One Story to Read Todayhighlights a single newly published—or newly relevant—Atlantic story that’s worth your time.
A few years ago, Stephanie H. Murray started a child-care swap that has turned into “something like the proverbial ‘village’ that so many modern parents go without,” she writes. Last month, she explored what it taught her about trust and letting go.
If you were to ask me about the lowest point of my life as a parent, I could pinpoint it almost to the day. It was in early March 2021. The United Kingdom was a couple of months into its third and longest COVID lockdown. I had been living in the country for more than a year, but having arrived just a few months before the outbreak, I still felt like a stranger in town. My kids were 2 and 3 years old, and my youngest was going through a screaming phase. I was overwhelmed, depressed, and crushingly lonely. Something had to change.
“Household mixing” was, at the time, strictly prohibited. But tucked into the lockdown guidelines was a provision allowing parents to form a child-care bubble with one other family.
How will today’s politics reshape society? On April 29, The Atlantic Festival brings you a bold new event gathering luminaries from the fields of finance, defense, tech, health, and climate in Washington, D.C., to help you make sense of the nation’s future. In-person and virtual passes are available now.
