Weekend A La Carte (May 9)

Motherhood Was Supposed to Be a Slog. I Found Joy Instead. Similarly, Kate Lucky celebrates motherhood and its many joys. “‘But how are you?’ the callers ask, sometimes with a note of concern. Having a toddler seems like ‘a lot.’ Well, yes. And also, I don’t quite know how to tell them the truth. ‘I’m good,’ I say, which sounds like I’m being evasive. But that’s not it at all. I’m great! Well, of course, not always. Think of the fatigue. The untethered tantrums. But joy persists. I don’t know how to talk about it without sounding as if I’m bragging or dissembling. I don’t know how to talk about it without being annoying.” (Gift link)

I Want to Live Like Costco People. This is a humorous and enjoyable article by a middle-aged guy who, perhaps inevitably, became one of those Costco people. “Like a lot of married couples, my wife and I maintain a regularly updated shared Google doc for Costco shopping as a form of domestic ritual. Anecdotally, it’s my belief that every Costco shopper has a certain item or two they’re compelled to purchase on each visit—I think it’s very likely you, while reading this, are nodding your head and thinking about your own nonnegotiable Costco pickup right now.” (Note: a bad word or two)

The “Christian” Pantheon of Acceptable “Gods”. “There is a curious thing about the first commandment, which is that almost no one believes they have broken it. Murder, yes. Theft, perhaps. Adultery, well, of the eyes if not of the body. But idols? Idols are wooden men in jungles and golden calves in deserts and fat little statues in temples on the other side of the world. The modern man hears Thou shalt have no other gods before me and feels a faint, rather pleasant solidarity with Moses, the way one feels solidarity with a man condemning a crime one has not yet thought of committing.” The honest truth, of course, “is that we break this commandment before breakfast.”

The Perverse Tyranny of a Perfect Transcript. People from my generation consistently insist that good grades were harder to come by when we were young. It turns out it’s true. “Each year, the undergraduate college at Harvard awards the Sophia Freund Prize to the graduating senior with the highest GPA. For decades, the prize went to one student, sometimes two if there was a tie. In 2025, there was a 55-way tie. The top students all had a perfect GPA. Hundreds more were nearly perfect. Last year, flat A’s accounted for 66 percent of grades. A’s and A–’s accounted for 84 percent.” (Gift link)

Girls Are in Crisis. Alarmism Won’t Help. Freya India’s book GIRLS® has generated both positive and negative reviews. I think this one from The Dispatch is quite balanced—and I say that having read the book. “India is not, in fact, a ‘girl,’ though: She is a 26-year-old woman. The slippage matters because the book’s chief claim to authority—personal experience—depends on it. India’s subjects, the girls living the phenomenon she’s describing (and notably not interviewed, but observed through TikTok and Reels), are roughly a decade younger than she is.” (Gift link)

This Is What Detransitioning Looks Like. Eight Stories of Regret. I was pleased to see this article on detransitioners in the National Post, a Canadian national newspaper. It tells the story of eight people who transitioned gender and then deeply regretted it. The stories are told from a secular rather than Christian perspective, a fact that makes them no less helpful in displaying the horrors of transitioning.

The Most Important Abortion Ruling You’ve Never Heard Of. Joe Carter explains a mostly-forgotten abortion ruling that he suggests may prove to be far more consequential than the ones we are all familiar with. “20 years from now, we may look back and conclude that this little-noticed ruling—and whatever the Supreme Court does with it next—mattered more for the future of unborn life in America than any of the better-known headline cases.”