Gratuitous Link

In The New Yorker, Jill Lepore writes about the origins of "parenthood:"

"There have always been parents, and parents have always been besotted with their children, awestruck by their impossible beauty, dopey high jinks, and strange little minds. But 'parenthood,' the word, dates only to the middle of the nineteenth century, and the notion that parenthood is a distinct stage of life, shared by men and women, is historically in its infancy."