How much is your parental mental load worth?

Use this tool to calculate the dollar value of your parental mental load, from meal planning to coordinating after-school care, then see resources that help generate solutions.

Calculate the salary of a mother's work

While traditional parenting roles are changing, mothers do a ton of work at home, from cleaning and cooking to managing household finances. This quick calculator estimates the salary a mother (or caregiver) should receive based on number of...

What employers can do about parental stress

The US Surgeon General recently released a formal warning deeming parental stress a public health issue. The advisory also included recommendations for how employers can mitigate the issue. Employers can help their employees access child care, for instance, or provide flexible working hours. To find out more about what the Surgeon General prescribes, read more here.

Watch a Yale University psychologist explain his new supportive parenting anxiety therapy

Dr. Eli Leibowitz says that accommodating a child's fears and anxieties—say, sleeping on the floor next to them or submitting to their requests to repeatedly come tell them goodnight—can further their anxiety. Instead, parents should change how they approach fear to equip children to think they don't need parental rescue.

Mental illness in the US costs roughly $282B annually nationwide

That figure, estimated as part of a 2024 Yale analysis that aimed to better understand the macroeconomic implications of mental illness, included the costs of mental health treatment, income loss, and overarching economic setbacks associated with mental illness.

Some parents are spending about $200 on berries per month

About 32% of respondents to a recent survey about berries said their children typically eat a carton of berries in a single serving. That level of consumption is costing parents more money than one might expect.

How to calculate your net worth

Someone's net worth is the value of their assets minus their liabilities. Assets may include a home or a retirement savings account, whereas examples of liabilities include student or credit card debt.

Calculate how much of your tax dollars go to each federal program based on your income, filing status, and number of children

A pregnant woman's brain sheds gray matter, perhaps explaining 'baby brain'

The brain areas involved in processing information and emotions decrease by an average of almost 5% during pregnancy. Researchers discovered in a 2025 study that this mostly temporary change—the brain hadn't fully returned to its normal size six months after pregnancy—seems to be associated with self-reported improved bonding and less hostility toward the child postpartum.

Are you burned out? Take this quiz

Have you ever wondered if what you’re experiencing is burnout, or just stress? This Psychology Today quiz may help you decide if you need to explore more mental health resources. You don’t have to create an account to take the quiz. Simply answer the questions and provide your ZIP code.

The emotional regression that happens when we visit home

Despite how mature we might like to think we are, returning home for the holidays often results in reverting to our moodier, angstier childhood selves. This story in the conversation dives into the root of this phenomenon, which can largely be explained by attachment theory. Read along to understand how your past experiences and attachment style can influence your current behaviors and for advice on how to cope with regression.

One dad, one hundred babies

A look at the companies offering surrogacy to the ultrarich—including Chinese men taking their reproductive cues from Elon Musk.

Total student debt has ballooned to $1.7T, up almost 150% since the Great Recession

While the burden falls across roughly 43 million Americans, the debt load itself is not uniform—millennials and those pursuing graduate or professional degrees represent an outsized portion of loans.

How life looks different with a $75K household income versus $150K

"The cleanest way to describe the gap is that $75K is often about stability, while $150K can be about optionality, but only if fixed expenses do not expand to consume the raise," said one finance professor.

Alzheimer's as a family disease: When children become "parents"

Kitty Eisele's 81-year-old dad went missing while on a snowy, four-hour drive from Minneapolis to Iowa City. It was the first emergency that spelled out the danger of her dad's dementia diagnosis—and captures how Alzheimer’s impacts entire families, with the influx of responsibility that comes with caregiving.

About 12.5% of US adults experience a phobia in their lifetime, a diagnosis that hinges on the intense fear interfering with daily life and persisting for at least six months.

Parents and romantic partners naturally touch at speeds optimizing nerve activation

A small observational research study shows that when parents are asked to caress their infants and volunteers are asked to caress their partners, both groups spontaneously stroke their loved ones at velocities that, on average, fell within the optimal range to stimulate the C-tactile afferent nerve receptors. This wasn't the case when volunteers were asked to do the same with an artificial arm, which they stroked much faster.

Could all mental health disorders have a unifying 'p-factor'?

Some researchers have argued in the past couple decades that all mental health disorders may have a unifying dimension—a theoretical "p-factor" that is common across mental illness, but life experiences and behaviors influence if and how illness manifests. Proponents point to similarities across different disorders, while detractors argue that such connections are largely exaggerated.

The pregnancy test industry is worth roughly $769M

The inventor of the at-home pregnancy test, Margaret Crane, largely hasn't taken credit for her invention until recently.

An MBA return on investment calculator

On average, the total investment for an MBA degree is more than $200K, which includes tuition, living expenses, lost income, and potential interest on student loans. This calculator can help you figure out your own future MBA degree’s estimated ROI based on your unique situation.

Aurea's father came upon polygenic risk scores after reading a news article about it

Rafal Smigrodzki, a neurologist with a PhD in genetics, first heard of the polygenic risk score offering after reading about it in a 2017 MIT Technology Review feature that focused on the company they eventually used, Genomic Prediction.

Contributing to a friend’s child’s 529 Account

A podcast listener asks about contributing to a 529 savings plan for their friend’s child. The hosts go over the basics of what a 529 is and how it works, and then give advice on how the listener can contribute, touching on how to have conversations about money with friends.

How much tax you would owe on a $14M inheritance

“Death taxes” refer to estate and inheritance taxes—fees imposed on wealth transfers after someone passes. While the federal estate tax only applies to estates over $13.61 million in 2024, some states, like Washington, have their own taxes.

Losing the kids to video games

An estimated 60 million people suffer from internet gaming disorder worldwide, a category created by the World Health Organization in 2018 to help communities support individuals plagued by pathological play. As the world's most-played game of all...

Ranking life's biggest decisions

Psychological research presents some unsurprising wisdom about how to make big decisions without regret: focus on people, don’t miss opportunities, and stay true to yourself.

Life insurance policies are often recommended for people with financial dependents

If you’re a parent, spouse, business owner, homeowner, or if you hold a lot of debt, you might want to consider life insurance. It can replace a loss of income or pay off debt.

How to carry more than your own bodyweight

Those images showing a villager carrying an enormous bundle on their back, or balancing a basket of fish on their head—how's that possible? This article dives into the clever tools and habits of strength training some cultures employ as part of their labors, from the springy bamboos used by Vietnamese farmers to the headbound burdens of Himalayan sherpas.

About 2,000 US babies are born annually without some portion of their limbs, potentially leading to a lifetime of pricey prosthetics.

Half of human DNA is inherited from each parent

Within most cells reside 23 pairs of chromosomes made of tightly wound DNA, and half of each pair is inherited from each parent. The 23rd pair consists of two X-shaped chromosomes, or one such chromosome paired with a Y chromosome, and determines biological sex.

US consumers collectively owe more than $1T to credit card companies—almost as much as they owe in auto loans.

Play the role of a student in a game where you try to navigate college and remain debt-free, selecting different income levels, high school experience, race, ethnicity, and more.

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

US housing costs have risen by roughly 175% between 1991 and 2026—but a growing number of Gen Zers are becoming homeowners anyway. In 2025, 4% of homebuyers were Gen Z, up from 3% the year before.

The hormonal disorder PCOS was renamed PMOS in 2026, a move designed to improve care and research by shifting the focus to the hormonal causes of this condition that affects 1 in 8 women.

Alzheimer's can lead to brain shrinkage, with an average of around 2% of volume reduction per year

Before the current East Wing ballroom project, only two White House renovations in the past 100 years cost more than $10M.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

Prince's sexually explicit 1984 track 'Darling Nikki' attracted the ire of the Parents Music Resource Center, an advocacy group that inspired the Parental Advisory sticker, even though the song ends with a Christian message.

Salvador Dalí believed he was his own dead brother, who had died nine months before he was born

Stanford built a Google Maps for the Roman Empire, revealing how much it cost to travel in the ancient world

A pickleball's loud 'pop' sound can reach 120 decibels, which is equivalent to a hammer hitting a nail

Crows are believed to have intelligence on par with a seven-year-old child and demonstrate complex behaviors, from problem-solving with tools to recognizing human faces.

The syncytiotrophoblast is the outer layer of the placenta and the largest human cell, spanning an area about twice that of a king-sized bedsheet.

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

In 2019, a laptop loaded with six of the worst malware in history and described as 'an exhibit of historical weaponry' sold for $1.3M.

Apollo astronauts left items in the moon's 'toss zone,' including golf balls, family photos, and bags of human waste, to make room for lunar rocks.

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

In 2026, Finland was named the world's happiest country for the ninth consecutive year based on its wealth, social safety network, and high life expectancy, among other factors.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight