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      8-Year-Old Is Killed and Two Adults Wounded in Queens Stabbing

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      Police officers arrived at an apartment in Jamaica to find a man holding his father at knife point and an 8-year-old mortally wounded.It was just after 5 p.m. on the Fourth of July when a bleeding woman staggered out of a Queens apartment building, begging for help.She had been stabbed in the back.When police officers from the nearby 103rd Precinct arrived, they found a grisly scene in a fifth-floor apartment: an older son holding his father at knife point; a younger boy nearby, dying from his wounds, the police said.The officers said the older son was holding his father in a headlock. They told him to drop the knife multiple times in English and Spanish, they said. When he did not, officers fired one round, striking the older son, who dropped the knife, said John Chell, the chief of patrol for the New York Police Department.The suspect is being treated for his injuries at a nearby hospital.“This was a tragic and horrific event,” Chief Chell said at a hastily gathered news conference on Thursday evening outside the apartment building, at the corner of Sutphin Boulevard and 94th Avenue in Jamaica, Queens.Police officials did not speculate on a motive for the attack that left the younger boy, who was 8 years old, dead. The family members’ names were not released, nor was the precise nature of the relationships among them.Police officials said the investigation was continuing. “This is a domestic incident,” Chief Chell said. “There is a relationship with all them here, and we’ll figure that out.”The police said that the woman, who is 29, and the father, 43, were expected to recover from their injuries. An 8-month-old girl who was also in the apartment was unharmed, the police said.Kaz Daughtry, the deputy commissioner of operations, said that the officers who had responded to the scene were crushed by the news that the boy had succumbed to his injuries: “One of them said, ‘We wish we could have got here a little sooner to save this young life.’” More

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      Bidens Border Crackdown Could Disproportionately Affect Families

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      Parents with children represent 40 percent of migrants who crossed the southern border this year. Now, they will be turned back within days, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times.A new border crackdown unveiled by the Biden administration this week is likely to disproportionately affect families, whose soaring numbers in the last decade have drastically changed the profile of the population crossing the southern border.Family units have come to represent a substantial share of border crossers, accounting for about 40 percent of all migrants who have entered the United States this year. Families generally have been released into the country quickly because of legal constraints that prevent children from being detained for extended periods.They then join the millions of undocumented people who stay in the United States indefinitely, under the radar of the U.S. authorities, as they wait for court dates years in the future.But according to a memo issued by the Homeland Security Department and obtained by The New York Times, families will be returned to their home countries within days under President Biden’s new border policy, which temporarily closed the U.S.-Mexico border to most asylum seekers as of 12:01 a.m. Wednesday.The implications of the new policy are enormous for families, who are some of the most vulnerable groups making the journey to the United States. Advocates warn that it could have dangerous repercussions, making parents more likely to separate from their children or send them alone to the border, because unaccompanied minors are exempt from the new policy.The vast majority of families seeking asylum are from Central America and Mexico, which places them in a category described in the memo as “easily removable,” akin to single adults from those regions. The memo lays out how the authorities are to carry out the new policy.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jill Biden Leaves France to Attend Hunter Biden’s Trial

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      The first lady’s departure from a high-profile foreign trip was a dramatic illustration of the Biden family’s personal priorities. She is expected to return to France on Saturday.Jill Biden, the first lady, left President Biden’s side in France on Thursday to make the trans-Atlantic trip back to Delaware, where Hunter Biden is standing trial on gun charges.The first lady is then scheduled to return to France for a state visit on Saturday, according to her communications director, Elizabeth Alexander.The departure of the first lady from a high-profile foreign trip was perhaps the most dramatic illustration yet of the Biden family’s personal priorities, which lie some 3,600 miles away from France, in Courtroom 4A of the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building in Wilmington, Del.Hunter Biden is on trial on charges of lying about his drug use on a form to buy a gun in October 2018, and of illegally possessing the weapon.The boomerang trip also says something about the resolve of the first lady, who is not a blood relative of Hunter Biden but who is the woman who raised him since he was a small child. Over time, she has become her family’s protective backbone.“I’m his mom,” she said in an interview in 2022, when Hunter Biden was the subject of a federal investigation. “I mean, I have to support him and love him, and, you know, I’m constantly talking to him, sending him texts; ‘How you doing?’ Because it’s tough.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Are You Having a Millennial Mom Midlife Crisis?

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      Mothers have been exhausted since the beginning of time, but some difficulties are specific to the millennial generation.There was dog urine on the carpet, vomit on her blouse and a queasy 7-year-old to look after, but Dr. Whitney Casares had just a few spare moments to clean up and change so she could resume the keynote presentation she had been giving when the school nurse called.Dr. Casares, 42, a pediatrician in Portland, Ore., tried to clean up both messes and race back to her computer. “But I was completely unnerved and underperformed,” she said. “When my husband” — who hadn’t picked up when the school called — “and younger daughter came home a few hours later, the first words out of their mouths were ‘Didn’t you get anything for dinner?’ and ‘Why does it smell so bad in here?’”In that moment, said Dr. Casares, the author of “Doing It All: Stop Over-Functioning and Become the Mom and Person You’re Meant to Be,” she related to a Taylor Swift lyric: “I did all the extra credit, then got graded on a curve.”It has always been exhausting to be a mother, but each generation has had its particular pressures and ways of coping. Boomer moms didn’t expect motherhood to be anything but difficult, though the lack of social awareness around anxiety and depression meant most would never openly discuss it. Generation X moms had to prove that they could do everything men could do — and then come home and work a second shift. Some Gen Xers were children of divorce, manifested an ironic detachment from their troubles and were prescribed Prozac to deal.And then came millennial moms, the women raised on “You go, girl!” in the 1980s and ’90s and who today are in their 30s and early 40s. On average, they enrolled in college in higher numbers than men, married later and delayed having children, sometimes to prioritize careers and other times because — with student debt and less wealth than previous generations — it felt impossible not to.Still, it seemed like some things had worked out in their favor. Perhaps they could juggle work and motherhood more successfully. Maybe their male partners, if they had them, would be more attuned to gender imbalances at home.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Seder Is About Family, Food, Freedom. And Now, It’s Also About the War.

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      At Passover Seders, many families addressed the war in Gaza. In some cases, generations clashed and tensions arose. “That’s the Jewish way,” said one host.Bonnie Rosenfeld had 38 people crowded into her home in Rockaway, N.J., on Monday night. She has hosted Passover Seders for years, but none that felt quite like this. She wanted to address “the elephant in the room” up front.So as they lit candles to mark the start of the holiday, they also recited a set of prayers alluding to the war in Gaza — for the remaining Israeli hostages, for peace, for the horrors unfolding, she said, on both sides.It was, in her eyes, a recognition of the obvious:“This night is different,” said Ms. Rosenfeld, invoking the Four Questions traditionally recited on the holiday. “This Seder is different.”That sentiment echoed around the country this week, as families and groups of friends gathered for the start of Passover amid the complicated swirl of emotions and fiery political debates stirred by the monthslong Israel-Hamas war.The festive holiday, for many, has instead felt solemn. And its familiar rituals, this year, have seemed anything but routine.Dining chairs were left empty in symbolic remembrance of the remaining hostages. Guest lists were trimmed to avert interpersonal disharmony. Old stories and prayers took on new meaning. Timeworn rituals were tweaked to accommodate the off-kilter mood of the moment. Swords were crossed over generational lines.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How to Tell an Older Person It’s Time to Stop Driving

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      The “car key conversation” can be painful for families to navigate. Experts say there are ways to have it with empathy and care.Sherrie Waugh has been yelled at, insulted and wept upon in the course of her job administering driving tests. Typically these extreme reactions happen when she is forced to render an upsetting verdict: It’s time to hang up the car keys.Ms. Waugh, a certified driving rehabilitation specialist with The Brain Center, a private neuropsychology practice in Indiana, often works with older drivers, putting them through an assessment that measures things like visual skills, reaction time and processing speed.“I had one gentleman, who had early onset dementia, who was just sitting here crying,” Ms. Waugh said. “His wife was out in the car and she was crying. And we all came back, and we were all crying. Because it’s so hard.”Decisions about when an older person (or someone whose physical or mental circumstances make operating a vehicle dangerous) should stop driving are often agonizing. They can rock the driver’s sense of independence and identity, and add to the responsibilities that many family caregivers shoulder.“It’s a major, major loss for older people,” said Lauren Massimo, an assistant professor at Penn Nursing. “It’s been described to me as dehumanizing.”But it is important to raise concerns as soon as you have them, experts said, and there are ways to make the car key conversation less painful for older drivers and their loved ones.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Eldest Daughter Syndrome’ and Sibling Birth Order: Does it Matter?

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      “Eldest daughter syndrome” assumes that birth order shapes who we are and how we interact. Does it?In a TikTok video that has been watched more than 6 million times, Kati Morton, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Santa Monica, Calif., lists signs that she says can be indicative of “eldest daughter syndrome.”Among them: an intense feeling of familial responsibility, people-pleasing tendencies and resentment toward your siblings and parents.On X, a viral post asks: “are u happy or are u the oldest sibling and also a girl”?Firstborn daughters are having a moment in the spotlight, at least online, with memes and think pieces offering a sense of gratification to responsible, put-upon big sisters everywhere. But even mental health professionals like Ms. Morton — herself the youngest in her family — caution against putting too much stock in the psychology of sibling birth order, and the idea that it shapes personality or long term outcomes.“People will say, ‘It means everything!’ Other people will say, ‘There’s no proof,’” she said, noting that eldest daughter syndrome (which isn’t an actual mental health diagnosis) may have as much to do with gender norms as it does with birth order. “Everybody’s seeking to understand themselves, and to feel understood. And this is just another page in that book.”What the research says about birth orderThe stereotypes are familiar to many of us: Firstborn children are reliable and high-achieving; middle children are sociable and rebellious (and overlooked); and youngest children are charming and manipulative.Studies have indeed found ties between a person’s role in the family lineup and various outcomes, including educational attainment and I.Q. (though those scores are not necessarily reliable measures of intelligence), financial risk tolerance and even participation in dangerous sports. But many studies have focused on a single point in time, cautioned Rodica Damian, a social-personality psychologist at the University of Houston. That means older siblings may have appeared more responsible or even more intelligent simply because they were more mature than their siblings, she said, adding that the sample sizes in most birth order studies have also been relatively small.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Is There a Political Divide in Your Family?

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      We want to hear from readers about how they approach different opinions over various social issues.As the 2024 election nears, parents and their teenage children and young adults are sometimes finding themselves divided on how they think about social issues, even if they identify with the same political party.In some cases, immediate families are split in their views across age and gender lines. According to a recent Gallup poll, fewer men in each age group today identify as liberal than do their female counterparts — but the gap is widest among those ages 18 to 29.The New York Times is looking to hear from readers about how they are approaching family conflicts over questions of gender, climate, equality, abortion and gun control, among other topics. If you are a young adult, do you share your parents’ political values or the values of your partner?We will not publish any part of your response without talking with you first. We will not share your contact information outside of the Times newsroom, and we will use it only to reach out to you.Your Family Dynamic More