Parenting & Families

The filmmaker was just 23 years old when she won South by Southwest jury prize for her second film, Tiny Furniture. The comedy stars Dunham and her real-live mom and sister playing fictionalized versions of themselves in their real-life apartment in New York City.

French actor Vincent Cassel plays a ballet-company boss who pushes a fragile Natalie Portman in Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan. The character is a hard guy -- though not quite the ruthless gangster Cassel played in the thriller Mesrine.

Country singer Loretta Lynn married at 13, had six children and created controversy by singing songs about divorce and the pill. Here, she talks about her decades in the music business, her relationship with her husband and a new tribute album, Coal Miner's Daughter.

The plot shakeups at the beginning of this season's Mad Men have left Jon Hamm's character Don Draper a broken man. Hamm talks about Draper's evolution, details how he auditioned for the role and talks about his newest movie, Ben Affleck's crime thriller The Town.

Filmmaker Lixin Fan's Last Train Home documents the journey 130 million migrant workers make back to their rural villages every Chinese New Year. But the movie is not only about families traveling home -- it's about China's modernization. Critic John Powers says the images in the "epic and intimate" movie are absolutely ravishing."

Jonathan Franzen's new novel Freedom has been called "a masterpiece" by Time Magazine and has received rave reviews from critics. Franzen talks about the runaway success of his previous novel The Corrections, and the strong reaction elicited by Freedom.

Why all the adulatory attention, critics ask, for Jonathan Franzen's latest domestic drama about marriage and family? Even though Franzen gets more praise for doing what many fine female writers do "backwards and in heels," critic Maureen Corrigan says Freedom has earned its high praise.

NPR host Scott Simon became a father for the first time at the age of 50, when he and his wife Caroline adopted the first of their two daughters from China. He describes how he felt becoming a father relatively late in life, how his family changed — and how his daughters continue to inspire him, in a new memoir, Baby We Were Meant For Each Other.

In a new memoir, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey revisits her own memories of the Gulf Coast region, and details how members of her family worked to rebuild their lives after the storm. She asks how the identity of the Gulf will be remembered — and how the region's stories will be told.

Writer Sue Diaz was surprised when her son Roman told her that he was joining the Army. She writes about the emotional roller coaster her family experienced when her son left for war — and how her relationship with Roman changed — in Minefields of the Heart.

Helen Schulman tells the story of a New York family's fall from grace in This Beautiful Life. Critic Maureen Corrigan says the novel is a parent's nightmare -- a cautionary tale about what happens when hormones meet the Internet.

Todd Solondz latest deadpan comedy, Life During Wartime, stars Shirley Henderson, Ally Sheedy and Allison Janney as three sisters struggling to find meaning in a bleak world filled with David Lynchian grotesques. Critic David Edelstein says it's the "feel-bad movie of the year.

Contemporary authors have a habit of lazily shoplifting plots and characters from 19th-century fiction -- especially the works of Jane Austen. But even though Allegra Goodman's latest novel, The Cookbook Collector, is a modern riff on Sense and Sensibility, her homage quickly comes to have a glorious life of its own.

Fresh Air remembers the comic book writer with highlights from 2003 and 2005 interviews. Pekar, who died Monday, was the author of the series American Splendor, which captured the angst of a man struggling with the daily ups and downs of life.

Lisa Cholodenko's film about two teenagers trying to track down their moms' anonymous sperm donor is a "stupendous" situational comedy, says critic David Edelstein, who praises the film for shaking up our way of looking at the mainstream family.

On the FX series Louie, comedian Louis C.K. plays a divorced father of two — in other words, a guy just like the real Louis C.K. The series is a sequel of sorts to his first show, Lucky Louie, in which he played a married father of two — which he was at the time.

Lyndall Gordon's Lives Like Loaded Guns explores the family secrets of the reclusive 19th-century poet. Gordon theorizes that Dickinson may have been epileptic, and describes the cult-generational family feud over the posthumous publication of the poet's work.

The star of the football drama Friday Night Lights discusses her role on the NBC series with Fresh Air contributor David Bianculli. Britton explains why she likes playing Tami Taylor, how she prepares for her scenes — and speculates on when the Texas epic will finally end.