Intending not to have kids has become much more socially acceptable for millennials . It used to be that if you were a person who didn't have kids, you were an old spinster, a nun, or a deeply ashamed closeted person. These days, a much larger chunk of young people are vehemently against bringing another life into this world. This can be for various reasons, from not wanting to financially support another human being to not wanting to push another person through their body. While these reasons…

You survived thanksgiving and deserve all the memes for it.

Family secrets are hit or miss. You can either discover something super rad about the people you see during Christmas and Thanksgiving or realize that they really are horrible people deep down. When you're a kid, every piece of new information you learn about your extended family feels like a long-hidden family secret. Even if this is not true by definition, I believe that anything once unknown to you that you learn about your family counts as a family secret. My grandma worked for a TV station…

Adulting is hard.

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…

When I was in high school, I made enough money babysitting for 12 hours that I was able to buy illicit substances that will remain unnamed. Friends of mine saved thousands over the span of a year just taking care of rich peoples' children in their own neighborhoods. While I don't remember my exact wage, it was definitely at least $10 per hour. For a teenager in the early aughts, that was a pretty reasonable amount of money – just two dollars less than I made at a fish market in the summers. If…

Good parenting etiquette definitely includes being able to laugh at parenting things.

Maybe have some responsibility for your own children?

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

Being a parent during the days following Halloween is an insane exercise in self-control. A bag or multiple bags of assorted candy is sitting dormant in your house at this very second. Surely, nobody would notice if you took one fun-sized Snickers bar , right? There's no way stealing some Dots would make you one of the worst parents in the world pertaining to the aftermath of Halloween. Parents out there make their kids give away all of their candy to the local dentist's office! There are paren…

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…

An acquired taste of humor

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…