Parents are grinding our teeth so much lately that dentists have noticed. Why? | Sophie Brickman

The huge grinding uptick' is about Covid stress - but also, I suspect, the specific stress of parenting during a pandemic

Dreams about your teeth falling out, among the most horrifying and universal we have, probably indicate a fear of losing control or power in a given situation - at least according to Carl Jung and centuries of dream interpreters. I'm not sure if this means that adding teeth to one's household can be viewed as a sign of resilience and order, but it's something I've been telling myself, however apocryphally, in the wee hours of the morning when I'm rocking my miserable, teething baby to sleep in a dark room, or plying my kindergartner with various chewy implements to scratch the itch of her six-year-old molars coming through.

Mama, look, I can see a little nub there," she says at bath time, opening her mouth comically wide and tilting her head at the mirror, her younger sister helpfully shining a small flashlight up her nostril.

Sophie Brickman is a contributor to the New Yorker, the New York Times and other publications, and the author of Baby, Unplugged: One Mother's Search for Balance, Reason, and Sanity in the Digital Age