David Minerva Clover

People see a baby and immediately imagine that the kid must have a mother and a father, who are probably married, who made that baby with good ol’ fashioned P-in-V sexual intercourse, most likely in the missionary position.

In today’s world, children may be a financial liability, but that shouldn’t make them a luxury item.

Getting rid of all of your stuff is all well and good if you are childfree, but if you have the fortune (or misfortune) to have children, they literally will not let you.

Teeth are inseparable from class in this country. I have gotten by in life largely by being able to “pass” as middle class, by being white and articulate and confident. People meet me and assume that I must have gone to college. Middle class people talk to me like I’m their peer. But I am not their peer. I will never be their peer.

I think kids and parents need old school trick-or-treating. I think it has a value far greater than the sum of its candy. I love trick-or-treating!

Once upon a time, the only thing to consider was “Does your kid watch too much TV?” But now it seems like nearly everyone can agree that kids these days spend far too much time looking at screens of all sorts.

I mess up and do things very differently than I want to sometimes. When that happens, I have one rule for myself: I stop and apologize to my kid.

I had always considered myself to be extremely body positive. I loved my body! I had several close friends who were fat activists, and I was working hard to be a good thin ally. But despite all of that, I wasn’t ready for the changes that were happening in myself.

One of the most insidious things that patriarchy does is the complete and utter devaluation of anything that is considered “women’s work.” Not only does patriarchy limit what women (and all trans and nonbinary folk) can do in the world, it also takes what we do manage to do and tells us it isn’t worth anything.