R. Eric Thomas
R. Eric Thomas writes a nationally syndicated daily advice column that uses empathy, humor and storytelling to untangle complicated family and life decisions, with a strong focus on parenting and intergenerational relationships. His column, Asking Eric, runs seven days a week in newspapers across the country, including The Oregonian and major national dailies. He brings a background as a bestselling author, playwright and television writer to reader letters, which gives his parenting coverage a narrative depth and emotional range that goes well beyond standard service advice.
Family decisions, boundaries and intergenerational dilemmas
Thomas’ work at The Oregonian is anchored in complex family decisions, often involving more than one generation and competing values around children and caregiving.
In a column about an aging parent who should no longer be driving, he treats the issue explicitly as a moral and ethical responsibility, guiding adult children through what they owe a parent and how to act when safety and autonomy collide. In a piece on a retired couple worrying they will “ruin” their family relationships if they move closer to their adult children, he focuses on expectations, communication and the realities of grandparenting, asking readers to think through how a physical move changes roles but should not erase boundaries.
The Oregonian column on an over-gifting grandmother and minimalist parents fits the same pattern: he works at the intersection of love, anxiety and parenting philosophy, helping relatives negotiate how gifts, consumerism and values around children can coexist without resentment. Across these family dilemmas, he consistently centers the child’s experience while spelling out what healthy boundaries look like for parents and grandparents.
Parenting advice embedded in broader life and relationship questions
Although Asking Eric is a general advice column, parenting and family life show up repeatedly inside wider questions about relationships, work and community.
Profiles of his syndicated column describe him weighing in on estranged relatives, difficult in-laws, inheritance conflicts and everyday struggles with kids, parents, spouses, coworkers, neighbors and even strangers, which positions parenting as one node in a larger web of obligations and loyalties. In this frame, Thomas treats parenting problems less as discrete “tips” and more as consequences of family systems: how partners communicate, how adult children handle aging parents, how extended family negotiates space and time.
That systems view means his parenting advice often includes practical suggestions - what to say, what to do, what to stop doing - but always tied to an underlying ethical argument about respect, care and accountability. Communications teams pitching him need to recognize that he rarely isolates a single parenting tactic; he is more interested in how a parenting challenge reveals something about relationships, values or social pressures.
Format, voice and pace of Asking Eric
Asking Eric is structured as a classic letter-and-response advice feature, but Thomas’ voice is shaped by his work across books, plays and television. He writes the column daily and it is distributed nationally, which gives his responses a quick, conversational rhythm while still leaving room for digressions and metaphor drawn from his storytelling background. Descriptions of the column emphasize his “wit and warmth” and his ability to tackle everything from relationships to work and “everything in between,” which includes parenting, caregiving and ethical quandaries that cut across those domains. His responses tend to begin with empathy for the letter-writer, then zoom out to a broader reflection on human behavior, and only then narrow down to specific actions or scripts a reader can use.
That structure distinguishes him from more prescriptive parenting writers: the advice is there, but it is framed inside narrative and moral reasoning rather than bullet-pointed rules.
Storytelling background and how it shapes his column
Thomas’ advice work is built on a long career as an author, playwright and television writer, and that experience is visible in how he constructs each column.
Professional bios highlight several books across memoir, biography and young adult fiction, as well as award-winning plays and writing for prestige television series. He has hosted live storytelling events and appeared frequently on narrative-driven radio programs and podcasts, which has trained him to use anecdote and pacing to pull readers through complex emotional terrain.
In interviews about Asking Eric, he describes empathy as the foundation of all his work, arguing that personal stories are “empathy engines” that help audiences reconsider their own lives. That approach is evident when he writes about parenting and family: he often shares a brief personal or imagined vignette to illuminate why a situation feels so fraught, then uses that story to argue for a more humane, communicative way forward. For anyone bringing him a story, it means he is receptive to richly told, character-driven material and to parenting topics that sit inside larger questions of identity, responsibility and community.
4 more parenting journalists.
Abigail Shrier
Abigail Shrier is a journalist, columnist at The Free Press, and bestselling author whose work centers on parenting, family relationships, and the cultural forces shaping childhood. She writes the weekly “Tough Love” advice column, where readers send hard personal and family dilemmas and she focuses on concrete situations and practical choices for parents, partners, and adult children. She also publishes essays and reported features on parenting that examine how institutions and professionals influence everyday family life, including criminalization of ordinary parental decisions and therapeutic advice that leads to “no contact” with parents. Her books “Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up” and “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” extend her reporting on therapy, gender medicine, and youth. She also covers education, gender, speech, activism, and censorship, approaching these subjects as reported arguments.
Alesandra Dubin
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Alyson Krueger
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Amie Windsor
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