Not for girls.

Not for boys.

We make clothes for children.

I love this slogan. It sums up everything I want in a clothing store for my child. We gender children’s clothing way before there is much in the way of difference between body shapes, to the extent that even clothing that we might describe as “neutral” (no bows and ribbons; no skulls and crossbones) is gendered by the colour it is (olive green for boys, pale yellow for girls, for example; even blue clothing, for example, has a “girl” shade and a “boy” shade), and vice versa (and orange top, for example, will be marked as “girl” or “boy” by either a subtle puffing up of the sleeves or a small car motif, for example). And it will be gendered, in most shops, by actually putting clothes in different aisles according to gender. (In my local Asda, for example, “boy” and “girl” clothes are even separated by the service counter!) And I’m sick of it and have been sick of it for a long time. (Also, lest we forget, “boy” and “girl” are not the only two genders in the world; we also don’t know for certain that our female assigned child is a girl, and our male assigned child is a boy, until they tell us, which relies on them having the words and us listening. So talking about “children” makes much more sense!)

So in terms of slogan and the idea behind it, Polarn O. Pyret gets my vote. Also in terms of placement within online store; clothes are sorted by type (trouser, dress, top, etc) rather than by gender. This is exactly how I want to search for clothes for my child; does he need a new pair of trousers? Let’s look at trousers then; rather than having to sort by boy or by girl, I can get the full range and choose for myself.

The clothes also look to be of a good quality; outdoorsy, rough and tumble clothes rather than decorative (actually, I don’t have a problem with decorative, and most children enjoy self-adornment; it’s when it’s limited to one gender that I’ve a problem).

The only drawback? The price. And here’s the thing; once again, being able to afford to support a shop with such important ideals, being able to dress your child in good quality, ethically sourced clothing, is very much the privilege of those with a certain amount of money. For example, should I want to buy my child a pair of trousers, I’m looking at over thirty quid. I couldn’t even justify spending thirty quid on a pair of kecks for myself, let alone a child that’s going to grow out of them in about a year’s time.

I do understand why places like this are expensive; it’s not cheap to be ethical, it’s not cheap to care about who makes the clothes you sell and it isn’t cheap to care about where the material in your clothes comes from. I get that; I’m glad they exist even though they’re way out of my price range. I hope parents (and anyone who buys clothes for children) with money will support this store as much as possible.

What doesn’t cost a company money, however, is having a unisex slogan like Polarn O. Pyret; it also doesn’t cost money to sort clothes by size and type rather than by gender. I hope the kind of companies I can afford to shop at follow suit. I might even add one or two bought pieces to my child’s lovely pre-loved hand-me-down collection then!

Sorry it’s late – I intended to get working on it on Saturday but my computer’s graphics card chose that day for its capacitor to burst open rendering my entire PC useless! Thankfully my partner came to the rescue, bought and installed a new graphics card and I’m now able to get on with the Carnival. Unfortunately life has been very busy (as it always is with kids around!) so this is the first moment I’ve had available to sit down and properly work on it. So my deepest apologies for the tardiness, I hope you’ll all forgive me!

I’m ashamed to say it’s a lazy Carnival this time round; usually I write a sentence or two describing what each post is about but I simply do not have the spoons. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that it’s a bumper issue this time around – I believe I’ve had nearly seventy submissions! So make sure you have a couple of hours spare, make yourself a nice cup of tea and sit down to enjoy all the wonderful pieces included in this edition.

Pregnancy and Childbirth

• When fighting rape culture means changing birth culture posted at Spilt Milk.
• Who Cares About Pregnant Women? posted at Her Authority.
• Another Doula Ban, Another Bad Birth Plan posted at Birthing Beautiful Ideas.
• Birth Trauma Can Cause Women to Develop PPD & PTSD posted at Associated Content.
• Reclaiming Birth, and the Albany Midwives posted at London Anarchafeminist Kolektiv.

Adoption

• Adoption, Race, Disability and the Vaule of People posted at The Trouble Is….

Bodily Autonomy

• Pregnant Women to be Tested for Smoking posted at Feminist Philosophers.
• Who Owns a Woman’s Body Pt 2 – Pregnancy posted at Finding Summer.
• Fragments of Evolving Manhood: Do You Like Your Body 4 (More on the Expendability of the Foreskin) posted at Alas, a blog.
• Honey, I poked holes in all the condoms posted at f/law.
• A different sort of female genital mutilation posted at Morrígan Reborn.

Reproductive Freedom

• My Mother’s Abortion Improved All of Our Lives posted at Women’s eNews.
• The love is the same; it’s the parenting that’s different. posted at abortionclinicdays.
• Word to the wise: Never date a guy who reads Details posted at Feministe.
• The Horror of Forced Abortions and Sterilizations in China posted at Women’s Rights Change.
• “Un bebé no se hace solita, or, You can’t make a baby by yourself” posted at Womanist Musings.

Breastfeeding

• What does feminism have to do with breastfeeding? posted at Breastfeeding Medicine.
• A Dad’s View on Breastfeeding posted at Tales of a Kitchen Witch Momma.
• Society is creepy (not breastfeeding) posted at PhD in Parenting.
• Breastfeeding is a feminist issue posted at Spilt Milk.
• normalizing breastfeeding through solidarity? posted at Living Peacefully With Children.
• Small fries, a coke and a McBreast please. posted at wood turtle.

Gender Stereotypes

• Where’s Mom? posted at Shakespeare’s Sister.
• It’s a boy! posted at Think Mama Think.
• Do we pigeon hole our children early on? posted at Single Mummy.
• I’m a little teapot posted at Living Peacefully With Children.

Motherhood

• Feminism Beyond the Veil posted at Courtroom Mama.
• Cyberbullying not just for kids: moms get bullied too posted at Feminist Mom in Montreal.
• My classes must be over because this post is damn long. posted at Bitch. Ph.D.
• Mother’s Day in the War on Terror posted at Sajid Malick Blog.
• Paris-Ankara Express: The Weekend Charter posted at Paris-Ankara Express.

Fatherhood

• Review: Do Men Mother? posted at A Canadian Lefty in Occupied Land.
• Guest post: It’s a MAD dad world posted at fertilefeminism.com.

Fat and Sizeism

• Where the Fight Against Child Obesity Can Go Very, Very Wrong posted at Huffington Post.
• Do Overweight Pregnant Women Need Separate High-Risk Hospitals? posted at Unnecesarean.

Employment Choices

• Tell me something I didn’t know already posted at In a strange land.
• Yes, I am a feminist housewife posted at Offbeat Mama.
• EU rules on pregnant workers’ pay posted at BBC World News.
• Me, a Radical Homemaker? posted at Laura Grace Weldon.
• Is stay at home motherhood a class issue? posted at used to be somebody.
• Downing Street goes family (time) friendly posted at Fertile Feminism.

News and Media

• I Can Slay the Jabberwocky! Disney’s New Alice Serves as a Strong Role Model for Girls posted at DisZine.
• Why My Daughter Doesn’t Watch Disney Movies posted at domestic dilettante, humorless feminist shrew.
• Birth and Breastfeeding in Season 1 of Lost posted at Birthcycle.
• Sexualised Girls and Macho Heroes – Gender Depictions in Children’s TV posted at Goethe Gender.

Race and Racism

• If You’re Not In Prison and Not Making Babies What Are you Doing? posted at Womanist Musings.
• Quick Hit on Hair: Not-White Is Not Other posted at Raising My Boychick.
• Daycare Subsidy and the “Good Single Mother” posted at Womanist Musings.
• My Daughter, Her Hair, and the Seattle School District posted at The Stranger, Seattle’s Only Newspaper.

Disability and Ableism

• Too Disabled To See Your Children posted at Womanist Musings.
• This Is Not Education: Abuse of Autistic Students in Pennsylvania posted at FWD/Forward.
• ‘Crazy’ Mother Kills Presumably Autistic Son, Media Reports posted at Astrid’s Journal.
• Signing with my baby posted at BBC – Ouch! (disability).

Sex and Sexuality

• Trans Children – Challenging the Myths posted at UnCommon Sense.
• Is That a Boy or a Girl?: Talking to Kids About Gender posted at Womanist Musings.
• No, You Mean to be Hateful to Gay People posted at Womanist Musings.
• Kids of lesbians have fewer behavioral problems, study suggests posted at CNN Health.
• Nudity and Gender posted at Finding Summer.
• The hypocrite in the room: Views on female sexuality posted at fertilefeminism.com.

Sex Education

• Protecting Boys with Condoms for Kids posted at Sociological Images.
• Rape discussed at school: shocking or sensible? posted at We Mixed Our Drinks.
• What kind of mirror did your mom make you look at your vagina with? posted at Feministe.
• Rape myths debated in schools posted at Pickled Politics.

Children’s Rights

• My Child Takes Up Space posted at Womanist Musings.
• Children Take Up Space (and Notice When We Don’t Notice) posted at random babble….
• Hay festival video: ‘No child is born a criminal’ posted at Comment is Free.

Miscellaneous

• Because I’m a mother now… posted at Surges of a Heart.
• India’s Growing Surrogacy Trade Faces New Restrictions posted at Time Magazine.
• Kids: screw ‘em posted at Pandagon.

That concludes this edition of the Carnival of Feminist Parenting, I hope you’ve enjoyed it! Submit your (or someone else’s) blog post or article to the next edition using our carnival submission form or by sending a Twitter message to @m4wl. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our carnival home page.

I didn’t want to tell him because it was embarrassing.  Eventually admitted that a rather nosey middle aged woman outside the doctors surgery had said something that had got my back up.  The gem I got from her, as I was smoking a cigarette was ‘You shouldn’t smoke when you’re pregnant’.

This had the quadruple whammy of being OFFENSIVE, JUDGEMENTAL, WRONG and also just plain NONE OF HER DAMN BUSINESS.

I gave her a withering look and informed her that actually, I’m not pregnant, just fat.  It will forever irritate me that some people seem to have the idea that women cannot possibly be allowed to be fat unless they are pregnant.  I also told her that I have two health conditions which cause my stomach to be bloated, and that comments such as hers didn’t particularly help.  I then continued on to say that in fact, it was none of her damn business even if I was pregnant and smoking, because she’s a complete stranger and it has nothing to do with her.

I don’t think people should smoke when they are pregnant.  However, being pregnant was a very stressful time physically and emotionally for me, and it would be been quite understandable for me to have a cigarette, which I still didn’t do.  I may have the occasional wibble when I see a pregnant woman smoking, but I remind myself of several important facts.

-Firstly, it really is NONE OF MY BUSINESS.  It’s not up to me to tell strangers what to do.

-It could be her only cigarette of the day.  She could be quitting or cutting down.  Maybe she’s decided that one cigarette a day is a good compromise when she’s previously been smoking 40 a day and the one that she has stops her wanting to put peoples head through windows.  Both pregnancy and quitting smoking make you want to do those things, combined isn’t going to be much fun.

-I have no idea what stress she’s under, what her life is like, if her pregnancy is easy or if she is suffering.  It’s not up to me to judge peoples coping mechanisms.

I would much prefer people didn’t smoke when they are pregnant.  However, your lungs filter out most of the toxins as does the placenta, so I’m not going to begrudge someone a cigarette, no matter how many people turn their nose up at this.  Women who smoke FREQUENTLY AND REGULARLY are at risk of complications with themselves and a baby.  But one cigarette is not frequently or regularly, and you cannot assume this from a chance meeting on the street.  Even if you can see someone smoking a lot, maybe sat in the garden of a pub or a club, it still remains none of your damn business (as well as all the other points above).

Above and beyond this, I am amazed and horrified at the absolute GALL of some people.  I would never presume to comment in this fashion because my delicate sensibilities were offended by something they were doing, unless it was extremely dangerous/immoral/unsanitary/illegal.  I accost people that let their dogs shit on the floor and make no pretence that they are going to clean it up.  I take issue with people being violent to each other in public.  I get annoyed at people that pee in alleyways or puke in the street when they are drunk.

But people, whether or not YOU like it, a pregnant person still has her own mind, her own personality, her own body and her own choices.  She still exercises control over these things and she doesn’t become a walking incubator, subject to the whims, orders and opinions of others when she decides to bear children.  Smoking when pregnant is not illegal.  So if you see it and get your frown on, remember it’s none of your damn business and walk away.

The only person whose choices you control are yours.  Don’t want to smoke when you are pregnant?  Fine then, don’t.  But you’re not such a special snowflake that you get the deciding vote over what other human beings are allowed to do.

I wrote a post for The F Word titled How do you teach a child about sex? discussing the ways in which I am doing sex education with my young son and asking readers how they’re doing the same. So far the conversation there has been great, and I’d love to hear your input too.

Writer would like to talk to lesbian couples with children about their expectations of parenting – and the reality

How did you expect to manage the childcare in your household before you had children? And how has it worked out? How do you combine looking after children with the other things in your life? Are you happy with the amount of childcare that you do or do you feel that you do more than your fair share – or too little?

I am writing a book for the Random House imprint, Harvill Secker, about how parents balance raising children with other aspects of their lives; how child care is shared between parents; and the extent to which this has changed in recent decades. I have been speaking to parents around the UK about these issues and I would be delighted to hear from you if you would like to find out more.  It would involve a chat on the phone and what I write will not identify you. I am a professional journalist with over fifteen years’ experience and am happy to answer any questions you might have.

Please email me at rebecca DOT asher AT hotmail DOT co DOT uk with your contact details and I will get in touch. I do hope to hear from you soon.

If you submitted an article or blog post which isn’t included in today’s carnival (and which wasn’t a spam submission!) please let me know as I think some of the submissions got lost when I switched the carnival from monthly to two-monthly.

So here it is. Many, many thanks to Earwicga for her help in putting this together, I wouldn’t have been able to do it without you! The first half was compiled by me (Anji) and the second half by Earwicga. I hope you enjoy it!

Pregnancy and Childbirth

• The Unnecesarean explains Why VBACs Should Be the Norm, Not the Deviant Care Pattern,detailing her horrible experiences with unnecessary caesareans and her attempts to have VBACs which were foiled by anti-VBAC medical professionals.
• Fertile Feminism has a post titled Selling out on the postnatal ward, about how advertising has permeated those first precious few moments with one’s baby, in particular the problematic allowing of ‘Bounty ladies’ to roam the postnatal ward peddling their wares and coercing women to give up personal details.
• The Unnecesarean talks about Good Little Girls, in a post explaining why so many women don’t fight for their birthing rights, because we have been taught from a very young age not to make a fuss or be a ‘troublemaker’.
• Amy Gates writes For Better or For Worse? Childbirth in Popular Culture, about the problematic way in which childbirth is portrayed in the media, and how that portrayal affects women’s beliefs and expectations surrounding it.
• In Secret Oppression: Epidurals, Mamapoekie talks about epidurals as a feminist issue and explaining why she thinks that in most cases epidurals are unnecessary and presenting her case for an epidural-free birth experience.
• Courtroom Mama asks Why is VBAC a vital option? Because anything less is anti-woman, explaining that “VBAC bans” in hospitals are an example of society having no trust in women to make the right decisions regarding their own bodies.
• Molly Westerman writes Manly Men and Blundering Dads: On Men’s Guides to Childbirth, about the stereotypes that plague new fathers, specifically the ones presented in books aimed at men whose partners are pregnant or who have young babies.
• In When fighting rape culture means changing birth culture, Spilt Milk talks about how society creates a culture where birth rape is acceptable.

Breastfeeding

• In It was either the Deech, or Jan Moir, Renegade Parent takes apart an anti-breastfeeding article in the Daily Mail by the ever-problematic Jan Moir with aplomb, discussing why it is in business owners’ best interest to ‘allow’ breastfeeding on their premises, among other things.
• Gina Crosley-Corcoran tells us that When It Comes to Breastfeeding, We Can’t Handle The Truth, explaining that, as breastfeeding saves lives, it should be advertised in the same way car seats are advertised, and reminding us that breastfeeding advocacy is not intended to bash those who don’t choose it.
• An “Other” Mother writes Pincer Grasp – Dealing with Anger as a Feminist, about how she copes with the painful side of breastfeeding and how being a feminist shapes her anger at those experiences.
• Motherhood Denied has a post about Toddler breastfeeding: Good for mother and child, but society says no, talking about full-term breastfeeding and the negative comments she receives for doing so.

Sexualisation and Rape Culture

• In Boys, Babes and Balls: Hooters mascots for U16 boys footy, Melinda Tankard Reist writes about how Hooters have joined forces with an under-16s football club and discussing how this may be teaching boys/young men that women are nothing but their bodies.

News and Media

• PhD in Parenting writes All I think about is princesses… where she sets a challenge for Disney, discussing how Disney has ‘rebranded Rapunzel to appeal to boys’ and asking them to rethink their strategies.
• Veronica has a post titled Women’s History Month: Why I love Ariel & Belle, discussing the least ‘princessy’ of the Disney princesses.
• In TV for feminist kids, An “Other” Mother talks about the pros and cons of children’s television and the programmes she has approved for her daughter.
• Elena Perez writes a review of the film How to Train Your Dragon from a feminist perspective, and it’s positive! I saw this film myself (twice!) and I have to say I agree with her on pretty much every point and would be happy to show this film to my young son.
• Pissweak Parent writes about The other taboo topic and marketing mania, a discussion about parenting as a taboo topic of conversation and talking about the problem of the advertising aimed at parents.

Reproductive Rights

• In Woman as womb, Julie discusses the reduction of women’s worth and interestingness to nothing but their reproductive capability and how especially when pregnant, people seem interested in nothing more than what’s in their wombs.

Work Choices

• Jaelithe writes about the pain of children and mothers who spend days apart due to paid work, and applies some wonderful logic to this situation in To My Friends Who Work Outside the Home.
• Society’s supposed opposite option to full time working parent(s) is discussed by Maman a Droit in Staying At Home: A Valid Choice, in which she discusses how women who are able to choose to bring up their children full-time are dismissed by society and shamefully by other women.
• In When mothering isn’t work? Pissweak Parent outlines the bizarre notion that taking care of your own child isn’t work and it only becomes work when a third-party does the job with the requisite money transfer.
• Spilt Milk takes a subject that I have always wondered about – how parents (in this case mothers) leave young children to go on reality shows – and teases out some issues. In Dishing it out the decision of a contestant, Sarah, to leave a show and the consequent ‘vicious criticism’ is shown rightly to be utterly sexist, hypocritical and unfair.

Relationships

• Only one entry in this section but it is a pure delight to read so heartfelt thanks to the submitter/Anji who found this article for the Carnival. Christina Campbell in Single Mothers Trashed For Not “Choosing” to Marry takes a Daily Mail article, which par for the course has great scope for criticism. Campbell decodes the language used surrounding welfare for single parents and other forms of welfare which have different names, such as ‘tax breaks’. Lots of good links too!

Teaching and Education

• Lynne Marie Wanamaker shows how a playground conflict provides a teaching moment for self protection and assertiveness skills in the interesting and inspiring Self Defense Snap Shot: Queen of the Kick-ball Crew.

Gender and Stereotyping

• Have a think about what “Mom Idol” could mean – how wonderful it could be – and then click into this post written by Saraline Grenier. A clever little post that I just know will keep me thinking throughout this week.
• In Reconciling the primacy of motherhood with the rejection of binary gender, Elizabeth Willmott Harrop tries to understand her dilemma between gender and biological sex and the consequent ‘fundamental behavioural differences’ in the context of breast feeding and biological ‘programming’.
• Pissweak Parent makes another appearance this Carnival with The ins and outs of gender politics, with a four year old in which a tantrum opens an opportunity to explain to a four year old (obviously) a version of feminism’s views/theories on clothing and gender.
• Melissa McEwan’s I Write Letters is a letter to parents to reject the reductive terms ‘she’s all girl’ or ‘he’s all boy’ and is partially successful, actually very successful in explaining this. But, to my eyes this post is also a great big fail when you consider transgender and gender dysphoric children, which I don’t think this post, or McEwan does. You may disagree but go read it with the knowledge that these children exist. They exist everywhere and you will know them. But they may not know how to explain it to themselves, let alone you. I was particularly struck with a fact that Natacha Kennedy blogged – trans children do not learn any language surrounding transgenderism for an average of seven and a half years after their initial realisation of being trans.

Race and Racism

• Renee Martin provides the actual opposite of People magazine in Sandra Bullock and her Secret Baby. Stirring and strong!
• A follow up post on the same blog, Motherhood and Homelessness, exposes the realities of motherhood and reproductive choices for young poor women who are statistically more likely to be women of colour. Renee’s words are elequently backed up by Katerina Cizek’s short film Unexpected which introduced me to the term ‘Only Parent’ describing my life way more than the term ‘Single Parent’!

Mother’s Rights

• Ghost in the Dwelling written by Dw3t-Hthr is a personal post describing how it feels to have other people’s ideas of the label of ‘Mother’ forced onto the author, and the anger it can engender in particular to her own mother where the experience is very different and isn’t seem to be at all helpful.

That concludes this edition of the Carnival of Feminist Parenting. The next edition will be in two months’ time on Sunday 11th July 2010. Submit your blog article (or one by someone else!) to the next edition using our carnival submission form or in an @ reply on Twitter to @m4wl. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our carnival home page.

The next Carnival of Feminist Parenting will be held on Sunday 16th May 2010. Submission deadline is Sunday 9th May 2010.

If anyone has any ideas on how I can better publicise the Carnival, please do comment here or email me!

• Stef presents Pity the blended family? No thanks we’re fine the way we are, talking about family structure and why that has no bearing on the happiness of the family.

• Fertile Feminism presents Mindful language: what does ‘mothering’ mean?, jumping off from a discussion about what to call Mother’s Day with a post about how we use language to describe mothering and parenting.

• Sparky presents A Spark of Wisdom: You’re already teaching kids sexuality, pointing out to heterosexist parents that they are teaching their children about sexuality every time they say “When you get married” or mention a boy/girlfriend.

• AnneE presents “Working mums” can’t win, a brilliant take-down of an article written about flexitime including some choice quotes from a woman who seems to equate having children with expensive outdoor hobbies.

• In The very gendered baby, Blue Milk discusses her inbuilt gender stereotyping problems and how they manifest in her different choices in how to dress her daughter and her son.

• Terri presents Barbie Becomes a Computer Engineer, showing off Barbie’s newest career and giving her thoughts on it.

• Sazz has four posts about co-feeding, also known as cross-nursing: A Cross-Nurser’s Response To Hatred, Articles About Co-Feeding (Cross-Nursing), Our 2nd Year Breastfeeding Anniversary and My 1st Cross Tandem Nursing Experience.

• Weaver points out that Shockingly, teenage motherhood is not the end of the world, talking about teenage parents, inspired by an article on the same from the Guardian.

• Liz has a slightly angrier post titled, appropriately, Warning: I’m angry, also discussing teen/young pregnancy and asking how its detractors intend to stop it happening.

• Roxann Mitjoy writes about the Pregnant Iowa Woman Arrested for Falling Down, the terrifying story of Christine Taylor who was detained for two days “for admitting to thinking about an abortion at some point early in her pregnancy and then having the audacity to fall down some stairs a couple of months later.”

• Renee Martin also uses Christine Taylor’s story as a springboard for her post Abortion: The Choice We Do not Speak Of.

• PhD in Parenting asks Should we parent boys and girls differently? discussing the different lessons we need to teach our boys and girls so they can better tackle the different challenges the world with throw at them.

• Fertile Feminism presents Getting it, talking about well known feminist/Fat Acceptance blogger Kate Harding and imploring her to understand the parallels between the FA/HAES movement and that of children’s rights.

• Megan has a guest post at the F-Word titled Contraception and Control – Teenage Rights, discussing the rights of teenagers to good sex education and access to contraception and emergency contraception, and above all the right to control over their own bodies.

• The Unnecesarean presents Too Polite to Fight, talking about “a cousin of the “Too Posh to Push” archetype”.

Thanks for reading, folks. The next edition will be Sunday 11th April with a submission deadline of Sunday 4th April. Submit your (or someone else’s) blog article to the next edition by using our carnival submission form or sending the URL in an @ reply to @m4wl on Twitter. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival home page.

Pregnancy and Birth

• In Media Coverage of Burton v. State of Florida, The Unnecesarean writes about the case of a woman who is fighting the court order which confined her to involuntary bed rest during her pregnancy.
• Lauredhel talks about That Homebirth Study in South Australia, and how the data has been skewed by the obstetric community to mean something totally different to what it actually says.
• In When will the police come knocking?, Renegade Parent tells us about the hospital who sent the police to a woman’s house after she didn’t turn up for the induction she didn’t want.
• In The system is broken if it doesn’t leave people whole – Part 1, Kenzie writes about the medical model of childbirth – I’d recommend browsing her blog for parts two, three and four as well.
• The blog Don’t Get Me Started has a wonderfully angry post titled Chop Shop, talking about what she sees in obstetric wards and why she would choose home birth.

Breastfeeding

• In Covering up is a feminist issue, PhDinParenting writes about the insistence by certain people that breastfeeding mothers ‘cover up’, and why this is an issue for all feminists, not just mothers.

Adoption

• Skylanda writes On the fetish-ization of Haitian orphans, talking about the problematic sudden surge of white would-be adopters of Haitian ‘orphans’ and the problems with orphanages.
• In Want to adopt a Haitian orphan? WAIT!,Veronica talks about the ten white USians who have been arrested for child trafficking out of Haiti, covering many of the same ideas.
• In The Dangerous Desire to Adopt Haitian Babies, Atlasien writes about her opinions as ‘a foster care adoptive parent’, on the topic of international adoption and specifically adoption from Haiti.

Education

• Ashley writes Female Students, Female Teachers, and Math Anxiety ? Oh My!, about the study that appears to show that girls learn maths anxiety from female teachers, and how this isn’t necessarily the case.
• In The Hands On Museum, Michelle Bell writes about her experience taking a young friend to the Ann Arbour Hands On Museum.
• In Wow, so Anne Frank was a girl?, BitcoDavid talks about the worrying news that the Diary Of Anne Frank has been banned in one Virginia school because of ‘sexual content’.

Sex Education

• In Get your hands off my daughter Tony Abbot (or what I will tell my child about virginity), Spilt Milk writes a beautiful letter to her daughter about her body, sex and virginity.
• Meloukhia asks that we Give Teens With Disabilities Access to Sexual Education, talking about the denial of sex education to teenagers with disabilities, reminding us that PWD have sexual feelings too.
• In The virgin diary, or: What Tony Abbott should have said to his teenage girls, Muliercula covers the same topic as Spilt Milk above, talking about Tony Abbott’s worrying opinions regarding virginity.
• Thomas writes It’s The Ears, talking about the ‘jokes’ other fathers make about their daughters’ virginity and his own response to them.

Disability

• In Do you REALLY trust women? AmandaW talks about the problematic lack of intersection between disabled rights and the pro-choice movement, specifically the problems with disabled parenthood/childhood.

Violence Against Women

• Marcella Chester writes about the Research On Link Between Pregnancy Coercion And Relationship Abuse, and talks about the lack of education on domestic violence when sexually educating teens.
• Cara has a heartbreaking post titled Court Ignores Man’s Domestic Violence Prior to Murder-Suicide, bringing us news of a man who killed himself and his infant son despite the child’s mother warning police of his violent tendencies.

Race

• Blue Milk writes Sunny, with a chance of racism, explaining an incident of racism her four-year-old had with one of her friends at the swimming pool.
• Laura Woodhouse has a piece titled Asylum seeker mothers fight to be reunited with their children, writing about asylum seeker mothers who have had to leave their children in their country of origin and are fighting for their right to join them in the UK.
• Tami asks Is a diverse environment enough to inoculate against racism?, with a post about trying to raise anti-racist children.
• The Independent on Sunday has an article titled Detaining children in Britain: No place for the innocent, about the horrible treatment of asylum seekers and in particular, their children.

Body Image

• Levi Pulkkinen has an article titled Charge: Parents didn’t want ‘fat’ baby, so they starved her, about parents so concerned about their infant daughter becoming obese that they starved her to the point of emaciation.

Gender Stereotypes

• Gina Crosley-Corcoran writes about her experience of her attempts at Raising an Equality-Minded Male, and asks her readers how they are attempting to do the same.
• Victoria Brooke Rodrigues says I feel neutral about gender-neutral parenting, with a post about the difficulties she’s had even from before her son was born in raising him outside of gender stereotypes.
• Mistress Mom writes a fabulous list of answers to the question “Why is your son wearing pink?“

Natural Parenting

• Woman, Uncensored has a post titled “Just let her cry” drawing a parallel between the ‘cry it out’ parenting method and what we’d think if someone treated a sick or disabled adult in the same way.

Mothers’ and Children’s Rights

• Stef has written a thoughtful and poignant list of 10 things you should never say to a stepmother.
• In Intersecting Needs: Maslow, interdependence, parenting, caregiving, relationships, PhDinParenting writes about the intersections between a child’s needs and a mother’s needs, and how to find a balance.
• In today’s kids… Boheime writes about how the children of today aren’t different but the society around them is, and why that’s actually a good thing.

Teaching Equality

• In Quantity time, Spilt Milk writes about how doing the ‘boring bits’ of parenting can be just as important for bonding with your child as doing the ‘fun bits’ is.
• Horry reminds us that Some mothers actually like bacon sandwiches, talking about her experiences of being a working mother and how that differs in people’s perceptions from being a working father.
• In Voices Of Men, CJ talks about how we teach our children, both male and female, about domestic violence.

That concludes this edition of the Carnival of Feminist Parenting. The next edition will be Sunday 14th March with a submission deadline of Sunday 7th March. Submit your (or someone else’s) blog article to the next edition by using our carnival submission form or sending the URL in an @ reply to @m4wl on Twitter. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival home page.