Parenting Déjà Vu

Updated at 7:00 p.m. ET on May 12, 2023

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For many parents, the act of child-rearing can resemble déjà vu. Children can be an uncanny mirror of one’s particularities: your weird foot shape, the exact contours of your social anxiety. But even stranger is the way parents often find themselves manifesting their own parents’ tics in the process.

First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

• The abortion absolutist
• Why Dad’s side of the family tends to miss out
• One of evolution’s biggest moments was re-created in a year.
• Ben Franklin would have loved Bluesky.

The Reenactment Loop

Children are not blank in a recent article, a child is the unwitting embodiment of parental legacy before she even draws her first breath. Certain biological inheritances will shape who a person is and the sort of life she’ll lead, as will her parents’ material circumstances, social support, and values. Before long, her parents’ childhood baggage can also come home to roost, emerging like a from their existential foliage.