Parenting Facebook groups have obsessions with the many "natural remedies" they think will cure all childhood ailments. My favorite supposed cure-all miracle is breastmilk. For some reason, crunchy moms think that breastmilk can do anything. I will give credit where credit is due: breastmilk offers babies essential nutrients they can't get anywhere else. Unfortunately, breast milk does not cure ear infections. You cannot squirt breastmilk in a blind man's eye and make him see again. Breastmilk…

I learn new things about parenting by looking at parenting fails. While some aspects of parenting are intuitive, there are about a million things that you need to learn about child-rearing before you actually have a baby. For instance, I was completely ignorant about bed-sharing and safe sleep until I started willingly exposing myself to all of this discourse within mommy Facebook groups . I can't imagine wanting to sleep in the same bed as your baby every night. I move so much in my sleep that…

The golden age of parents on Twitter lying about the esoteric things their young children say has long passed us. Back in the ancient years of 2016 and 2017, parents were obsessed with tweeting things like, "My 3-year-old son came just up to me and said 'Papa, I have a childlike solution to great economic and social problems that will go viral instantly through the retweets of easily fooled rubes.'" Unfortunately for these parents, a lot of Twitter users have caught on to these unbelievably cor…

Parents embarrass their kids all the time. It's a natural part of the parent-child relationship , and it's often completely unavoidable. Once a child becomes a tween, they can't stand to be seen with their parents in public. Tweens want their parents to drop them off at the mall far out of the view of any other tweens, because having a mom is apparently extremely embarrassing. Tweens and teens don't want their parents to take pictures of them, be seen in public with them, or generally be around…

It's finally March, and you know what that means? Spring Break is imminent, and there's nothing you can do about it. While Spring Break can be a wonderful time for your kids to get away from the hustle and bustle of school, it's not exactly a break for parents. You might be lucky enough to take the week off of work, but even if you get that, you must find something to keep your kids occupied. Spring Break is simply a preview of what's to come after Memorial Day. Your kids are lying around all d…

Part of being a parent is forcing your kids to do things they don't want to do. Sometimes, they have to eat yucky vegetables and finish the year of playing with their soccer team, even though they wanted to quit halfway through. However, there's a point where parents need to listen to what their kids are saying and act accordingly. One mother took to Reddit to ask whether she was the villain for forcing her teenage daughter to wear dresses when going over to their grandparent's house. There is…

Isn't it wild that so many popular ideas about parenting came from one dude? I'm talking, of course, about Dr. Spock. No, no Dr. Spock from Star Trek, but the Dr. Spock who wrote the most influential book about parenting of the 20th century. The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care revolutionized child care in the 1940s and 1950s and taught parents to see their children as individuals, all with their own individual needs. Before Spock, parenting books told parents to do everything on a rigi…

These people are nuts

I'm going to let you guys in on a little secret; I am not a parent. Despite this, my friends always tell me that they think I'd be a good mom . What does that say about me? I have no idea. My first theory is that I would be a good mom because I have incredible vibes, and I will pass those good vibes down through my bloodline. Hopefully, my good vibes won't skip a generation! Perhaps I would be one of those strict, no-nonsense parents that can't stop bragging about how their 3-year-old has never…

For a childless person, I sure spend a lot more time in the enclaves of the parenting side of social media than I probably should. Twitter, TikTok, and Facebook: all of these places have proved to me that parenting is no walk in the park and that it truly takes over a person's life. I don't not want to be a mom because I don't like kids or anything: I don't want to be a mom right now because I don't want to start unknowingly and constantly post cringe parenting content for all of the world to s…

Tell me if you've heard this one: "I'm going to have kids early so I can enjoy my 40s and 50s." Or what about this one: "I'm going to wait until I'm 30 to have a kid so I can enjoy my twenties." These lines of reasoning are predicated on the notion that having kids is not enjoyable and is something you want to be relieved of eventually or postpone. I have little qualification to speak on this: I am not a parent, and who knows what the future of parenthood will look like for me. But I hope that…

Like many other towns across the country, my hometown had an infamous mommy Facebook group . The group was a running joke at my high school because the mothers involved just didn't know how to behave themselves. They would constantly bicker with each other over everything and nothing at the same time. Popular topics of conversation were politics, religion, how evil doctors were, and their children's behavioral problems. The number of women who would divulge their children's medical history to a…

If you've ever been in a “[CITY YOU LIVE IN] Moms Facebook Group” you know that they are some of the wildest places on the internet. They are crazier than Reddit. Some are even crazier than 4Chan. These platforms are cesspools for the most insane opinions regarding child rearing that you'll ever seen. At least 70% of these people don't want to bring their children within 50 feet of a doctors office for their entire lives. They tattle on and bully their neighbors for having the wrong color of di…

Mother & father of the year

It's that time of the year…the kids are out of school, and they are going hog wild . I do not envy parents who stay home with their kids three days before Christmas. Their little bodies can barely hold so much anticipation, which leads to a lot of frantic energy coming your way. This time of year can be highly stressful, and there are very few things that can calm down kids who are so excited about Santa Claus. At the same time, there is something so special about having a couple of weeks to sp…

Not to brag, but my parents are extremely rad. I know that not everyone has great relationships with their parents and that some of the readers of this piece might be orphans, but I, for one, am in neither of those camps. My dad is literally one of the funniest people I know. He is a master songwriter and has been singing and writing his original jingles for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, I used to wake up at 5:30 in the morning to sit at the breakfast table and read the funnies w…