Books for Parents Archives - Page 10 of 23

New Parenting Memoir Shows Humor and Heart

July 18, 2012

To label Dan Bucatinsky’s Does This Baby Make Me Look Straight?: Confessions of a Gay Dad a “gay parenting” book is to do it a disservice. Not that there is anything wrong with gay parenting books (far from it)—but Bucatinsky’s work is about parenting, period. To limit the scope of this hysterically funny, often bawdy, and unexpectedly touching book to gay parenting alone is to miss that essential point—even if the book also contains some supremely sharp observations about being both gay and a parent.

LGBT Parenting: 40 Years of a “Quieter Revolution”

June 5, 2012

President Obama has said that same-sex parents and their children influenced his decision to support marriage equality. And in the Washington Post recently, Janice D’Arcy asked, “Has gay parenting ‘normalized’ the perception of gay relationships?” The interaction between LGBT parenting rights and relationship rights is indeed a fascinating and important question—and one charted in part by law professor Carlos Ball, whose new book also gives us a compelling history of the expansion of LGBT parenting rights. Here’s my review of his work, originally published as my Mombian newspaper column.

Zach Wahls’ “My Two Moms” Tells of His Family’s Values

April 26, 2012

Zach Wahls, the former University of Iowa student whose speech about marriage equality to the state House went viral—twice—on YouTube, has a new book out today about his family: My Two Moms: Lessons of Love, Strength, and What Makes a Family.

Is Blogging a Luxury?

April 11, 2012

April is National Poetry Month, which always brings to my mind this passage from Audre Lorde, self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet”:

Catching up with “Pregnant Butch”

April 9, 2012

Back in December, I wrote about A. K. Summers new online graphic memoir, Pregnant Butch. She’s recently finished posting the last pages of Chapter One and the first few pages of Chapter Two—which cover the beginning of her second trimester—so I thought this would be a good time to remind readers of her work and encourage you to take a look. (Some pages are NSFW; we’re talking about human biology here.)

Also, I realized I’d never posted the full interview of Summers I did for my newspaper column, so here it is.

Adrienne Rich: The Passing of a Lesbian Icon

March 28, 2012

Adrienne Rich was a mother, a lesbian, and one of our country’s foremost poets and writers. Today comes the news that she has died at the age of 82. Below is one of my favorite quotes from her works, about invisibility and diversity.

Books for and About Transgender Children: More Than You Think, Less Than We Need

February 20, 2012

Children’s books with gender nonconforming/transgender protagonists are rare, but over the past year or so there have been some encouraging signs of progress.

New Dr. Spock Childcare Book Includes Gay and Lesbian Parents; Iffier on Transgender Issues

January 17, 2012

The new, 9th Edition of the venerable Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care by Dr. Benjamin Spock, first published in 1946, includes a section on gay and lesbian parents, the Washington Post informs us. I’ve taken a look, and while there is much to praise, there are also a few obvious gaps, particularly around gender

Top Lesbian and Gay Parenting Books of 2011

December 19, 2011

This year brought us several new books, fiction and non-fiction, featuring lesbian- and gay-headed familes. While we might hope for greater quantity (and greater diversity across the LGBT spectrum), the quality was at least very good. Here are some of the best.

“Pregnant Butch” Takes a Comic Look at Pregnancy and Gender

December 5, 2011

You’re probably saying, “What would make this Monday morning just perfect is a new comic about a pregnant butch lesbian.” What? You’re not? Well, you should be. Go check out A.K. Summers’ new comic/graphic tale, “Pregnant Butch” over at comic collective site Act-i-vate. It’s a funny, insightful, semi-autobiographical look at “a butch dyke enduring that