About Lauren

I’m an only child, and, for now, the mother of one.  I was raised in Cambridge, Mass., and have spent most of the past two decades in New York.  I live with my daughter and husband in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, downstairs from two of our dearest friends, and down the block from an Italian bakery with the best cannolis in town.  Not a bad setting in which to debate a second child.

I’m also a journalist and essayist.  I began my career at NPR, but left to write about cultural politics for a long list of publications including The Atlantic, Mother Jones, The Nation, The New Republic, Elle, Marie Claire, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Slate, and Salon, where I was formerly the Life Editor.  In the fall of 2003 I was sent by the Carr Foundation to investigate cultural looting and the erosion of women’s rights in Baghdad. My book, Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement, about my journalistic immersion into the young Christian Right, was published by Viking in 2006. My husband Justin is a photojournalist, and sometimes we get to work on projects together, but our main collaboration lately has been our kid.

To be honest, I never wanted to be one of those writers who has a kid and suddenly shifts all their intellectual and professional energies to the subject of parenting.  But in so many ways, the question of family size is a matter of cultural (and often sexual) politics, economics, education, philosophy, ambivalence, loss, joy–so much of what makes me tick.  (Plus, when the world seems to think it knows what’s better for me and my kid than I do, I’m bound to talk back.)  It’s occurred to me lately that while we agonize over every minute aspect of parenting in the media, in mother’s groups, with our partners–which stroller?  cloth diapers?  co-sleeping? TV by two?–we’ve missed the biggest question of all: how big should our families be?  What will make the happiest kids, parents, and societies?  Why do we assume we must have children, instead of taking things one kid at a time? (Or at all?)

I’ve started this blog in the hopes of jumpstarting a conversation.  Please join me by commenting on posts, emailing me at laurenosandler@gmail.com to suggest topics for research and discussion, or just by reading–you know, in all that extra time you have.