Home, Sweet Home

parenting in Palo Alto

It’s been an eventful couple of days here in Palo Alto. First, I discovered that I live a mere mile away from a house that The Daily Mail described as “America’s most obnoxious real estate listing.” Then, Grown and Flown, a behemoth site for parents of teens and young adults, reposted an essay I wrote two years ago, and the essay seems to be getting a lot of engagement, which is a polite phrase for provoking strong opinions in the people who read it.

Apart from the coincidence in timing, my essay and America’s most obnoxious real estate listing have a lot in common: a preoccupation with where people live and how they parent. I’ll get to parenting in a minute, but first let me direct you to the real estate listing in question: a five-bedroom, four-bathroom, $4.8 million dollar home on a cul-de-sac in south Palo Alto, which, according to a commenter on Threads, is not even the “nice” part of Palo Alto. (Side note: yes, I do spend a lot of time online. Someone has to track down all these …