Family Pride’s Blog

This Sunday is Mother’s Day - a national day of celebration, recognizing the contributions of moms across the country.

As we write this, children in schools everywhere are busy gluing glitter to construction paper and writing poems for their mothers. While this is indeed a fantastic way to celebrate, it can also have some not-so-fantastic implications for some families.

How so? Consider 4-year-old Jessie, who has two dads. Jessie’s kindergarten class spent the afternoon talking about the great things that their moms do and creating artwork for Mother’s Day. When it was Jessie’s turn to talk about his mom, he didn’t know what to say. Jessie went home with a big “I love you, mom!” card for his two dads. His dads didn’t know how to handle the situation or what went wrong.

Instances like this occur all the time. Too many of our families are marginalized by gendered holidays and well-intentioned but ill-prepared schools. So how do we fix it?

It’s a big issue. First, we need to know how to talk to our children about our families. Download Family Pride’s Talking to Our Children resource and use it to jump-start conversations with your children. Second, know how to talk to your schools about being inclusive of all loving families. Download, print out and read Opening Doors, Opening More Doors and the Back to School Tool. Share them with your school community. Third, be as out as you can safely be. Had Jessie’s dads been visible and present to the teacher, the teacher would have had the tools to approach the situation differently.

Of course, the same is true for Father’s Day.

At Family Pride, instead of celebrating Mother’s or Father’s Day, we celebrate Parents Day. In 1994, Bill Clinton signed into law a resolution establishing the fourth Sunday of every July National Parents Day. On this day, we celebrate the contributions of all parents, regardless of gender, and recognize that families come in many different shapes and sizes.

What do you think? How do you celebrate your family?