David Minerva Clover

Yes, we should be criticizing these straight, cisgender dads. We’ve been far too easy on them for too long. It’s straight out of the patriarchy playbook.

A human being does not go through an experience like that without getting to know themselves really, really, well. I learned more about myself than I could have ever imagined. Today, I am going to share some of those lessons with you.

Faced by the extreme pressure to conform to impossible beauty ideals, I followed my instincts (and my budding feminism) and rejected them wholesale. I wasn’t going to play like that; I wasn’t going to let my gender require that I wear makeup or perform a certain way.

I think kids and parents need old school trick-or-treating. I think it has a value far greater than the sum of its candy. I love trick-or-treating!

I expected it was only a matter of time until someone sent it my way. I mean... friends have even called my relationship with my wife “inspirational.” [...] [O]nce I noticed that I still hadn’t been invited, I started to notice something else: Everyone that I saw posting “love your spouse” pictures was straight....

My kid, who turned three the day after Mary the duckling died, wasn’t old enough to get any of it. Yet talking to toddlers about death is part of life.

It is worse to be fat shamed because thin shaming is often just fatphobia in disguise. Let me say that again for the people in the back.

I had always considered myself to be extremely body positive. I loved my body! I had several close friends who were fat activists, and I was working hard to be a good thin ally. But despite all of that, I wasn’t ready for the changes that were happening in myself.

I don’t want to deprive my child of these magical Halloween memories, I just also want to light candles and talk about our ancestors.

Here are six tips that can serve as a basic outline of how most parents can strategize to help feed a toddler and to calm the heck down.