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…

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

Sex Education is one of those topics that some people have a challenging time breaching with their kids. My parents were never the kind of people to try to tell me some hogwash about a stork and a baby; They were not in the business of baloney. I don't remember the exact moment when I realized what sex was because it was more of a gradual conversation throughout many years and, therefore, not so shocking to me. The one thing I do remember about our most memorable birds and the bees talk is that…

Twitter has a new main character this week, complete with a wild and unexpected backstory. I've found that most of the “Twiter Main Characters” tend to be parents who make mind-numbing decisions regarding raising their family. One of the most infamous of these characters is the Bean Dad, who sat idly by and watched his young daughter struggle to open a can of beans with a can opening for hours without helping her. Earlier this year, a parent described supporting their adopted kid's emotional ne…

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

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.…

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.’"

Watching parents spill details about their kids on social media can make you feel a lot better about your family life. I saw a TikTok this morning where a mom openly admitted she took her able-bodied child on a family vacations without her disabled son. Like, how are you not embarrassed? Why are you openly admitting this horrible thing you did on social media without shame? Parents can share the most alarming things to complete, and if you question it at all, you get accused of “mom shaming.” L…

Back to school season is finally upon us! That means parents get the whole day to lay around and do nothing before their kids come home, right? If only. School is one of the main reasons people don't see parenting as a full time job. Nobody except parents know how much time it takes to drop kids off at school, go grocery shopping, clean the house, manage their kids affairs, pay the bills, pick kids up from school, drive them to their activities, make dinner, pick them up from their activities a…