It's time for us to face the facts: we give moms a lot of slack in this series. There are a lot of cringe mothers out in the world who detox their children from heavy metals and squirt breastmilk in their eyes when they get a stye. Even though they have some wacky ideas, they're not complete monsters. They're just women who've been sucked into a weird online subculture . It's easy to criticize mothers for a myriad of reasons. It's far too natural for us to fall into misogynistic thought pattern…

When you're a little kid, there's nothing scarier than the possibility of attending summer school. That's where you go when you're a juvenile delinquent throughout the year and don't finish your schoolwork. When a teacher brings up the dreaded idea of attending summer school, it's usually a simple scare tactic to submit a class of youngsters into obedience. There's nothing wrong with that! Once you get to high school , you realize that summer school is an actual possibility and not just a scare…

That's not a rainbow

Millennials are killing the normal name industry, or at least so it seems. The weird names young parents give their kids have become bonafide memes at this point. I don't know if we'll ever get to a point where McKinsleigh will be considered a normal name by the majority of the population. At the same time, we felt the same way about the name Britney, and nobody bats an eye at that anymore. My favorite millennial naming convention is giving your baby an old lady's name. I know two babies named…

These people are nuts

I'm addicted to you (car seats) don't you know that you're toxic?

There is no group of people more unfairly scrutinized online than parents. Okay, maybe that's not 100% true, but I am baffled by the comments on nearly every parenting video I see on reels and TikTok. No matter what a parent does, no matter how normal their video is, some weirdos in the comments will pick apart and criticize them for no reason. I know this isn't wholly a problem of the internet. People have been giving parents unsolicited advice since man developed the ability to speak. The iss…

Twenty years ago, parenting books used to be where it was at. Parents who had a million questions about how they should raise their kids didn't go around posting about it on their MySpace pages. They went to Borders, Books A Million, and other now-defunct stores and bought a bunch of books about it! While not all parenting books are written by experts, they're at least a bit more inherently trustworthy than strangers on the internet . When I was a kid, all of the adults in my life told me to be…

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…

Flying with kids is so nerve-wracking. The most stressful part is gauging whether your kids will cry or have tantrums inside an enclosed metal tube for three hours. The second biggest challenge is keeping them occupied, which is much easier nowadays with tablets and iPads. A tertiary concern might be that your kids could make a mess on the plane. Luckily, if they don't throw up or have an accident, most messes are easy to pick up! At least, so we think. Semi-famous people are obsessed with twee…

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…

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…

A big part of growing up is getting rejected from things. Whether it's a sports team or the top band, teenagers will inevitably be disappointed by rejection throughout their adolescence. My most devastating high-school rejection was from the elite group at my community theatre. I know, I'm really cool. I was in the Junior Varsity of musical theatre for three years before I finally got into the top group. The first two years in this group of self-proclaimed "rejects" were expected, but when I di…

There is an epidemic sweeping our nation right now. It's hard for me to articulate this without getting emotional, but the store Target is selling shirts for toddlers with rainbows on them. This is a national emergency and needs to be addressed by the leaders of this great nation sooner rather than later. I'm making a jokey joke here, but there are a lot of people out there who think boys wearing shirts with rainbows is the end of the world. I remember when I was a kid, people tried to decrease…

Not a conspiracy diaper!

What's the matter with kids these days? Why can't they be like we were: perfect in every way? Every generation has gripes with “kids these days.” These days, kids are more rebellious and less hardworking than kids used to be! If you're not a member of Gen Z or Generation Alpha, this thought might have crossed your mind. If you're a millennial parent, you might be “kids these days” curious, and I beg you to resist this urge! Don't you remember when adults criticized you for liking 98 Degrees