The Parents Arranging Playdates for Their College Kids

Weeks before her son set foot on campus, Jennifer considered quitting the Facebook group she’d joined for parents of new students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The mother of one of her son’s first-year roommates had sent her a link to the group, which has more than 20,000 members, and she clicked on it looking for guidance on what to pack for him besides extra-long twin sheets. “Some parent wrote, ‘Make sure you stick a pool noodle in the gap between the wall and the bed,’” says Jennifer, who lives in Essex, New Jersey. “As soon as you’re telling me to buy a pool noodle so my precious son’s precious phone doesn’t fall on the floor if he drops it, I’m out.”

We don’t know what looks sillier about this movie: Dakota Johnson playing a superhero instead of a witch, or the suggestion that putting Sydney Sweeney in glasses makes her less of a smokeshow. Gwyneth Paltrow’s ski trial has been adapted as a musical. New Jersey’s First Lady, Tammy Murphy, is running for Senate. Why so many accidental pregnancies happen in your 40s. See the winners of the 2023 Natural Landscape Photography Awards. And it’s the scam-iest time of the year.

Sign up to get Brooding, a biweekly newsletter interrogating modern family life, written by Kathryn Jezer-Morton.