When, if, and how people plan to build families is not your business, so stop asking.
Seriously don’t hassle people about their relationships and kids
Tag: children
Why I’m excited that kids are suing for climate change action
Children across the US are mounting multiple cases against federal and state agencies, demanding that they take action on climate change. It’s working.
We must take action on the trafficking of refugee children
In January, Europol announced that some 10,000 refugee children were unaccounted for over the last 18-24 months, reflecting the realisation of one of the most persistent fears surrounding unaccompanied minors and their risk for human trafficking, but also highlighting one of the most vexatious aspects of Europe’s handling of the refugee crisis. With a million […]
Where are kids on television?
Children are part of society. In a purely functional sense, they’re the next generation, the people who live after us. But they’re also all around us — they’re in grocery stores with their parents, at reading groups in the library, riding the subway to school. Yet, the notion that children should be seen and not […]
The epigenetics of the foster system
I’ve been thinking about epigenetics a great deal lately. I know that at least some of you probably share my tendency of getting fixated on a subject and doing it to death, and right now, mine is epigenetics, because I find it completely fascinating. Perhaps not surprising, given that genetics has always been a subject of […]
How about we not judge pregnant people?
This is the year of fecund friends. Every time I turn around, someone I know is pregnant. I’m starting to fear walking into a room lest my uterus spontaneously sprout a foetus in order to join in the party. I’m very happy for all of them, as they all appear to be very happy about […]
Are we suffocating our children?
This year has been one marked by a number of bizarre cases of parents being penalised, cited, and socially shamed for doing something that would have been second-nature for the parents of my generation, and even those a few years younger than us: Allowing their children out on their own. The ‘when I was kid…’ […]
On suppressing gender fluidity in children
Gender and expressions of gender are complex things. Some seem eager to dismiss gender as a social construct, undermining the very real and sometimes painful experiences of people who experience gender conflict and struggle with their gender expression. Others reduce gender to essentialist narratives about how people are what they were born with, and that’s […]
The Things We Learn: Quiet
Stand in a party with a group of people, and notice something. The women are quieter, and smaller, than the men. Not unilaterally, but it’s a very clear trend. Women lower their voices, shrink down to take up less space, turn their bodies in nonconfrontational ways. Men are loud, facing conversations head-on, gesticulating. Is this […]
‘Real women have children’
I will never forget the first time I heard it. ‘You won’t be a real woman,’ he said, ‘until you have children.’ At the time I was struggling with my gender identity and I was fairly certain I wasn’t a woman to begin with, but the comment still struck at me. That this person would […]