Parenting for Liberation

Before the lockdown, those of us who are parents were thinking about how we could supplement or shift our kids’ education and exposure to cultivate their taste for liberation. Now we are thinking not just about them and their continued growth, but also about how this can be an opportunity to change ourselves.

Rather than simply yowling for a return to normalcy like so many of the voices coming out of popular media, we wonder about how can we use this time to experiment with the ways and locations in which we do and don’t parent. We think about what we mean by “good education” or “great teacher”, and continue to explore and get creative about how we make time and space for our full selves. Here are some cool and helpful things we’ve stumbled across along the way:

Parenting for Liberation for podcast – episode 31 (with adrienne maree brown and dani mcclain) is particularly dope!

Parenting is Political – blog for progressive and radical parents

Unconditional Parenting – this classic by Alfie Kohn is all the more critical as we find ourselves in this moment where people seem more ready than ever to talk about ways to extract police and policing out of our communities and reimagine how we hold each other accountable without turning people out into the cold.

The Conscious Kid – website link to more good resources for

Rooted Kids – a very cool website by radical NYC kindergarten teacher, Laleña Garcia

Crisis Nursery – this is an amazing project I heard about that provides 24-hour emergency care for children and support to strengthen families in crisis. It is open 24 hours, 365 days a year for the entire community to access with no fees or income eligibility. I would love to be part of helping to start this sort of thing in NYC if it doesn’t already exist.

_{about the image: Here, at a village on Rarotonga, principal island of the group, a district nurse speaks to mothers and children on the importance of a balanced diet for the health. (1965) By Photographer: Unknown – https://ndhadeliver.natlib.govt.nz/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE25799650, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89425520}