Chumpy, I’m honored one of the books is Confessions. And I hope you don’t want to toss the Kohn book at me after you read it. We loved it, but are now facing a periodically recalcitrant, parent-wacking three-year-old, and thumbing through our Kohn and coming up blank. The teaching rather than bribing/coercing route feels more right, but lordy lord it’s a long road to travel. Any & all hints are more than welcome.

Nightgigjo: welcome! And thank you. I hope what’s to follow is some help. “No gender roles, just being ourselves and raising the kid” is just what we’re trying to do. A fascinating proposition when the kiddle begins to get interested in slotting us somewheres. Which slotting impulse will carry on, I’m sure, for another decade or two, ’til she realizes she really, truly, can think these things up for herself. Best wishes on your journey and I’ll be checking in to see how it goes.

I will be a parent in a few short months (I’m the with-child one) and I’m leery of being ‘just the mom’ because I’m a woman who identifies het female. There will be some traditionally ‘mother’ things that I do because of who I am, but there are some things I don’t want to be stuck with simply because “I’m the mother”.

I’d rather be a parent, and the biological-contributor be a parent too. No gender roles, just being ourselves and raising the kid when it gets here. It will be a tough fight, but I have the feeling that reading this series of yours will help me articulate these desires, at least with the other parent.

I look forward to the rest.

Belated Get Well Wishes. Heres hoping your kids dont take lying down as a cue to bounce on sore bits.

“if I couldn’t make sense to a table full of liquored-up leftie hippie Buddhist artists, who could I make sense to?”

Hilarious and poignant.