[The American Library Association's Banned Books week  will be celebrated from September 27 to October 4.  This year, I think we should break out the sparkling apple cider early.]
You know times are tough when, at your daughter’s fourth birthday party, you and three other parents find yourselves in the middle of the lawn, ignoring the flying [...]

Recently I had the great good fortune of being asked for advice by a dear friend of a dear friend of the beloved.  We bonded in a hot tub in Idaho, over a decade ago, both there for the wedding of a friend.  Under the stars, we caustically competed for who felt most likely to [...]

In Child of the Week, my Blogging for LGBT Families post the other day, I shared a wee bit of the excitement and trepidation that has been stalking me through the our daughter’s first preschool year. I divulged no details about her actual experience there, mind you (which has been just ducky), or our [...]

Two years ago my sister called me from Copenhagen, where she was then living with her family, to tell me that her son wanted to do a presentation to his first grade class about Gay Pride. Each kid in the class was presenting on a holiday from their home culture — it was an [...]

I was reading Dana Rudolph’s recent piece Of Ducks and Penguins, a rumination on her son’s launch into preschool this past week, and about ducks, penguins, family diversity curriculum in early childhood education, and homophobes on the march in Lexington, MA and Evesham Township, NJ. Astute and thought-provoking, as usual.
At the top of her [...]

I was writing an epic-length response to a great question someone asked, and realized that I had better give it a whole different lease on life as a post, the better to tempt more of you astute readers to add to my answer. So here was the question Sheri Bheri posed, in a comment [...]

Fig. A. In which Baba elbows her way into the state’s somewhat limited parental imagination. (Alternative? How ’bout “Parent/guardian 1″ and “Parent/guardian 2″? Has a nice Thing 1 and Thing 2 ring to it. Plus it works for EVERYONE. That’s what I, an honest taxpayer, like to see in my state-generated paperwork.)

Fig. [...]