If you don't have a list on your phone with potential baby names for your future children, what are you even doing? At press time, I am kind of ambivalent about whether I want to have kids, but so help me God, if I come upon a child, I have the perfect name waiting in the woodwork. Having baby names with no intention of having children is kind of like wanting to get married because you want to throw a party. It's all of the fun with none of the hassle. Anyone who has actually raised a child kno…

Are you teaching your kid they're born to run or that they're master of puppets?

Happy Thanksgiving, parents! Today might not be the most leisurely parenting day of the year, but I believe you all will get through it. You're about to enter prime “threatening your kids with Santa” season, and I support you all the way. Nothing will whip a kid into shape better than their fear of the naughty list.

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…

One of the most prominent stereotypes about parents is that once someone has kids, something shifts in their brain that makes them feel like the most esoteric bearer of ancient, once unknown knowledge. They smugly remark on how different the world looks now that they've got kids, implying that they've got something far more important in their lives than anything a childless person could be doing. Although I understand how annoying this can be for those on the receiving end of these takes, I kin…

So evil

Halloween is a difficult time to be a parent. One week, your kid wants to be a princess. The next week, they want to be a witch. By the time you get close to the 31st, they've come up with an idea for a costume so niche there is no way Spirit Halloween can provide it. Being a parent on Halloween is a difficult balance because you remember what it's like to be a kid on Halloween. You remember the struggle of your parents making you wear a winter coat over your costume, rendering the costume func…

Maybe it's the Australian accent

One of the most interesting concepts I've learned about from being on the parenting side of social media is a little phenomenon called "mom shaming." Mom shaming occurs when someone criticizes a mom for how she chooses to raise her family. When I look at “mom shaming," I see it as a cyclical problem. We have moms posting

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…

One of the things that uniquely strikes me about parenthood is the fact that you are wholly responsible for another human being. As it currently childless early 20s something, I can barely take care of myself let alone another living person. The thing that baffles me about parenthood is that you have to buy twice the amount of stuff then you would if you were just by yourself. If you’re going for a nice evening out at the Golden Corral, you have to buy a meal for yourself and for your child. To…

I've seen many wild takes from parents online, but none wilder than young moms bragging about having kids in their late teens and early twenties. I can't count the number of times I've seen someone say, "when you're 40, you'll be dropping your kids off at pre-school; When I'm 40, I'll be at the club partying." I feel like 22-year-old moms make that statement to rationalize why they can no longer party. These posts fail to recognize that parenting is a lifelong duty that you're never done with.…

Not all dads are created equal. And not all dads are technically dads . See, while some Dads stay up late to help with homework, or teaching their progeny to shoot hoops (or paper into a trashcan), there are those who can be considered nothing short of distant. There are also those who aren't in the picture. So in this sense, some moms are dads, and then there are the grandpas who are “dads” to their grandkids. So the thing is, “dad humor” as we know it can never be solely for the fathers that…

Everyone's the perfect parent …until they have kids. That's the hot take a lot of parents express when they find people commenting on and criticizing their parenting techniques. I think there's some truth to this sentiment: I can't even imagine how difficult it is to raise a real human person. However, that doesn't mean that parents, especially those who make weirdly invasive social media posts documenting every part of their children's lives, are exempt from any criticism. Far from it, actuall…

The golden age of parents on Twitter lying about the esoteric things their young children say has long passed us. Back in the ancient time of 2016, parents were obsessed with tweeting things like, "My son came up to me and said ‘Papa, I have a childlike solution to great economic and social problems that will be incredibly easy to go viral through the retweets of easy to trick rubes.’"

Many dads aren't known for being the most affectionate guys. These fathers tend to express their affection for their family quietly or not at all. As someone who's dad loves to sing humorous jingles to his animal friends, I can't really relate to this problem. However, I sympathize with people who have daddy issues caused by their fathers inability to express emotions. There are some dads who are so cavalier and unemotional that it goes past the point of being sad and circles on back to being f…