Regardless of parents’ attempts to be cool, there comes an age at which their children find everything about them mortifying. For the cover of the June 24, 2024, issue, the cartoonist Adrian Tomine portrays a young preteen trying to distance herself from her progenitors. “I have to admit that I waste a lot of time thinking about how to not embarrass my kids, by calibrating how much slang I should use or by assessing how much curvature there should be in the brim of my baseball cap,” Tomine said. “As with many aspects of parenting, I know I will fail miserably in this, but I hope my daughters give me points for trying.”
