, father, younger brother, and soon-to-be fiancée. On Grief generously asks us what it means to consider grief, both personal and national, as an ongoing project.