Lydia Kiesling
Help Each Other Up the Hill
Lydia Kiesling
American economists are arguing about whether the economy is good or bad: if the numbers look good, but the people feel bad, who is correct? Family policies are one place where the numbers are undeniably bad — unaffordable childcare, horrible gun and traffic violence, intensifying mental health crises. But since the birth rate is also bad, it’s bad form to focus on these bummers, from a demographer’s perspective, lest we...
No Returns | On Family Functions and Dysfunctions
Lydia Kiesling
In December, The New Yorker asked, “How Did Polyamory Become So Popular?” in a piece that tracked the rise of the open relationship, from the obscure “province of utopian free-love communities” to its status as a mainstay of “Park Slope marriages and prestige television.” In January, New York magazine took on the same topic in a cover story, which explored the “increasingly mainstream world of ethical non-monogamy” and included “a...
