We humans are good at figuring things out. We’ve figured out why apples fall down instead of up. We’ve figured out that objects are made up of tiny particles, bound together by forces so strong that to break those bonds unleashes energy of a great and terrible kind. We’ve figured out that even the deadliest animals on the planet contain secrets we can use to cure diseases.

We can figure all these things out, but there are mysteries that resist even our intelligence and inventiveness. One of those mysteries is what makes our parents tick.

In The Origins of the Universe and What it All Means, Firstman, herself the offspring of a scientist and a college professor documents her own inability to fathom the intricacies of the parent-child relationship. There’s a rich irony in that lack of correlation between the formal knowledge and skills we develop over a lifetime and…