“Here,” said a mom friend said last summer as she reached into her bag of pool toys and handed my 2-year-old son a small water gun. My stomach dropped. I didn’t know how to react. I’d always known ...

From Barbie dolls to action figures, the range of toys available to kids is expansive. But when a kid picks up a play gun from the toy aisle, parents may pause to question whether or not plastic ...

Race, gender and other social factors may explain why some parents allow their children to play with toy guns, while others shudder at the thought, a Johns Hopkins researcher reports in the January ...

The “enlightened” parents of our culture seem to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to keep kids from playing. From playing in the living room or classroom. From playing in front of the house ...

Meghan Walbert is Lifehacker's Managing Editor. She has a degree in journalism and has worked at Lifehacker as a writer and editor since 2018, covering parenting, foster care, online child safety, and ...

The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on the concerns posed by a child’s hobby. By Kwame Anthony Appiah My son is a freshman in high school and has recently become obsessed with Nerf and airsoft guns. He ...