Greetings!

http://gowstakeout.com/author/admin/ Hello! Thanks to all who welcomed me in Liza’s post and greetings to our Lesbian Family readers. This will be in the way of an introductory post, we’ll get to the nitty gritty stuff in a week or two. I am very glad to be here and writing – first off though lets get one thing straight (ha), I am here to write for you and to write about what you want me to write. I have found in my vast procrastinatory surfing trips through the blogosphere that there are many, many fine quality parenting blogs and sites which offer information, advice, assvice, and general mouthing off by parents and non-parents about How to Raise Good Kids, How to Get Your Child to Sleep, Eat, Use the Potty and other subjects but I found very few that approach these issues with an eye to actual current child development research. The exception to this, unfortunately, is media type blogs or blogs that focus on media outlets and use press release type information. This is really too bad, because as we all probably know the media report about things they think will get them good ratings and/or whatever their corporate overlords order them to report about so sometimes the information presented is blown out of proportion, taken out of context or otherwise skewed. Please do not take this to include sites such as askmoxie or kellymom who present a great deal of research-based information along with anecdotal info and info from experienced parents. They are in a league of their own and shouldn’t be compared to media blogs. So, as an almost-parent and a specialist in child development I think there is room around for folks such as me to present research information for parents and other folks who care for children. I think that Lesbian Family is a great place to do this.

Alrighty, that said, who do I think I am? I live in the DC metro area. My partner and I have been together for six years. She works for Big Grassroots Queer Organization (not the one that owns it’s own multi-million dollar building in downtown DC but you know, that other one, the one that has been around for over 30 years) in fundraising. She walks the line between being “trans identified” and “gender-queer” and you’ll have to ask her what exactly that means and you might get a different answer on any given day. We have three fairly well-behaved but spoiled feline children. We had a very long trying to conceive process that culminated in 1.5 cycles of IVF and a pregnancy currently 21 weeks along. It is downright surreal after all we went through that there is now a baby girl thumping around in my belly. If you go to my personal blog and click on the fertilicoaster tag you will find all the details. We used a known donor who will be “special uncle” to our child(ren.) I am in a Phd program in Applied Developmental Psychology. This means that I am getting a research degree in psychology and human development with a focus on applied uses of that research and knowledge. I am not getting training to be a therapist or counselor or to do psychological testing. I am getting training in teaching and communicating research findings to policymakers, educators, administrators, and others who are interested in child development research. Most people with a degree like mine go into research either at a research consulting company or university. I intend to (eventually) do child advocacy work, policy work, or consulting. I finished all my classes last spring so now there is just that pesky dissertation to complete.

I have plenty to write about out of my own head, but I’d just love it if you would ask me questions. They can be related to stuff you are currently seeing in your own kids, stuff you are worried about for later, or about stuff you see reported on the news and wonder about or anything else related to human development. Supposedly I am qualified to teach all this stuff to undergrads, so test me!