I have spent the last 30 years taking care of women in pregnancy, birth and beyond. I use my hands to help bring life into this world. Over the past few years, however, I found myself using those very same hands in the performance of a Taharah, a Jewish ritual that prepares a dead woman for burial. Birth, life, joy, beginnings vs. death, decay, finality. Such a contrast! What could be more different? And yet, somewhere in my consciousness, there was a commonality. Caring for a woman in her life, preparing a woman for birth had a parallel in preparing a woman for burial. The act of helping a woman and her baby through their many transitions seemed analogous to helping the soul transition from this plane of existence to the next.

“Taharah” means “to purify.” Particular prayers are said and simple hand-sewn white linen garments dress the body. All this is identical for everyone, no matter how old, how young, how rich, how poor. During a Taharah, all are treated the same.

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Things are very different today. Kid-targeted movies filled with teenage actors like "The Hunger Games" and the "Harry Potter" franchise have found a huge adult audience, while actors like 15-year-old Chloë Moretz (who stars in the new movie "Hick," opening this week) and the Fanning sisters are given prominent roles in serious dramas. On TV, children have become a regular part of many casts, from sitcoms ("The Middle," "Modern Family") to dramas ("Shameless," 'The Walking Dead"). Child actors, once a sign of cheesiness and unprofessional conduct, have become integral to the success of a large number of critically respected and commercially successful entertainment properties. And not only that, many of these child actors have gotten really, really good.

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Even down at the local LGBT center, it's still unusual to think of a young child as gay. Childhood is, after all, a fairly neutral time, one in which the concept of love is reserved largely for parents and ice cream. But just because a kid isn't yet engaged in the stream of romantic attachment, it doesn't follow that he isn't developing his sense of self. Who you are is not a single adolescent rite of passage like a bar mitzvah or quinceañera. Every gay adult was once a child. And in every classroom and playground in America right now are our future gay adults. So how do we raise those children – and all our children -- in a way that acknowledges and accepts that?

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Bullying, unfortunately, was a part of the warp and weave of my childhood. I grew up in northern Minnesota in the '70s, where my Asian family was the only color in a sea of Scandinavians. When I was in second grade, a crew-cutted boy shoved me against some metal monkey bars, cracking the back of my head open.

But the most difficult time came when I entered junior high. I was underweight, bookish, bespectacled. Gym class was a convergence of all my anxieties. The other girls were tall with pretty hair that feathered and training bras, while I had no breasts and not even an undershirt for camouflage underneath the one-piece uniforms that looked like a baby’s onesie.

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I looked back at my son, hanging upside down on the monkey bars. “Sounds like you have Asshole syndrome,” I said. “Have you ever thought of that?”

In my head, I said that. What I said out loud was something like, “We think he’s just Jake, and that’s good enough for us.”

“Well, he might have Asperger’s,” she pursued. "And you should have him tested.”

“Well, you might be a bitch," I said, in my head. "Is there a test for that?”

My actual words were, “We’re not interested in labeling him at this point.”

I was standing under a tree with a woman from our home-school play group when this dreaded “developmental milestones conversation” occurred. Her son had all his multiplication facts memorized; mine still hadn’t memorized addition facts. Her son was complimented for being polite; mine often ignored other children's personal space. Her son was reading three grade levels ahead; mine was reading three below.

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The child psychologist Alison Gopnik observes that the human infant lives in a very fluid state of becoming; astonishingly rapid changes in perception and sensation occur in the early years of human development, and these shape our capacity to cooperate. Buried in all of us is the infantile experience of relating and connecting to the adults who took care of us; as babies we had to learn how to work with them in order to survive. These infant experiments with cooperation are akin to a rehearsal, as infants try out various possibilities about getting along with parents and peers. Genetic patterning provides a guide, but human infants (like all young primates) also investigate, experiment with and improve their own behaviour.

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"Scared Sick: The Role of Childhood Trauma in Adult Disease," the new book by Robin Karr-Morse and Meredith S. Wiley (respectively, a family therapist and a nonprofit worker with a background in family policy), explains just how profoundly babies and young children are affected by traumatic experiences. In the remarkably researched work, the two women show that early life malnutrition and abuse can affect a kid's nervous system well into adulthood. Children raised in traumatic environments are more prone to cancer, chronic pain and even diabetes. The duo's previous book, "Ghosts From the Nursery," looked at the childhood roots of violence, but this new work is no less significant in its conclusions about American culture.

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Listen in on a group of middle-aged children of the elderly, and you’ll hear that even the most casual mention of aging parents is likely to open up a Pandora's box of anxieties. These are stories told with tears, with exasperation, and sometimes, when they can take a step back, with laughter. Not funny ha-ha mirth, but more like the hysterical laughter we all experience at those moments when we're forced to come to grips with the absurdity of life and our own helplessness.

Even if their parents are still doing fine, middle-aged children need only look around at friends and neighbors to be reminded that these anxieties will become theirs one day. Indeed, most of the children I spoke with in the research for my book, "60 On Up: The Truth About Aging in America," actively worry about their aging parents, often well before their parents need any help.

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I'm a 41-year-old intellectual-property paralegal from the New York/New Jersey area. I lost my job two weeks ago. It was a job I took in June after working for a small firm for four years. I had been trying to get a better job for over a year.

I felt great when I started but afterward, my "baby mama" (I have a 5-year-old daughter whose mother and I were never married) got angry because I wouldn't be able to have my daughter over as much as the recent past (we never had a child-support agreement).

Beforehand, I had my daughter every other weekend, overnights during the middle of the week, and I would have her stay with me for up to a week at a time when her mother would travel for work (which was four to six times a year). I have been consistently paying support without complaint.

That schedule changed to just every other weekend. And even though I was making more money, I was being called a "deadbeat." And she was angry I took a job "without consulting her." We were never married. Why should I have "consulted her"?

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Once, after a particularly long social studies lecture, it became clear from the growing dark spot on her skirt and her uncomfortable shifting that Valerie had wet her pants. (Valerie is not her real name, by the way. I've changed names to protect the real people.) I sidled up next to her and whispered, “Did you have an accident? It’s OK, you can tell me.” After she finally admitted she had, I told everyone.

Manipulation formed the heart of our relationship. Recently, I found an entry in my middle school diary: “Dear Journal, Guess what! Valerie Jones, the biggest nerd in school, has an uncle who owns a dance/dinner club. For her birthday, he’s letting her rent it and invite 100 friends! Since she has no friends, I get to make the invitation list! This is gonna be great!” (The party never took place.)

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Turns out I'm far from alone in experiencing such early unwanted advances. On Monday, a study finding that sexual harassment between peers is widespread in grade school started making the rounds, and the New York Times' coverage swiftly climbed the most-emailed list. The survey, conducted by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), found that almost half of seventh to 12th graders had been sexually harassed during the last school year. Girls were the most frequent target of "unwelcome sexual behavior," but 40 percent of boys had experienced such an incident in the last year. The news has predictably stirred up significant media attention – the topic of kids and sex always does – but the phenomenon itself is hardly new. For decades now, countless studies have shown this to be a problem, and yet the message doesn't seem to stick.

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She's a mom herself, actually – to 8-month-old Emma – as well as a performance artist in the tradition of "post-porn modernist" Annie Sprinkle. That is why we're sitting across from each other on an airbed in the middle of an art gallery in San Francisco's Mission District. This peculiar scene of public domesticity -- with a reporter, no less -- is how she chose to close her recent group exhibit, "Building Our Own White Picket Fences," which explored family dynamics relating to queerness and sex work. Among Young's contributions to the show: An image of the red-haired BDSM star next to a blindfold and cutouts of combat boots – it's titled, "Pin the Combat Boots on the Queer Mommy." Another photo shows the award-winning BDSM star topless with a shot of a television covering one breast and an image of a milk carton covering the other, with a spinning arrow in-between. By the window, a wood swing is strung from the ceiling -- on the seat, upside-down pushpins spell out "family."

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I grew up as a fat girl in an unforgiving new money suburb. One time, I was going to play with a younger friend from my block when a group of girls surrounded us, some shoving me, some yelling "Moose!" (Moose was the nickname that plagued me throughout school, following me until I left for college.) The girl leading the mob, Stacy, had one year and at least four inches on me. Her golden good looks would've made her pretty if not for the furious expression she wore whenever she caught sight of me. I broke through the circle of screaming girls and ran till I got home. I never told anyone, though the violence frightened me.

I tried contacting Stacy, but she ignored my emails. I moved on to Delia, leader of the mean girls in my elementary school. Delia sometimes called me names, but generally stuck to catty mind games. One day in sixth grade, she walked up to my desk, looked deep into my eyes, and said I had "such a pretty face." Then she shook her head sadly. She and her eighth grade boyfriend tried to convince me his friend had a crush on me. I weighed 250 pounds, so it was unlikely. I saw her at our 20th high school reunion this summer. She teaches grade school now and commended me on an essay I'd written about bullying for Salon.

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“Ya know, I always thought I’d have a kid by now,” my spouse blurted out, as he collected scraps of paper from the floor.

There it was. The one present he really wanted when he turned 36. And it was my fault I hadn’t gotten it for him. I removed the headphones and tried to deflect. “Well, 36 is really the new 26, so when you think about it, we’ve got plenty of time.” He wasn’t convinced. Just short of replacing my birth control pills with prenatal vitamins, my partner was raring to reproduce. I felt about as prepared for parenthood as the stars of “Teen Mom,” even though I was old enough to remember when MTV aired music videos hosted by Adam Curry.

It’s a delicate dance when a desire belonging to your significant other is entirely dependent upon your cooperation. The decision to, say, bring another human being into this world required my total support and collaboration. Not to mention the use of precious real estate.  But our timing was off.  My partner tried pushing me forward, I pulled back.

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Some patterns came naturally, since they were holdovers from when we were kids. Negotiating household chores was a breeze. I agreed to wash the dishes if she would dry and put them away. The next night, we swapped duties. Other moments of synchronicity caught us by surprise, like realizing we both avoid dealing with our emotions by taking on more responsibility. During the nine months my mother fought a losing battle for her life, she found joy in watching her daughters put aside their childhood differences and learn to appreciate each other as adults.

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While my husband, Victor, slept in one of the few comfortable chairs, I entertained myself by assessing the other families. The couple next to us was uninitiated. They sat close together, eyes dilated with fear, holding hands. Ear Tubes, I decided. First kid. Professionals. Scared as all get-out. I strained to remember when we were them. Mondays always brought out a lot of Ear Tubes. It was surgery day for the ENTs.

The plus-size woman near the television had captured the only other cushy recliner in the room. She snapped open the morning paper and enjoyed a steaming Styrofoam cup of coveted Swiss Miss. She was alone, her only companion a child's empty wheelchair and a familiar array of pumps and tubes.

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No, that sentiment didn't make me a bad person, but my previous one -- that children in a broader, all-inclusive sense sucked universally and without reservation -- probably did. After all, I had two children of my own. Even in my current state of twitchy, aggravated exhaustion, I felt the whiff of disloyalty, so I revised my original thought. Upon further consideration, not all children sucked, just Other People's Children. No, I was not down with OPC, and in case you hadn't noticed, they were everywhere.

Take the aquarium, for instance. After a day of plodding through the exhibits in the company of hundreds of doting parents and their imperious offspring, I was beginning to see the appeal of vacation destinations that billed themselves as "child-free." As I hunkered down for the rest of the drive home, however, an uneasiness settled over me and a familiar but uncomfortable question began to stir in my mind: Was it them ... or was it me?

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