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

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"

One of the greatest breakthroughs in anarchist theory and practice first appeared six years ago, and hardly any anarchists even know of its existence. Not only that, but most of the anarchists who do know of its existence either disregard it or dismiss it with comments containing hierarchical and authoritarian language. I am referring to the philosophy and practice known as Taking Children Seriously or TCS.

Taking Children Seriously is an educational and parenting philosophy which uses Karl Popper's views on epistemology, critical rationalism and a belief in fallibilism to reach a conclusion that coercion of any form is bad for the growth of knowledge and psychologically damaging to people, especially children. From this conclusion, Taking Children Seriously creates the framework for a methodology through which parents can cooperate with their children to find mutually preferable solutions to problems and disagreements that arise between them.Read More...

For the third year running, local Boston holiday shoppers have been entertained by selections from the Radical Carols Songbook, from favorites like 'away in a sweatshop' to 'song for the one percent.' BAAM began the caroling season by going out Friday, December 12th. The group was in high spirits and was even able to convince a few passerbys to join in the festivities. Then a week later, two representatives of the BAAM Radical Choir stepped into a studio at MIT's WMBR 88.1 FM to record an hour long set for Dave Goodman from the Independent Broadcast Information Service. Segments will be played on the air and a CD copy will be available soon! Look for it on our information table. Everyone is encouraged to print out the songbook and head off to make their own radical caroling adventure!
http://baamboston.org/archive/propaganda/Radical_Christmas_Carols.pdf

Recently I attended the Permanent Autonomous Zone conference in Louisville, KY where I participated in my first parenting workshop. Even though I go to several conferences a year, this was the first time I saw a parenting workshop offered. Unfortunately, it wasn't even scheduled, but was a guerrilla workshop set up by a mama from Detroit. Why did it take so long for me to come upon a workshop like this? Why is it that a bunch of self proclaimed anarchists in this "movement" for social and political change are not prioritizing family and community?

I am the mother of a 3-year-old kid, miss Anaya Cassidy Kelly. Anaya goes with me almost everywhere. She is by my side at meetings, workshops, benefits, during volunteering, demos, consciousness raisings, protests and other events. You name it, and if I was there, chances are Anaya was too. That kid has sat through the most annoying and frustrating of consensus-based meetings where even I was whiny and tired by the end. Anaya has to put up with a lot having an activist as a mama.

This is complicated by the fact that she has a mama who is working within a "movement" that tends to marginalize both the parents and children within it. Often I am left with the feeling that, within the anarchist community, kids are seen as fun little things to have around as long as someone else takes care of them and they don't inconvenience people by taking them away from the "real work" they could be doing. The amount of cluelessness and hypocrisy that we, as parents, find ourselves surrounded by as we struggle to both work for change and raise our kids is astounding. We must do our work in a "movement" not inclusive of children.

Locally, this plays out in several ways, including how children are treated, how child care is handled and the unrelentless judgement passed on the hardworking folks who are parenting, I would like to think that these problems just apply to my local community, but in conversations with parents from different parts of the country there are definite patterns in the ways that children and families are looked at and treated in our supposedly "radical" communities...Read More...