The Parenting Journal

The drawer my older daughter opened at 22 months wasn’t the knife drawer. It was the one below it, the one I figured was fine because it held baking sheets and a cast iron skillet. She pulled the drawer all...

Every state licenses daycare facilities differently, but the gaps between "licensed" and "genuinely safe" are where children get hurt. A license tells you a provider met the minimum bar on inspection day. It doesn’t tell you whether the cabinet locks...

Every dollar you spend on baby proofing costs less than the first hour of an emergency room visit. That’s not a metaphor. It’s the math that should drive every purchasing decision you make in the next few months.The instinct to...

The holidays turn your living room into an obstacle course. Twinkling lights, dangling ornaments, flickering candles, a six-foot tree that your baby is already eyeing like a climbing wall. It’s beautiful. It’s also a hazardous environment for a child who...

Key Takeaways Start with the kitchen, bathroom, and nursery before tackling any other room. Remove all soft items from the crib sleep space, it costs nothing and saves lives. Hardware-mounted gates at stair tops cannot be dislodged by a determined...

Parenting twins means you are always doing the math. Two crawlers. Two climbers. Two children who will, at some point, figure out that one of them can occupy your attention while the other gets into something they absolutely should not....

Renting an apartment or living in a leased home doesn’t mean you get to skip babyproofing. It means you have to be smarter about it.For a lot of parents, the fear of losing a security deposit is real enough that...

Renting with a baby is a specific kind of stress. You’re trying to keep a small person safe while also protecting a security deposit that represents, in some cases, two months of rent. The good news: you don’t have to...

Summer arrives fast. One week you’re watching your toddler chase dandelions in the backyard, and the next you’re managing a full outdoor obstacle course of pool water, bug spray, sunscreen, and a grill that’s somehow always within reach of small...