Loco Parentis

  1. Aubrey Hirsch's previous Loco Parentis columns for The Butter can be found here. In June, I gave birth to a baby boy. His father, his big brother and I all welcomed him home together. He is pink and perfect. And he’s my last baby. Even through the electronic ether of cyberspace I can feel you tearing up at those words, those incredibly loaded words: LAST BABY. But please don’t. I’m not sad. I’m not…

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  2. Aubrey Hirsch's previous Loco Parentis columns for The Butter can be found here. From time to time, these think pieces appear in which some new dad explains how, now that he has a daughter, he totally understands the need for feminism. I used to hate them. It really irked me that these men could be so callous and dismissive toward their mothers, sisters, friends, romantic partners, co-workers, and the other-half-of-the-population in general until they had…

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  3. Aubrey Hirsch's previous Loco Parentis columns for The Butter can be found here. Look, it’s not rocket science. Pregnant people just want to be treated like people. But too often, I’ve found that my distended belly somehow signifies open season on body commentary and intrusive questions from strangers. With close friends and family members, I don’t mind talking about my pregnancy. But sometimes I just want to get in and out of the drug…

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  4. Aubrey Hirsch's previous Loco Parentis columns for The Butter can be found here. The toughest emotional moments of motherhood for me are always the “firsts.” My son had an ear infection when he was two weeks old and it was the first time I couldn’t calm him down by bringing him to my breast. I remember thinking, this is the first time he’s coming to me for comfort and I’m not fixing the problem.

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  5. Aubrey Hirsch's previous Loco Parentis columns for The Butter can be found here. Did anyone else’s Facebook feed get completely overrun by this terrifying video of one man’s social experiment on children and strangers? Mine did, and I spent a solid hour being completely horrified by it. In the video, a man with a puppy asks mothers at the park if they talk to their kids about strangers. The parents all say yes, and…

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  6. Previous Loco Parentis columns can be found here. Before I had my son, I was never very good with kids. They’re like these weird, short people who don’t make any sense, don’t follow social cues, and are somehow always sticky. They’re unpredictable. Sometimes they scream and hide if you make eye contact with them and sometimes they want to sit on your lap before they even know your name. This is all to say,…

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  7. Previous Loco Parentis columns can be found here. It’s better if I just get that on the table right away. The truth is, I really, really don’t care about birth. I’m not interested in the details of my own birth, I don’t want to talk about my son’s birth, or my second kid’s upcoming birth, and I definitely don’t want to spend any of my time pretending to listen to the details of someone…

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  8. Aubrey Hirsch's Loco Parentis columns for The Butter can be found here. I was talking on the phone with my friend the other day, telling her about a particularly tough day home with my son. Everyone in our house was sick and I’m super-pregnant and as much as I wish I could be an endless fountain of patience…I am decidedly not. Trying to cut to the chase about how the day had gone, I…

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  9. Previous Loco Parentis columns can be found here. I recently spent some time paging through my copy of What to Expect the First Year, the holy bible of advice when it comes to keeping your infant alive until its first birthday. Looking at those pages brought me right back to the experience of day-to-day care of a new baby. It’s exhausting and joyful and horrifying. It often brought me to the brink of my…

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  10. Aubrey Hirsch's previous Loco Parentis columns for The Butter can be found here. Let me start by explaining that I have a bit of an empathy problem. I have a lot of it. Way too much. When I was a little kid, my sister pretended that my favorite doll had a broken leg and I felt sick to my stomach for a week. Once a stuffed animal I won at a carnival flew out…

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  11. Aubrey Hirsch's previous Loco Parentis columns can be found here. In my experience, the question you get asked most often when you’re pregnant is “When are you due?” It’s almost reflexive. Someone sees your distended belly, offers their congratulations and then, without hesitation, asks, “When are you due?” When I was pregnant with my son, I didn’t really mind this question. I found it mildly annoying (like I do most pregnancy-related questions), but not…

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  12. Previous Loco Parentis columns can be found here. I’m currently pregnant with my second child and I thought I’d heard every pregnancy comment and fielded every pregnancy question that existed. But I was wrong. This will be our last baby and when people learn that, they sometimes say something like, “I hope it’s a girl.” We don’t actually know the sex of this baby yet, but my first child is a son. He’s healthy…

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  13. Previous Loco Parentis columns can be found here. If there’s one thing I never thought I’d be, it’s a mommy-blogger. I’ve clicked my way onto more than a few mom-blogs during frantic, middle-of-the-night Google searches. While they were sometimes helpful, I always left with the weird, unpleasant feeling that I’d just been party to some kind of child exploitation. I can’t help but notice that some of these blog kids are living in their…

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  14. Dear Childfree Person, I am writing to you to share some vital information that has only become available to me in the last couple of years, since I became a parent. Before that, I was subjected to the same saccharine clichés from parents that you are undoubtedly hearing over and over again. You’re probably being told, like I was, that you never really love until you become a parent. You’re probably hearing a lot about…

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  15. It’s almost Christmas and all over the Internet, mom blogs are filling up with gift guides for babies. You’ve seen these. They’re packed with affiliate links and, therefore, stocked with the priciest and most instagrammable versions of things you might typically buy for a child. Gifts like this $167 hoodie. For a baby. And these $60 shoes sized for a non-walker. And this $198 rag doll. You read that right. Who in…

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