A disturbing video shared online in 2018 drew widespread attention after appearing to show a tricycle driver with an unusually heavy head lice infestation. The Filipino Times reported that the footage had been posted on Facebook by Primo Onipa and showed numerous lice around the back of the driver’s neck and on his clothing. The…
On November 19, 1997, Bobbi and Kenny McCaughey became the center of international attention when Bobbi gave birth to seven babies at Iowa Methodist Medical Center in Des Moines, Iowa. The four boys and three girls were born by Caesarean section within approximately six minutes of one another, about nine weeks prematurely. Their names are…
The Whittaker family of Odd, West Virginia, has attracted extraordinary online attention, but much of what circulates about them is mixed with sensational language, incomplete genealogy, and assumptions about disability. Photographer and filmmaker Mark Laita first encountered members of the family while working on his Created Equal portrait project in the early 2000s and later…
You open an elegant wedding invitation, pull out the RSVP card, and suddenly one tiny letter makes you hesitate: “M.” It sits at the beginning of a blank line with no explanation, almost as though you are expected to know exactly what belongs there. For guests who rarely attend formal weddings, the old-fashioned format can…
The guardianship papers were still on the kitchen counter when my fiancé, Elliot, looked me in the eye and told me to send my five-year-old twin brothers away. Only days earlier, our parents had been killed in a terrible accident, leaving me, at 22, as the boys’ closest family. I had signed every document necessary…
A seemingly tiny moment on the red carpet turned into one of the most talked-about details of the Spider-Man: Brand New Day premiere. As Jon Bernthal posed alongside his 24-year-old co-star Sadie Sink, cameras captured him placing an arm around her while keeping his hand closed in a fist rather than resting it directly against…
Family relationships can be some of the strongest and most meaningful connections in a person’s life, but they can also become complicated over time. Parents may expect closeness with their adult children to continue naturally, while adult children may be building careers, partnerships, friendships, and families of their own. When visits become less frequent or…
PART 1: WHAT I FOUND WHEN I CAME HOMEAfter spending a week in Dallas for work, I returned to our Chicago apartment expecting my three-year-old daughter, Emma, to run into my arms. Every night on video calls, she had asked whether I was bringing home her favorite chocolate teddy bears. Instead, I found her barefoot…
At 9:15 on an October morning, a woman placed a 14-month-old girl named Maisie into my arms, and within seconds she wrapped one tiny hand around my collar. She wore a yellow fleece sleeper, but only one matching duck-pattern sock. I was Daniel Prewitt, 44, divorced, financially comfortable after 20 years in commercial real estate,…
My 14-year-old sister Emma came home crying because she had been banned from using a swimming pool she had helped buy. After our parents died in a car accident two years earlier, I became her legal guardian at 27, so seeing her humiliated over something she had worked months to earn hit me hard. Emma…