A few weeks ago, a woman posted a question in a large Facebook group of writers who are also mothers. She asked us to share our greatest fear related to our children. The responses might have shocked the generation of parents before us.

The top-cited concern was about a child getting shot, either in a school or otherwise. While the odds of being killed in a school shooting are extremely low, the images and stories of dead children massacred in their schools are seared in our minds. That’s traumatic for survivors, and anxiety-provoking for witnesses and children who live with that reality.

The second most common fear was that a child might commit suicide. The rate of teen suicide has been rising. The number of children hospitalized for thinking about or attempting suicide has doubled in less than a decade, according to a 2018 study published in the journal of Pediatrics.

Depression and anxiety among young people have skyrocketed. A new Pew Research Center study found that the vast majority of teens see these illnesses as major problems among their peers. Experts continue to debate the factors fueling the mental health crisis many young people are facing today.

Parents realize how serious these issues have become, as reflected in the suicide response and others that followed it, such as bullying. We don’t know for sure if smartphones and social media are direct causes of these problems, but we cast a suspicious eye on the technology in which our kids are immersed. The number of hours spent with screens daily can’t be healthy, and research suggests the same.

We didn’t grow up this way. Our parents likely worried most about risky behavior, like drug use, or car accidents. But parenting fears are tied to generations like the tide to the moon. Our fears are pulled by what we can’t control, the unfamiliar and omnipresent.

By now, it seems every parent on the planet has been warned about the “Momo Challenge.” Even Kim Kardashian warned her 129 million followers on Instagram about it. An image of a sculpture called “Mother Bird,” created by Japanese artist Keisuke Aisawa, was hijacked into creepy internet lore. The bulging-eyed, birdlike female face allegedly appeared in YouTube videos targeting children or WhatsApp messages and encouraged kids to hurt themselves and others, culminating in -- what else? -- suicide.

Numerous media organizations, schools and law enforcement agencies warned the public about it, although scant evidence showed that children were actually falling for the so-called challenge. It was later described as a “hoax,” although that’s not quite accurate, either. Some people likely did see this unsettling image, perhaps delivering a frightening message.

Momo tapped into something primal for parents. Momo is knowing you can’t control everything your children will ever see or experience on the internet. Momo is the plethora of terrible content, shady corporate practices and dangerous people as close as the phone in your child’s hand. Momo is knowing that the current levels of screen time are affecting our kids in ways we don’t entirely understand or even know. Momo is the outsized consequences and ruined futures for stupid mistakes on social media. Momo is the cyberbully we can’t see, and schools can’t control. Momo is feeling outmatched and outnumbered by technology’s pull and unable to protect our kids the way we want to. Momo is the report about a 9-year-old boy in Colorado dying by suicide after being bullied by classmates.

I talked to a father about what he had heard about the Momo challenge. He said he knew it wasn’t a real threat. “All these kids use all these different apps now,” he said. He named a popular messaging one that can be used to chat anonymously in large groups. “That’s the one that’s scary,” he said.

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Jill Gaither’s daughter came home sobbing because of an accident only a girl could experience.

Her period started unexpectedly at school and leaked through her pants.

Her mother had given her supplies to deal with such situations. Why didn’t she take what she needed out of her locker?

“Then I have to pull it out in front of everyone,” her daughter said. “There are boys standing by my locker.”

“Oh yeah, that’s seventh grade,” Gaither thought. She asked why her daughter didn’t go to the nurse. It’s embarrassing to go the school nurse and admit something like this, her daughter explained. Duh.

Gaither wondered why the school, in Ladue, didn’t have tampons and pads available for girls in the bathroom. She told her daughter that she was going to look into it.

“She, of course, is mortified because she might be associated with periods, but I was undeterred,” Gaither said. She put together a wish list of supplies that could be purchased for the bathrooms. Then, she emailed her friends who also had middle-school-aged daughters and asked them to purchase what they could from the list. When she had collected enough items, she approached Ladue Middle School.

There was some initial pushback. The school already provides supplies at no cost at the nurse’s office. There are also coin-operated machines in the bathrooms to purchase hygiene products.

Gaither responded that no kid carries quarters on them anymore, and the supplies the machine dispenses are unfamiliar and uncomfortable for teen girls. Also, boys don’t have to trek to the nurse’s office to ask for toilet paper after they use the bathroom. Why make it burdensome for a girl to deal with her bodily functions?

At first, the school put a sign in the bathroom saying there were teen-oriented products available in the nurse’s office. After a few months, they eventually put the tampons and pads in baskets in the bathrooms, like Gaither originally wanted.

“They were worried it would be a disaster with maxi pads stuck on lockers,” Gaither said. Another concern was that students might just take free supplies home instead of using them at school, to which Gaither responded: If they need them that badly, then please, let them take them home.

None of the concerns materialized. Many girls have used the free products available in the bathroom. Gaither attended a parent association meeting and asked if they would be willing to fund the project. They agreed to budget $100 a month to stock the four bathrooms at the middle school.

Much of the attention in the media recently has focused on the negative consequences of “period poverty,” where girls don’t have access to, or can’t afford, sanitary supplies. In some parts of the world, girls drop out of school when they begin to menstruate due to the lack of supplies. The documentary short film “Period. End of Sentence” told the story of bringing a machine that makes sanitary pads to a small village in India and how it changed the lives of the women there. A group of girls at a North Hollywood school raised funds to buy the machine and paid for the film production.

“Ladue is a pretty affluent area,” Gaithers said, and increasing access and availability to products even there helped many girls. She heard about girls who don't have anyone to talk to or to help them once they get their period. Her goal is to “normalize this normal thing and not make it this shameful thing,” and to spread the idea to other schools.

She has a meeting later this month with a teacher who reached out to her because a Ladue student wants to spearhead the same effort at underserved schools in the area. Other cities and states have already taken up the issue of free menstrual supplies in schools as one of basic equality and dignity. It’s disruptive and stigmatizing to send girls to the nurse to access basic hygiene supplies. It’s embarrassing to deal with stains from accidents. And it’s unconscionable that schools would force impoverished families to choose between buying a child’s food or buying period supplies every month.

Using a tampon is just as much a “luxury” as using the bathroom soap to wash your hands.

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In the room where they prep you for surgery, "Sixteen Candles" played on the small television. I was waiting with my husband, who was about to get his troublesome right knee forcibly removed and replaced with an improved model.

He had put off this surgery for many years. He tore his ACL playing basketball in his early 20s. For a while, he could wear a knee brace and get around fine. But after a few decades, the joint had worn down to the point where the bone was hitting bone. Even walking became painful. So he finally relented to undergo a surgery, that, frankly, we associate with much older people.

As the parents of young teenagers, I'd like to think we've embraced middle age. We go to bed earlier than we ever did before. We talk a lot about how things were different when we were growing up. I like to remind my spouse that he's nearly a decade further along this path than I am. But there are moments when you start to realize how far you have drifted from youth.

I noticed it when I started hearing a lot of passionate conversations about joints -- knees and backs and shoulders -- in recent years. Also, when did my friends start obsessing about apple cider vinegar remedies and the most effective eye creams? (Don't get me wrong; I'm terribly interested in these topics, as well.) Why was I well acquainted with my loved one's blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol numbers? How come the celebrities I loved growing up were dying?

In a culture in which people claim adulthood later and later, it's mildly disconcerting when you realize you've become physically older than you feel inside. For me, the moment of reckoning hit when my eldest child, who was born when I was in my late 20s, started high school. I remember high school vividly. It doesn't seem like it was that long ago. My child was leaving behind her childhood for adolescence and ushering me into a new life phase, as well.

It turns out acquiring children speeds up time. More so than any changes within myself, it's watching their speed-of-light growth that most acutely marks the passage of time. It takes so long for us to get from kindergarten to high school graduate, but our children fly through those years.

While we waited for my husband to be taken to the operating room, I shared some tidbits from Twitter that seemed appropriate for the occasion. Judd Nelson is as old now as Angela Lansbury was on "Murder She Wrote." My husband shook his head.

Remember when you watched "Gilligan's Island" as a kid, he said. Alan Hale Jr. played the Skipper. He looked old to me back then, he said.

Today, my husband is a decade older than the Skipper.

A former newsroom administrator described turning 50 to us in a way we've never forgotten. He explained that your body tends to feel different when you wake up in your 50s. Things hurt.

"If I woke up feeling this way when I was in my 20s, I'd call 911," he said.

We hope this new knee will turn the clock back for my husband. We are planning hikes and trips and walks around the neighborhood. He thanked me for pushing him to finally get it done. When your wife's persistent nagging turns into sage advice, it must be a sure sign of maturity setting in.

We turned our attention back to the television, to a time when teen idol Molly Ringwald ruled the screen.

Today just so happened to be her birthday, I said.

She turned 51.

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