The Way Things Are
by Helen Spitzer
It’s a kind of litmus test for the cultural shift that’s happening, as more and more dads insist on being hands-on during their children’s earliest days: New York Mets second baseman Daniel Murphy missed the season opener and took three whole days off when his first child was born last week. Cue the end of the… Read More »
2:19pm April 7, 2014
by Tara-Michelle Ziniuk
You already know I have some things to say about My Little Pony. And in that I have already confessed to watching the Brony documentary. We’ve established that: I think My Little Pony is just okay; that my daughter watches it and plays with the toys sometimes; and that I like breaking down gender constructs.… Read More »
11:01am April 4, 2014
by Tara-Michelle Ziniuk
Here’s something you might not know (unless you, like me, have, uh, Wikipedia): the original My Little Pony was called My Pretty Pony. It was created for Romper Room in the same year I was born. A couple years later its creator wound up working for Hasbro and reinventing the toy into My Little Pony.… Read More »
12:02pm March 26, 2014
by Tara-Michelle Ziniuk
Apparently there’s a popular Tumblr site called Reasons My Son is Crying. I’m a bit late to the game on this one given that the book is already out, though as Bunch has already pointed out, the guy’s kid is probably crying because he looks like Ferris Bueller. Perhaps I was drawn to the site… Read More »
8:00am March 25, 2014
by Carla Mundwiler
I remember the first time that I really felt grief, the kind that completely overwhelms the body and sends sobs as loud and powerful as tidal waves up and out from the gut. It was 1980-something, and I had stumbled upon an animated version of Hans Christian Anderson’s ‘The Little Mermaid’. What I watched from… Read More »
11:41am November 18, 2013
by Meri Perra
Most interracial adoption cases involve white parents adopting kids of colour, as Frank Ligtvoet writes in his op-ed for The New York Times. Such is the case in Ligtvoet’s family: two white dads raising two black kids in Brooklyn, N.Y. And from what he’s learned raising their 7-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son, he feels strongly that… Read More »
2:00pm November 7, 2013
by Tara-Michelle Ziniuk
A few days ago, Thought Catalog crossed a line. Twenty-three year-old provocateur Jeremy King took it upon himself to let us all know that having a girlfriend with an autistic son, in his thoughtful opinion “sucks.” And that said autistic son sucks, and that the said girlfriend will always be burdened with the suckage of said… Read More »
3:32pm November 6, 2013
by Tara-Michelle Ziniuk
My toddler Anna is standing on her booster seat scream-singing, “Helpless, helpless, heeelp-less…” She demands that someone get her down from her seat, now. This is hilarious to the adults in the room, and those I tell the story to later because: 1. Tiny kid 2. Singing Neil Young 3. Like a boss. She’s almost 3… Read More »
3:23pm October 24, 2013
by Carla Mundwiler
I have always had animals in my life. I have two cats right now, I have had close to a dozen cats over the course of my lifetime. But I have also been a dog owner to a rescue dog that we named Sugar, a Norwegian Elkhound that my mother and I adopted when I… Read More »
11:18am October 7, 2013
by Aviva Rubin
Every few years sees a fresh burst of panic about kids gone wild, dangerous sexcapades, “blow jobs are the new kissing”, followed by a hue and cry that our teens will never know true intimacy and social media is to blame. This begs the un-sexy question of what we’re doing about it beyond moralizing. Other… Read More »
10:31pm October 3, 2013
by Carla Mundwiler
I have been thinking a lot about Putin and anti-gay legislation in Russia, and worrying about LGBT families there. And how I’m going to convince everyone I know to care about this issue and to boycott Sochi in one way or another. The problem with getting people to care about anything is that they usually don’t until… Read More »
8:30am September 19, 2013
by Carla Mundwiler
We like to call our neighbourhood ‘Bloorcourt’ when we’re feeling fancy. And when we aren’t we call it ‘Parkdale North’ because that’s where people who can’t afford to rent ‘downtown’ live. You know, people like us. We don’t have a nice house — we don’t even own our house — but our riches, they are… Read More »
10:18am September 9, 2013