David Minerva Clover

The whole concept of salaries for stay-at-home moms reveals both the classism in parenting culture and what we really think about poor people.

I don’t get out much — and it’s not because I don’t have a sense of adventure or don’t care about learning about the larger world: It’s because I’m broke.

Yes, we should be criticizing these straight, cisgender dads. We’ve been far too easy on them for too long. It’s straight out of the patriarchy playbook.

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

Back when we decided to have a baby together, we had a plan. She was never, ever going to have to work full-time. She was going to work part-time, and I was going to work part-time, selling dog food at that cute little store I used to work at. We would have one day off a week in common, and we would be broke, but we would get by. We would be tired, but we would be happy.

None of us follows any one parenting philosophy to a T; we’re all making split-second decisions about what is and isn’t dangerous.

[W]hen tickets went on sale for a DIY punk music festival that my wife had attended several times before we were married, and she lamented that there was “just no way” that she’d be able to go, a light bulb went off in my head. “What if we just all went together?” I said.

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.

When I finally realized I was trans, it was after almost a year and a half of therapy, a lot of trauma, and after becoming a parent.

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.