How Baby

Like most people, I live in a capitalist hellscape that’s imperfectly compatible with raising children. Momo’s been going to daycare since she was 17mo, which is an unthinkable luxury for many who have to send their kids to daycare as early as six weeks! Understandably, the decision to put your kids in daycare is pretty emotional. You go from literally carrying them inside your body to entrusting them to someone else? Yikes.

Something that I hear a lot when people are talking about their decision is this idea that daycare is the undesirable option because it’s ‘letting a stranger raise your child.’ Which, as someone who’s relied on daycare this long, makes me want to butt in like, WELL ACTUALLY…

The idea is ridiculous to me, because our daycare provider hasn’t been a stranger to us since the day we met. She’s a trained professional, no more a stranger than a doctor or a pharmacist I trust; she’s cared for more children than anyone else I know. When I couldn’t find my butt with two hands, parenting-wise, she gave advice – for a while, I could pretty confidently say that she was a better caregiver than we were, on the basis of experience alone.

When we chose daycare, we chose someone to be an extension of ourselves. I think it’s disrespectful to the profession and to parents like us to think of that person as a stranger!

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Just a few announcements, one small, one big; the small one is a reminder that I’ll be at Boston Comic Con this weekend, table A209, August 11-13! I’ve never been to Boston, so maybe if you’re a Boston person, come say hi!

The big announcement is:

How Baby is teaming up with the Aspen Tyke Traveler, a diaper bag that blew me away when I saw it. It’s being made by engineers who are parents, and wanted the kind of diaper bag that could get you through a zombie apocalypse (and I said, hell yeah). When they hit their stretch goal of $15k, every bag is going to come with a free How Baby zine inside!

There’s just over a week left in their Kickstarter, so check it out if you want to get it before everyone else; it’ll be available for retail after the first run, but it’s always good for creators to get that support early! Plus, there’ll be some new How Baby stuff in there, and an instruction manual by Randy of Something Positive (omg).