Radical Fatherhood in the 21st Century

     I wanted to take a moment to congratulate my friend, editor, and fellow Rad Dad Tomas for all his hard work over the past several years on Rad Dad out of Berkeley. Rad Dad won Utne's 'Zine of the Year in 2010, Best of the Bay in 2011, and came to print as a book this year as well.

     I'm proud to have written for half a dozen issues of the 'zine. Keep up the good work Tomas!     

And this is a nice little project I just found recently:

Re-post from From the blog Cuntastic.org:

Just wanted to give a shout out to a fabulous rad-parent-zinester across the oceans over in Fiji, Lara at Tricycle Zine Distro!  We’re thrilled that CUNTastic is now being distro’d by Tricycle, along with other titles that are the backbone of any radical parenting library.

Here’s some info about her 3 new exciting projects:

Tricycle Zine Distro was created to distribute and inspire the writing of radical parent/ing* zines and other zines/resources useful to parents, caregivers and allies. 

Building Blocs Zine: parenting, movement and little folk is a compilation zine of radical parenting* challenges, experiences and reflections.  The zine is open to contributions from parents, caregivers, children and allies .The theme for the inaugural issue is “Firsts.”

Raising Rebellion is a zine I started writing when I was pregnant. I wrote the first issue to share with my unborn fetus, family, friends and friendly folk. My plan is to keep writing as life with Ruby unfolds.

*Radical Parenting is an imperfect term and is meant here as inclusive and diverse – an exploration of parenting styles that value respect, trust, autonomy, diversity, non-oppression, learning, love and revolution.

For more info, or to submit a piece for the upcoming issue of Building Blocs, or if you have a zine or resource you’d like to distro through Tricycle, email Lara atutopia@riseup.net.

Rad Dad Book Release!

Congrats to Tomas and the whole crew of us writers behind Rad Dad for several awards in the past couple years and for the recent release of Rad Dad, the book! I'm excited to see what we can muster next! Long live Rad Dad, Daddy Dialectic, Pirate Papa, 'Zines and Parent-Bloggers! ~

From the PM Press website:

"Rad Dad: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Fatherhood combines the best pieces from the award-winning zineRad Dad and from the blog Daddy Dialectic, two kindred publications that have tried to explore parenting as political territory. Both of these projects have pushed the conversation around fathering beyond the safe, apolitical focus most books and websites stick to; they have not been complacent but have worked hard to create a diverse, multi-faceted space in which to grapple with the complexity of fathering.

Today more than ever, fatherhood demands constant improvisation, risk, and struggle. With grace and honesty and strength, Rad Dad’s writers tackle all the issues that other parenting guides are afraid to touch: the brutalities, beauties, and politics of the birth experience, the challenges of parenting on an equal basis with mothers, the tests faced by transgendered and gay fathers, the emotions of sperm donation, and parental confrontations with war, violence, racism, and incarceration. Rad Dad is for every father out in the real world trying to parent in ways that are loving, meaningful, authentic, and ultimately revolutionary.

Contributors Include:

Steve Almond, Jack Amoureux, Mike Araujo, Mark Andersen, Jeff Chang, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jeff Conant, Sky Cosby, Jason Denzin, Cory Doctorow, Craig Elliott, Chip Gagnon, Keith Hennessy, David L. Hoyt, Simon Knapus, Ian MacKaye, Tomas Moniz, Zappa Montag, Raj Patel, Jeremy Adam Smith, Jason Sperber, Burke Stansbury, Shawn Taylor, Tata, Jeff West, and Mark Whiteley."

www.Undergroundparent.com & Caveman Parenting

Props to Underground Parent for leading me to this article on Primitive Parenting.

Radical Parenting

Just noticed that my blog made it on the Radical Parenting Wikipedia page! Ahhh, fame and fortune are sure to soon follow.

But seriously, what's wrong with me? I thought I was a writer but these past few years have been rather pathetic. Stay tuned though, as I have an interview in the works with Bill Ayers, yes of the Weather Underground, on parenting, counterculture and educating for social justice. Between this and Last Earth Distro I'm sure to make it on some terrorist watch lists. I just hope they'll still let me fly to Hawaii.

Two nice sites recently unearthed

http://greatgreenbaby.com/

http://organicbaby.co.nz/

Green Baby Blog

I applied for a job but no luck so far... looks like she's got the site up and running though. Welcome to the club. I must have been a little too radical for her. Or maybe my kind of green is a touch damper than hers. Ahhh, the 'Clean Green' parents, how I love to sit back and chuckle as they scramble over eco-friendly household cleaning products while I grab a big jug of vinegar and get the hell out of Fred Meyer, conveniently 'forgetting' it under my orange shopping cart/toddler car.

Who's Your Daddy? - Best Daddy and Papa Blogs of 2006

Knew about a lot of these but a few were new to me.

Getting ready to go to Walla Walla for four days with my girls and Hannah, been full to brimming with gardening and personal emotional realignment, a little surgery from the inside out. Being in a relationship again so soon, even a good one, strains me at times. I find myself scared without knowing why, a smell I can place but not locate. I trudge through the monotony of chores and bills, checks and balancing acts, searching the small stuff for some substance to shore up my sore heart and patch me through 'til tomorrow.

My hard-copy zine of Pirate Papa got reviewed in Green Anarchy's magazine. Not a very good review, but Zerzan gave me a good word after Felonious Skunk wound his way through a long-winded, self-deprecating piece of boredom. I took offense at first but then I just felt sorry for him. He's a new father and doesn't think fathers are interesting? Watch out buddy. You're in for a ride. Any publicity is good publicity in my opinion and if you don't like my work then don't waste your time reading it.

Even if I didn't like his review I suppose I've taken a few tips from it and changed the attitude of Pirate Papa a bit, less journaling and more journalism as of late. Then again, maybe that's just due to the fact that my time has been swallowed whole by spring and the world and the beauty encapsulated within a toddler's blossoming eyes and big, big mouth.

A few links I've turned up in my internet travels:

Dads & Daughters - WE ARE the only organization dedicated to maximizing the power and potential of father-daughter relationships. We support fathers and stepfathers no matter where they are. We work hard to make a better life for every girl.

WE BELIEVE that all dads and daughters benefit when fathers and stepfathers actively and deeply engage in the lives of their daughters and help transform the pervasive cultural messages that devalue girls and women.

Divorced Dads Matter - Practical Information and Support for Divorced and Divorcing Dads

Good Parenting Resolutions

Family Pride is the national non-profit organization committed to securing family equality for all loving families, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer parents, guardians and allies. Our work consists of strategically linked initiatives—broad in scope, but simple in vision—love, justice, family, equality. We make change. We share information. We build community. We are visible.

Revolutionary Childcare

Very interesting, thanks for the link Blog Green.

...Organizing themselves and imagining strategies to defeat the Architects of Despair was not an easy task for these mamas. They came from different places and spoke different languages. Sora was from Chile; Olivia was a black woman whose family lived in Bushwick for as long as she could remember; Celia was from Ecuador, and there were other mamas who came from around the world. Despite their differences, they created a new organization called Pachamama: the Bushwick Childcare Cooperative.

Pachamama means something like “Mother Earth” in Aymara, an Incan language. It was a good name because it reflected the Latin American roots of many of the mothers, yet still had the word “mama” in it, so people who spoke English could understand the name too. With a room full of toys and games in the Sista II Sista office, and with lots of determination, they invited more mamas to join them in raising their children together…Read More...

And another article on the same topic from Zapagringo.

More links and articles:

Regeneración Childcare NYC is a network of awesome childcare volunteers in New York City. We provide childcare to facilitate the participation of low-income mothers of color in building movements for collective liberation.

How Collective Childcare Liberated Women in Maoist China

Children of Che: Childcare and education in Cuba - An interesting book I came across awhile back.

Community Child Care Co-operative is a not-for-profit organisation established in 1978 to promote, support and advocate for quality children’s services, meeting the needs of children, their families and the community. - God, Australia is so cool.

Sustainable Sex Toys - A Revolution Between the Sheets

Now this is what I'm talkin' about. Living in Olympia, I know a lot of girls who have gone glass... but they usually espoused local economy or support-your-local-glass-blower reasoning, not enviro/health/what the hell am I putting in my cooter? logic. There are a ton of links on these various articles too for the blossoming green-kink in all of us. Solar vibrators? Sweet. Thanks to Treehugger, we now have a few alternatives to choose from:

How to Buy a Green Sex Toy - So you eat organic veggies, drive a hybrid, and use eco-friendly detergent? What about sex toys? Make sure you are sitting comfortably to learn about what chemicals you may be taking to bed with you. Do you dare to go green between your organic sheets? TreeHuggerTV gets the sweet lowdown with a report inspired by writer Emily Gertz. The phthalates found in traditional sex toys can cause cancer, damage our reproductive systems, impair sperm, and damage the planet. Watch the vox pops in the streets as people realise that the objects they’ve been using to pleasure themselves and their partners might have longer terms effects on their bodies than they wanted. Carolyn Riccardi, Education Coordinator at Babeland, gives us a tour of PVC-free green sex toys that keep us sexy and healthy. Love the earth while you make love!

Sustainable Sex Toys - For treehuggers, it can be hard to get through the day without guilty, pre-occupied micro-decisions. You might regretfully take a cab rather than the bus, or grab Styrofoam take-away instead of just sitting down and eating from a plate. In the bedroom, it can be an accomplishment to wade through all of the cultural pollutants and just enjoy ambivalence-free pleasures. So, once you’ve happily integrated one into your life, who wants to worry about a carcinogenic dildo? Or non-biodegradable paddles whose ultimate punishment will mean an eternity of landfill stink? Not sexy. We have assembled an array of toys and info for you and your partner(s) in crime! Be sure and let us know what we’ve missed.


How to Green Your Sex Life - Whether you’re single and playing the field, settled down with that special someone, or someplace in between, most of us consider good, satisfying, sexy sex an important part of this complete breakfast. It might not be the first thing we think of while working towards a sustainable and graceful life on this fragile planet, but there’s a lot we can do to make our sex lives greener. In the process of greening the ecological footprint of our love making, we might also open up some new doors to deeper pleasure, satisfaction, and romantic connection.

Naughty by Nature: Ever thought about the toxins in your sex toys? - Many popular erotic toys are made of polyvinyl chlorides (PVC) -- plastics long decried by eco-activists for the toxins released during their manufacture and disposal -- and softened with phthalates, a controversial family of chemicals. These include invitingly soft "jelly" or "cyberskin" items, which have grown popular in the last decade or so, says Carol Queen, Ph.D., "staff sexologist" for the San Francisco-based adult toy boutique Good Vibrations. "It's actually difficult for a store today to carry plenty of items and yet avoid PVC," Queen says. "Its use has gotten pretty ubiquitous among the large purveyors, because it's cheap and easy to work with."

Babble: A Magazine and Community for the New Urban Parent

Okay, so I found this via my vicarious friend Sarah of Sarah and the Goon Squad and it is hands down the coolest site I've come across in the last while. So here, have some highlights:

Strollerderby- the blog at Babble for which Sarah writes.

Is Wall-Mart Too Evil for Parents?

Parent Blogosphere Focus: Meet the GLBT Parents

Angsty is the New Happy: Parents Eschew Therapy for Blogging

Junk Food Ads Contribute to Childhood Obesity. In Other News, Pope is Catholic.

Just some old laundry I found lying around...

Baby Gadget

scarleht crying and wanting mama to come back to papa’s home

“becca and papa, owie” – lyl

a day of easy lines elliciting hard thoughts

“goodnight fire in the book” – s, referring to the fireplace in Goodnight Moon

they care more about their pillows than they do which side of the bed they’re on

“papa hurt inside”

“papa no read books” - goddamn, this one made me run in the laundry room and cry while pretending to turn the dryer on.

there’s nobody that wouldn’t hurt you if it helped them

funny how yer smile opens the parentheses

the tuba is the only instrument which can approximate a distress call

“As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don't hate nothing at all
Except hatred.

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred.” – Bobby D.

Links and Crap

Neal Pollack's Alternadad

Modern Tots - Cool, but ridiculously overpriced. I spit on anyone who spends this much money on this kind of junk. Get a hammer and grow some balls.

Diversity, Culture & Parenting - a study by the University of California's Cooperative Extension

My Little Cthulhu vinyl doll

Spain Dad's Blog

Daddy Zine

Wooden Toys from the UK

Babies go green: Parents thinking organic when it comes to infant food, clothes

The Parenting Manifesto Project

Thanks Embassy of Arcturus!

"One of the more interesting bloggers out there is Hugh MacLeod from gapingvoid.com (occasionally NSFW). Lately, he's been calling for manifestos of 500 words or less on any topic and posting some of the more interesting ones. It's a fascinating effort, and a wonderful way to spread wisdom.

I'd love to reproduce some of that wisdom-sharing. While my stab at a parenting manifesto is below, it should be pretty obvious to all of you that I don't have the market cornered on parenting advice. So I'd like to tap into the wisdom of all of you: e-mail me (at rebeldad+manifesto@gmail.com) a manifesto of no more than 500 words (on any parenting/balance topic you can think of), and I'll post them all at rebeldad.com/manifesto.html"

"When Men Are Involved In the Care of Their Own Infants the Cultures Do Not Make War"

Food for thought in the double-oughts, here's to 2007

Why Do We Dress Our Daughters Like Skanks?

Lactating men video! Courtesy of Mama's Big Old Blog

World Sex Laws

The Home Realm - This lady is pretty radical!

And a bunch of cool shit from Daddy Types:

When Men Are Involved In the Care of Their Own Infants the Cultures Do Not Make War

A Soldier Dad's Journal to His Son

Germany engineers a family-friendly car-free community!

Fatherhood Statistics & Links

Not too much to report. Exhausted from kids and work and erratic schedule and wild mind. Going to Walla Walla to work a bit of the Christmas rush at Earthlight Books, my father's shop. Hope to get a bit of more academic, serious research and writing done while I'm there but I've also learned not to get my hopes up, especially around X-mas time, who knows what wayward souls will blow home for the holidays? Working Last Word Books with Eamon and Lyli and Scarleht tomorrow if anyone happens to be in the vicinity of downtown Olympia and needs a fix of my fine-ass ladies.

A few sites I dug up:


Seattle Dads
Old article on Seattle dad's group.
Northwest Baby.com - 'eh', it makes me make that sound.
Solid Indiana Fatherhood Initiative Program

Father Facts pamphlet you can order, out of which the following is excerpted:

Top Ten Father Facts

1. 24 million children (34 percent) live absent their biological father.

2. Nearly 20 million children (27 percent) live in single-parent homes.

3. 1.35 million births (33 percent of all births) in 2000 occurred out of wedlock.

4. 43 percent of first marriages dissolve within fifteen years; about 60 percent of divorcing couples have children; and approximately one million children each year experience the divorce of their parents.

5. Over 3.3 million children live with an unmarried parent and the parent's cohabiting partner. The number of cohabiting couples with children has nearly doubled since 1990, from 891,000 to 1.7 million today.

6. Fathers who live with their children are more likely to have a close, enduring relationship with their children than those who do not. The best predictor of father presence is marital status. Compared to children born within marriage, children born to cohabiting parents are three times as likely to experience father absence, and children born to unmarried, non-cohabiting parents are four times as likely to live in a father-absent home.

7. About 40 percent of children in father-absent homes have not seen their father at all during the past year; 26 percent of absent fathers live in a different state than their children; and 50 percent of children living absent their father have never set foot in their father's home.

8. Children who live absent their biological fathers are, on average, at least two to three times more likely to be poor, to use drugs, to experience educational, health, emotional and behavioral problems, to be victims of child abuse, and to engage in criminal behavior than their peers who live with their married, biological (or adoptive) parents.

9. From 1960 to 1995, the proportion of children living in single-parent homes tripled, from 9 percent to 27 percent, and the proportion of children living with married parents declined. However, from 1995 to 2000, the proportion of children living in single-parent homes slightly declined, while the proportion of children living with two married parents remained stable.

10. Children with involved, loving fathers are significantly more likely to do well in school, have healthy self-esteem, exhibit empathy and pro-social behavior, and avoid high-risk behaviors such as drug use, truancy, and criminal activity compared to children who have uninvolved fathers.

Indigenous Fatherhood project in Victoria, British Columbia

Randominities #067k

Strange happenings the other night while carousing with Eamon and Afton... Eamon had, merely hours before, reminded us that it was December 7^th and the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. While we were sitting around after dinner playing adult games I started going through a stack of comic book promotional posters I snagged from the back room of my father’s bookstore last trip. Lo and behold, halfway down the stack was a copy of...drumroll...The Honolulu Star-Bulletin 2^nd Extra from Sunday, December 7^th, 1941, an eight page news supplement focused on the disaster unfolding. Crazy shit huh?

Just received my 4000^th hit on pirate papa (since installing the counter a little less than a year ago). 3,000 of those hits in the last six months alone. My buddy Ben over at Honky Tonk Dragon just made his first few bucks off adsense or some such advertising. Makes me think... I mean shit, I don’t like consumerism, but if I can choose the ads I definitely wouldn’t mind getting paid to work on my blog. Fuh-gid about it.

Eamon gets home at 4:45 in the morning to my insomniac ass cracking out on the computer. He weaves a very sad tale about a meth-addicted mother he befriended years ago and how he ran into her father in the 4^th Ave Tav tonight and had a regretful blast from the past. I listen and share what few words I can muster.

Gotta be movin’ in a few hours here, girls into Steph, maybe a late morning nap at el bookstore-o. Hopefully this weekend I will travel to the far-off mystic lands of Seattle with Luke to see that Bodies Exhibition and the Dead Sea Scrolls!

Don’t know why I haven’t written anything about it yet, but the 2^nd Papa Party was great! Still small but twice the size of last time (three times, counting little wobblers), the 2^nd papa party was a casual hoot! Myself, my business partner Dave, Jason and his daughter Aurora, and Rob and his son Ezra all attended at Traditions Fair Trade Cafe last Saturday night for almost an hour and a half. Dave and I were sans children so part of the time was of course spent chasing little ones around Traditions, playing drums and sporadically talking about local politics, parent groups, food, kids, partners, our own parents, and future meetings of our fatherly minds.

My buddy Aaron Wesley officially became a father yesterday, little Noah popped out at NINE AND A HALF POUNDS and 20 3/4 in. Jesus. I mean, I know I had, like shrunken pygmy preemy twin babies but damn, that’s a big kid! So Congrats all around Aaron and fam-damily.

more links!

Divorce & Custody

A Kid's Right

Joint Custody and Shared Parenting

Shared Parenting Works

Fathers & Families

Men's Activism

for forever, love now

There is not such thing as darkness; only a failure to see.
--Muggeridge

Fog rolls in from the cow pasture this morning, up and over the creek splashing with exhausted salmon whose hides are spotted with experience. I revel in this morning's waffle-dance (even though we have no waffles) and listen to Lyli talk about "when me ah beeg gurhl ah cut appo wita nife." Scarleht talks at great length about the "pah-kit" of her "fwooyoo" (sweater). We move into "five anananados!" (five things colored orange as we begin to pick up Spanish left and right). Lyli complains that her socks are not working, then talks about yesterday when Scarleht threw a fit and didn't want to clean up her toys. Lylis says with utmost seriousness: "Lyli no cwy, lyli toys away" and punctuates it with her affirmative, headstrong single nod.

In other news I aimlessly, doggedly trudge onward, though the monotony of freedom sometimes stifles in ways you wouldn't imagine. I change hats to improve my despondency, smoke a fancy cigarette and watch the groundsquirrels and chickadees dance across the landscape of our cold, wet yard. Friends seem few and far between, even when perched next to me for a spell. When you only have little pieces of yourself to portion out it narrows your opportunities a bit. Or sequesters them to dark barrooms on those nights when part of me pretends I'm not a father. Other people seem to move so much faster than me, their emotions granted more time to work themselves out and evolve. With the passing days comes an increasing, encroaching loneliness I attempt to quell with cheap beer to little avail. I tell myself that crutches come and go in phases and that everything will be okay. I space out and don't listen to myself. I wonder about far away friends living out fantasy lives even though I know they feel as stagnant and small and forgotten as I do.

In the Pacific Northwest, this seems to be a seasonal ineptitude, our collective bioregional funk that starts to settle in around October and finally lifts her gloomy mantle whenever little miss spring gets around to pulling up her skirts enough for us to spy a little ankle and sink our hands back in her still cold soils with images of cherry tomatoes and strawberries driving us onward.

Changing hats works a bit, as does the thought of tea. I abandon my sorry self and start to sort out this dreamless day replete with routine duties. To that end, peruse some links, o gentle distant readers of my little world:

The Porn Myth

Naked Man Smokes Crack and Gets Attacked by an 11-foot Alligator

Christian Groups to Boycott Hate-Based Video Game Based on that Nutjob Tim LaHeye's Left Behind Series - YES!!!!! Thank you Jay-sus!

Green, Socially Responsible Gift Giving

The Fable Game: DIY Storybook

2006 10 Worst Toys List

Just Plain Awesome

Dwarfist, Deaf Parents Down With PGD

Eating Chocolate Reduces Risks of Miscarriage!!!

Captain Picard Sings the Alphabet Song

McSweeney's Has Kids Books!

2xy.org - Just a cool dude runnin' a cool site

Culture Seed

Disenfranchised Father

Disenfranchised Father Syndrome

"Be it thy course to being giddy minds with foreign quarrels." - Little Billy Shakes

links, shits, comix, eighteenth century midget poetry and wildlife drunk on rotten pears

last night scarleht naked standing in the brisk air saying "goo-night sun"
before bedtime i am informed by twin mouths that the fire is sleeping

this morning after cereal and scramble
taking a dump in my bathroom in the dark perusing canadian pornographic beaver comix and playing footsie with four tiny feet

abandon self-consciousness that my aunt reads my blog, for it's a cool, cruel, crude world

british techno-pop over daily blogging routine
coyotes and deer in my orchard harmoniously eating the fallen pears I watch drop over the course of the day

reading My Name is Rachel Corrie, an Incredible Hulk comic book (that quite frankly sucks, the old stuff was great but this new storyline blows), and flicking my mind across Alexander Pope's incredible poetry (even though he was only four feet tall).

some links for y'all:

Gene-Engineered Food
Duh, cell phones eat holes in your brain and give you CANCER
Average American home has more televisions than people
What getting emergency contraception is like
Flouride delays eruption of new teeth!
Custom I-pod baby stroller - give me a fuckin' break
Teaching the kid her NBCs - the glories of our corporate culture
Rainbow Babies - resource for LGBT parents and parents to be

More from one radical papa's internet-mining as soon as my computer stops overheating.

another link in the chain

i listen to pears drop into the tall grass beneath the east orchard
i can almost smell the thin wisps of buttermilk clouds as the moon cuts through them, her dusty harvest yellow edge round and full and sharp against this midnight blue

links of the day, a bit more political than I usually post on this blog but I wanted to liven things up a bit and piss a few people off:
Caiman Bedtime Story from Olympia! - How punk is this?

Diamond Companies Lie, attempt to bolster image in the face of increasing criticism. Oh, and fuck all you people with diamond wedding and engagement rings, I hope you enjoy having the blood of innocent people wrapped around your finger to symbolize your imperialistic, priviliged "union".

Go Oly Anti-War Activists!

How to protect your children from the deranged killer monster Olympia raccoons. (This is not a joke.)

The CIA, Guantanamo, & Bush's tiny truths - or, why the fuck don't people pay attention the first time horrible things happen?

Secret History of the CIA & Guatemala: 1952-1954

70% of 9-11 Responders Suffer Lung Ailments - or, tell me again how absolutely safe it was and how absolutely necessary it was to re-open Wall Street. Tell me again how illegal it is to tamper with a crime scene (read: cleaning the entire thing up and selling the scrap to China). Go to hell Uncle Sam.

Parents demand speed for their kids - This one's scary as all get-out.

little article on the benefits of a bilingual upbringing

The The Juvenilizing Evolution of Mickey Mouse - This one kicks ass.

'Flat-Daddy' Cut-Outs for Military Families - OH...MY...GOD...

Childbirth in Rural Ethiopia

Don't want kids? Crank up that heated seat and toast those little spermies!

A Mama Blogs in Rafah!!! Yes!

Anarchist FAQ on Crime, Police & Prisons

Anarchist Economics for the 21st Century

Abolish CPS Blog - interesting...

Fatherhood Statistics:
Divorce & Fatherhood
InnocentDads.org Stats