When I was four years old, my mother announced we were moving to New Haven. Not for forever, she insisted, just for the weekdays when she needed to juggle a full-time job and a tiny child. I started daycare in the neighborhood Monday through Friday, and on weekends we’d shuffle back home to New York.

But daycare only occupied me for three-quarters of the workday. While I was napping and trading peanut butter sandwiches (this was before allergies were a thing, I think), my mom was worrying about whether she’d be able to pick me up when work ran late. When things were especially busy, my grandmother would make the trek up from North Carolina and stay with us for weeks at a time—after school, we’d eat black raspberry Ashley’s and go to the park and wait until my mom came home.

Not every mother (or daughter) is fortunate enough to have family to turn to, or the resources to access daycare at all. For a lot of Yale faculty and staff, finding childcare during work hours is difficult or impossible, and almost always expensive. In this week’s front, Libbie Katsev, DC ’17, follows parents left without systems of support, struggling to balance a full-time job at Yale with the fulltime job of being a parent.

We honor parents in Voices, too: in the interview, Ava Orphanoudakis explains how her father’s wisdom shaped her art, and Coryna Ogunseitan, TC ’17, illustrates her father’s journey to America. In Culture, Emma Chanen, TD ’19, celebrates Claire of Claire’s Corner Copia, the mother of New Haven coffee cake.

But this paper isn’t just kid stuff—check out Reviews for rare skin diseases and Muppet innuendo, Opinion for scary clowns (read: politicians), and Features for poisonous abandoned factories (NSFW. Literally).

This Parents’ Weekend, we hope you spend time with family—whether it’s the family you grew up with or the families you’ve grown into here. From our family to yours, here’s the Herald. Enjoy.

Hugs,

Sarah Holder

Managing Editor