Category Archive

Offbeat Papas

Gender, adoption, and identity: how being transgender will help me be a better dad

When I began testosterone replacement, I was giddy and excited. Surgery made me anxious, but I was relieved when it was over. And now: nothing. The elation I expected never came. I had rejected the most basic gift from my mother and father — I had declared myself someone other than the daughter they had welcomed two decades earlier.

Broken Phantoms: understanding visually identifiable and invisible disabilities

If there is any one particularly great experiential divide in the vast disability community, it may be that between the visually identifiable and the invisible disabilities. It’s the difference between a world of unwanted pity, and one of unwanted judgment.

DIY Father’s Day gifts and activities you can pull off for under $10

Whether or not you’re co-parenting with a male, many of us know of a dad or two that we feel really deserves to be celebrated. So if it’s your partner, brother, best friend, or the guy who lives across the street — here are a few ways that you can help rock his world on Father’s Day without spending more $10.

Why I let my tween listen to whatever music he wants

Language isn’t that big a deal to me, nor is the violence. It’s the drug use and the sexually suggestive material. But the music doesn’t concern me. Is that bad?

Two gay dads + twelve adopted kids = fourteen happy family members

AZ Central recently featured the wonderful story of Steve and Roger Ham, a gay couple raising 12 adopted children in a state not historically known for positive attitudes toward the ideas of gay marriage OR gay adoption.

Post-It Notes: an interview with the stay-at-home dad behind “Message With A Bottle”

Chris Illuminati, the stay-at-home dad behind Message With a Bottle, uses Post-It notes to remind himself of the joys and pitfalls of parenting.

Postpartum depression: it’s not just a woman’s disease

Like a werewolf under the light of a full moon, women with “hysteria” were transformed by the powerful force of their uterus, causing an excess of emotion. Interchange that moon for a baby, and you’ve got postpartum depression — a woman’s disease

My husband was a sperm donor: perspective from the partner of a bio-dad

Anyone who has friends in same-sex relationships knows about how much weight is given to biological parents here in the US … I don’t know exactly how this has worked out so well, but I think it’s because we all care about each other.