Child Development

Despite a venerable history—and a citywide child-care crunch—the Weekday School is on the chopping block.

According to experts, maintaining an infectious state of calm is the single goal from which all other family aspirations can flow.

“The reason I design for children is I’m designing for people,” Holman, who is featured in the second season of the Netflix series “Abstract: The Art of Design,” said. “Good toys make good people.”

Climbing Bugaboo Mountain a) “was a fun way to spend a rainy day”; b) proved “so impossibly frustrating” that I “vented my anger on the nearest sibling”; or c) left me in a “cavernous depression.”

From The New Yorker’s archive, pieces about the surprising history of children’s TV, its broad, enduring impact, and its many, sometimes contradictory meanings.