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…

As someone who does not have children (and will likely never have them) it's easy for me to laugh about certain aspects of parenting culture. Gender reveals are not only stupid but have proven to be deadly. Weekly and monthly photoshoots of babies seem, well, unnecessary to me. And then there's the whole referring to your kids age by month even when you can actually just say “he's four.” These habits have been ridiculed nearly to death, and frankly, the mockery is nearly boring. But every now a…

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…

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…

Why do so many young parents want their kids to have unique names ? Do they know that having a unique name doesn't make them a unique person? I'm lucky enough to have a name unique enough that I never have to go by my last initial but normal enough that I've never been bullied for my name. That is the ideal sweet spot for names IMHO. Sometimes, your kid gets bullied for their name because of things out of your control. I would never begrudge somebody naming their daughter Isis or Katrina before…

One of the most popular stereotypes about parents is that once someone has kids, something shifts in their brain that makes them feel like the most esoteric person alive. 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 of us on the receiving end of this smug, I kind of get it. I cannot imagi…

Boy moms have been rightfully roasted on social media recently. I'm not talking about just any woman who has solely mothered boys. I'm talking about the Oedipal nightmare of TikToker moms who openly admit they are in love with their sons. I have seen the same variation of "watching your son grow up is like experiencing the longest breakup ever" repeatedly on the stupid clock app. Why are these women telling on themselves like this? Why are so many boy moms in love with their sons? That guy Soph…

Valentine's Day brings many unique challenges to parents, depending on how old their kids are. If you have elementary school-aged kids, you've probably had to go to the store and buy way too many Valentine's Day cards for your kid's classmates. It's fun for the kids, but buying and assembling these cards can be a pain. If you've got some moody middle schoolers , you might be dealing with some candy-gram-related drama. Once you age out of classroom Valentine's Day parties, kids start to send eac…

We should all know less about each other. This mantra has popped up on Twitter recently, often in response to people sharing graphic personal details online, particularly on TikTok. With the advent of social media, we have become conditioned to share so much of our lives with strangers. We're not just showing the shiny and cool parts of our lives with strangers: we're sharing everything! We post a picture every day because an app told us to “be real.” We share our traumas on TikTok because thos…

It's hard to let the baby bird leave the nest. Many parents struggle to balance being involved in their kids' lives and being overly involved. I understand the struggle! At one point, you had to work day in and day out to ensure this young human survived. Flash forward a few years, and they seem like they don't need you anymore. This transition can be challenging for parents, but it's of the utmost importance that parents give kids, especially their adult kids, space to function without them. T…

I'm going to be honest…we can be pretty critical of bad parenting here at Memebase. When you're exposed to the most insane parenting takes that the internet can offer, it's difficult not to get jaded about the state of parenting in 2023. I know that most parents do not lay their babies on their stomachs because “SIDS be damned, it's the only way my baby sleeps.” I am well aware that the majority of the parenting population does not name their child something straight out of the 1800s. These

The Batmobile, but for paranoid suburbanites!

Such a beautiful name for a girl

How's that new kitchen looking mom?

Favoritism is an issue a lot of kids deal with. I can't imagine how horrible it feels to feel like your parents care about one of your siblings more than you. For many of us, we can see areas where our parents might treat our siblings differently than they treated us, but outright favoritism is more rare and so much worse than passing inequities. The phenomenon can border on neglect when parents put the needs of one golden child over the black sheep child. This treatment causes resentment betwe…