It turns out that “Do you want to be pregnant?” and “Do you want to be a parent?” are two very separate questions, and for me, they have two very different answers. Maybe this is an inevitable part of being in my 30s, but I’ve recently, inexplicably, wanted to nurture something. So I went to […]
On the contrary, I’ve come to believe that having children is one of the most selfish things a person can do. My mother has eight grandchildren already. Eight. And yet it’s on me, her only daughter, to have one of my own. “Don’t you want a little Jessica?!” she pushes. My face crinkles. Is there […]
Who will protect our child from the ‘protectors’? Can we truly cope with a lifetime of fear, wondering if our child would become one of far too many whose lives are lost at the hands of police? My partner and I both grew up with music. We both heard our daddies sing from birth, and […]
Sometimes we can answer the changes we have no control over with changes we make deliberately. I realized you could not have one without the other, that this great capacity to love and be happy can be experienced only with this great risk of having happiness taken from you—to tremble, always, on the edge of […]
Dear Dana is a bi-weekly advice column for humans who engage in romantic relationships. Please send your dilemmas, issues, conundrums, assumptions, conflicts, anxieties, worriments, obstacles, complications, predicaments, queries, questions, and any other synonyms for “problems” to deardana@rolereboot.org. Dear Dana: My wife and I have a happy, healthy 4-year-old daughter. She’s awesome. It took a couple years […]
Through the fog of my grief, I discovered that pregnancy loss is like a secret society you never asked to join. You don’t realize how many members there are until you become one of them. There are some questions almost too big to answer. Or too loaded. “How many times have you been pregnant?” is […]
Even without doubt, it’s OK to wonder “What if…?” There are many Sliding Doors moments in life. Some you realize are happening, while others pass by unnoticed and only much later do you understand how profound those decisions were. Choosing to be childfree was not a moment that slipped me by. It was instead a wrenching cerebral […]
The only weird thing about some polyamorous parents is how lasting and deep their friendship is. The conventional social standard in modern relationships is to get married. Once you are in that monogamous dynamic, there is the next cultural expectation to clone yourself because, hey, this overpopulated decaying world needs more people like you! As […]
Mother’s Day celebrates what mothers should be, while actively ignoring an absolute truth: Many of us harbor deep sensations of ambivalence toward mothering, pregnancy, and our children. Martha Stewart’s website is bursting with Mother’s Day craft ideas that engaged co-parents can make with their children. Gifts that will find their way into the sheets after […]
For a country so taken with the idea of ‘family values,’ we do a remarkably terrible job at helping people start families. For a country so taken with the idea of “family values,” the United States does a remarkably terrible job at helping people start families. We are the only industrialized nation that doesn’t have […]
For many women, constant reminders that they aren’t pregnant aren’t just annoying—they can be downright cruel. When I got married, I was shocked at how quickly people started asking me when I was going to have a baby. And when I did have a baby a few years later, I expected a fairly lengthy reprieve […]
