The Atlantic Cover: Childhood in an Anxious Age

How do you prepare a child for life in an uncertain world?

When a global pandemic has upended our lives, and anxiety is pervasive, how can parents raise their children to handle stress and future calamities?

Even before the coronavirus took hold, something was clearly amiss. From 2007 to 2017, suicides rose 56 percent among 10-to-24-year-olds. And in recent years, suicide rates have almost doubled for children 11 and younger.

What can be done about overwhelmed children, and the parents struggling to care for them? The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, discussed this mental health epidemic with Kate Julian, a senior editor who wrote the magazine’s May cover story, “Childhood in an Anxious Age and the Crisis of Modern Parenting.”