Lynn Beisner shares her method for getting her kids to share (and love) their gender-specific toys. What sensitized me to the problems of gendered toys was not any feminist ideas about how we teach gender. I had yet to be exposed to any of those ideas. What got me thinking about the gender toy trap […]
Lyla Cicero is all for equal parenting, but a part of her still wanted her kids to think of her as #1. Only when my twins were 20 months old did they master the correct use of the words “mama” and “dada.” They took quite a long time to even say these words, despite beginning […]
What works for one parent, may not work for all. But learning from your mistakes should be universal. “In the ’70s, we played outside, ran around, rode our bikes without helmets, and if we talked back to our Dad we got our asses beat. Click like if you think spanking never hurt you.” (Paraphrased from […]
Annamarya Scaccia says she’s an amazing person today because she grew up with two moms. I remember when my mother came out to me. I don’t remember the date or the time. I don’t even remember my exact age (I was either 10 or 11). I do remember that we were in the basement of […]
Tina Traster knew early on that something wasn’t right with her adopted daughter, but admitting it meant possibly admitting that she’d made a mistake. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt make it look easy. They adopt kids from all corners of the world and the media broadcasts images of perfect Kodak moments. They’d have you believing […]
If Emily Rapp was a man, would people still ask her annoying questions about writing about her terminally ill son? Since I began writing about the experience of parenting my son Ronan, who is almost 3 years old and dying of a terminal illness, I’ve been asked this question several times: Don’t you feel strange […]
Introverts have it rough around the holidays, so Lynn Beisner offers a survival guide for all the over-stimulating festivities and family gatherings. If you hate the company Christmas party or the big family Thanksgiving dinner, you are not necessarily a bad person. You may just be an introvert, which likely means that you are drained, […]
Who says in-laws can’t get along? When my husband, Anders, proposed to me in May 2008, we didn’t have much time to celebrate on our own. There was too much else to do; after all, our undergraduate commencement ceremony was only five days later. We also knew that at some point in the middle of […]
