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Who’s Your Daddy?
As promised, here is another in my series of quotes from Who’s Your Daddy? And Other Writings on Queer Parenting. I’ll be running them for a couple of weeks courtesy of the book’s editor, Rachel Epstein. I’m choosing the quotes I feel are most intriguing and thought provoking; I don’t always agree with the sentiments, [...]
Two New Books on LGBTQ Parents and Our Children
I am thrilled to bring you news about two (two!) wonderful new books on LGBTQ parenting: Lesbian and Gay Parents and Their Children: Research on the Family Life Cycle, by Abbie Goldberg, and Who’s Your Daddy? And Other Writings on Queer Parenting, edited by Rachel Epstein. I have a longer article in Bay Windows about [...]
New Resources for LGBT Families
(Originally published in Bay Windows, July 29, 2009. Stay tuned for another post on what an ultra-conservative group had to say about this article.) The number of resources for LGBT families is, like my own son, small but growing. Here are some recent highlights for a variety of children’s ages: Mommy, Mama, and Me and [...]
Shakespeare on Lesbians
Today marks the traditional observance of Shakespeare’s birthday. In honor of the Bard, therefore, I give you two lesbianish quotes. The first is from his gender-mix-up comedy Twelfth Night. Viola, disguised as a man, comments upon the Countess Olivia: She made good view of me; indeed, so much That methought her eyes had lost her [...]
Confess and Win
Author and mom Romi Lassally knows motherhood isn’t all smiling babies and roses. She’s compiled an entire bookful of funny, embarrassing, and outrageous admissions from moms all over the world, snack-sized bites of motherhood that may both help moms learn to laugh at themselves and send prospective parents running. Better yet, Romi’s friend Brett Berk, [...]
Bending the Law
(Originally appeared in Bay Windows, February 4, 2009.) “Family law is very vague,” says Kimberly Richman, an associate professor of sociology and legal studies at the University of San Francisco. “That leaves room for a lot of open interpretation.” In her new book, Courting Change: Queer Parents, Judges, and the Transformation of American Family Law [...]
“She Got Me Pregnant”: Episode 57
Helen and I congratulate the world’s first lesbian mom to become a head of state. We then turn to a viewer’s more personal question: How to deal with a pregnant partner’s hormonal mood swings. (“Run!” is a tempting but unacceptable answer.) Although there were no parenting angles this week on The L Word, we use [...]
Poll: Lesbian Parenting Books
It’s time for another poll: {democracy:16} Feel free to leave comments about what you liked/didn’t like about any of these books or others. More books for and about lesbian families, as always, in the Mombian Shop.
Gifts for LGBT Parents and Our Kids
(Originally published in Bay Windows, December 11, 2008.) LGBT parents or our kids on your holiday list? For the most part, mainstream gift guides will work just fine. Not everything we own has to be rainbow colored, and our kids already have three “I love my mommies” t-shirts each. If you do want something with [...]
LGBT Parenting Roundup
It’s time for another collection of news and fun stuff for LGBT parents: Put on your flak jackets. “It is same-sex parenting that is heating up as the next skirmish in the nation’s culture wars,” asserts the Chicago Tribune. Nancy Polikoff points out just how scary are the proposed Bush rules that would allow healthcare [...]
The Trouble with Gender
(Originally published in Bay Windows, October 16, 2008.) When Peg Tyre wrote an article titled “The Trouble with Boys” for Newsweek in 2006, outlining what she saw as a national trend of boys struggling at school, it caused a firestorm of controversy. Some feminists accused her of ignoring the age-old and still ongoing struggles of [...]
Banned Books Week
It’s Banned Books Week once again, the American Library Association’s annual celebration of the freedom to read. Each year, the ALA tracks the books that have received an official challenge, “a formal, written complaint, filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness.” Judith F. Krug, director of [...]
Staying at Home vs. Outside Employment
Nina over at Queercents has posted her thoughts on Leslie Bennetts’ The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much?, a book that warns women of the financial risks of staying home as full-time caregivers. The book spawned much controversy when it first came out, with the media hyping it as part of the “Mommy [...]
Butch: It’s What’s for Dinner
(The Butch Cookbook, discussed below, isn’t about parenting per se, but since food forms a large part of most parents’ lives, I thought it was relevant. I had interviewed one of the editors, Nel Ward, in her role as head of the American Library Association’s Rainbow Project of LGBT-inclusive children’s books. She was kind enough [...]
When Heather Grows Up
(Originally published in Bay Windows, June 26, 2008, with minor variation.) Two new works and one re-release share the real and fictionalized stories of teens with LGBT parents, shining a light on this often-overlooked part of our community. Tru Loved, now making the rounds at LGBT film festivals, features an all-star cast including Jasmine Guy, [...]
Book Giveaway: Love Tips and Trips
It’s all to easy, it seems to me, for us parents to become focused on our kids to the detriment of our own relationships. Today’s giveaway just may help remedy that. Michele O’Mara (who blogs at Bilerico) is an award-winning therapist, educator, and author based in Indianapolis who specializes in “the social support and personal [...]
Teaching All Teens About LGBT Issues
I wrote this a few months ago (with slight modification) for Vanessa Van Petten’s Teens Today blog. She had asked me to share some resources for her audience of mostly straight parents who want to talk with their teenagers, LGBT and not, about LGBT issues. I realize most of my readers at Mombian are more [...]
“She Got Me Pregnant”: Episode 35
Helen and I highlight a new guide for parents of transgender kids and, on the other side, one for kids of transgender parents. (Regular readers may have seen my written piece on these books earlier in the week. It’s only the first couple of minutes of the vlog, though, so you won’t get bored if [...]
Trans Parents, Trans Kids: Two New Guides
(Originally published in Bay Windows, July 10, 2008.) Two new works offer much-needed guidance for families with transgender members, but each approaches the subject from a different perspective. One addresses parents of transgender children, while the other targets children of transgender parents. The Transgender Child, by Stephanie Brill and Rachel Pepper (Cleis, 2008), is subtitled, [...]
Goodnight Bush
Few among us, I’d wager, haven’t read Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd’s classic bedtime story Goodnight Moon. It was our son’s constant goodnight story for the first year or so of his life, and is now burned into my brain along with the Thomas the Tank Engine theme song, the movie Cars, and large [...]
“She Got Me Pregnant”: Episode 34
Helen and I talk about Family Outing, the funny, raunchy new memoir by a man whose mother was outed to him by her ex-girlfriend when he was 10 years old. (Not the recommended way of doing things, might I add.) We also share more highlights of our recent vacation to California, including San Francisco Pride’s [...]
Book Review: The Maternal Is Political
The Maternal Is Political: Women Writers at the Intersection of Motherhood and Social Change, a collection of 43 essays edited by Shari MacDonald Strong, is both a celebration and a manifesto for mothers with hopes of making the world a better place for their children. Its authors include news headliners like Nancy Pelosi, Benazir Bhutto, [...]
Vermont Author Writes Teen Novel of First Love
(Originally published in Bay Windows, May 15, 2008.) “It’s the book I wish I’d read when I was 13,” says Vermont writer Jennifer McMahon about her new young adult book, My Tiki Girl (Dutton/Penguin: May 2008). “I wish I had a time machine to send it back to my 13-year-old self. When I fell in [...]
Lonely Lesbian to Tour May 2008
Andrea Askowitz is the author of My Miserable Lonely Lesbian Pregnancy, a funny, bawdy, unflinchingly honest memoir of her journey to motherhood as a single lesbian. (Here’s my review.) Askowitz has now kindly offered to share some of her misery with you, Mombian readers. Please enjoy the excerpts below from her book. She has also [...]
Are LGBT Parents More Anxious Than Non-LGBT Ones?
Slate did a weekend review of “Super Books for Pretty Good Moms: Parenting guides that won’t make you even more anxious than you already are.” Whether you’re an anxious parent or a calm one, you’re most likely familiar with how the media plays up these anxieties (and then tries to sell us the solutions). This [...]
