“Dad, I’m bored”: What I learned from my son’s incurable boredom

Is a child ennui a sign of a parent's failure, or an existential revelation? Mark O'Connell, The Economist's 1843 Magazine parenting columnist, experienced a shocking moment with his son while being on lockdown: his child's boredom had "proceeded beyond restlessness into an encounter with the meaningless of existence itself." Here, he contemplates the moral meaning of that revelation for him as a parent.