She still comes over and tries to stay for as long as possible. I still have to remind her to leave. It’s a work in progress, and maybe it always will be. I never spent much time worrying about parenting adult children. In the early years, I was too busy navigating the complex demands of […]
After growing up with seven siblings who were adopted into the family and one sibling who was biologically connected to my parents, I recognize that society places a higher value on children born biologically than those who are adopted. “I want to adopt, but I’m going to have biological kids first.” Have you heard anyone […]
Childcare is an accessibility issue. It determines a parent’s – let’s be real, a mother’s – ability to exist in the world and participate in society. Every summer I volunteer for a week at a day camp where girls learn to play music. It’s a beautiful oasis of art and feminism and love and empowerment, […]
Down syndrome is definitely part of our life, but it’s not the axis on which our family turns. Ten years ago my wife and I found out that the child she was carrying had Down syndrome. I immediately assumed this child would suck all of the “me” out of my world and that I was […]
There’s a strong narrative in our country that suggests queer people shouldn’t be allowed to raise children because they’ll make them queer. My response to that is: Queer people should raise children because we give them possibilities. The other day I was caught in the kind of awkward conversation I am often caught in. My […]
I wanted to give my son what I didn’t have: the feeling that he didn’t have to choose, and that he had one big family. “Why would you not get a dog?” My friend is asking this because I was talking about wanting to adopt a pet. “Well, my son is allergic to cats and […]
Families come in all forms. We’re just trying to live our lives and the question you might have considered innocent can sting us and our children. My two youngest kids are adopted from China, which makes them…well, Chinese. My husband and I are Caucasian, so you get a little more at-a-glance insight into our family […]
How can a show survive when at its core it doesn’t understand who its characters are? What their lives are actually like? Out of all the unbelievable things that ABC’s new sitcom Single Parents asks us to believe, the most outlandish is that there are five – count ‘em, five – single parents parenting children […]
