“Social Justice Parenting offers guidance and grace for parents who want to teach their children how to create a fair and inclusive world.”—Diane Debrovner, deputy editor of Parents magazine “Replete with excellent examples and advice that can help parents raise children with a healthy self-image and regard for the welfare of others."—Jane E. Brody, New York Times An empowering, timely guide to raising anti-racist, compassionate, and socially conscious children, from a diversity and inclusion educator with more than thirty years of experience. As a global pandemic shuttered schools across the country in 2020, parents found themselves thrust into the role of teacher—in more ways than one. Not only did they take on remote school supervision, but after the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing Black Lives Matter protests, many also grappled with the responsibility to teach their kids about social justice—with few resources to guide them. Now, in Social Justice Parenting, Dr. Traci Baxley—a professor of education who has spent 30 years teaching diversity and inclusion—will offer the essential guidance and curriculum parents have been searching for. Dr. Baxley, a mother of five herself, suggests that parenting is a form of activism, and encourages parents to acknowledge their influence in developing compassionate, socially-conscious kids. Importantly, Dr. Baxley also guides parents to do the work of recognizing and reconciling their own biases. So often, she suggests, parents make choices based on what’s best for their children, versus what’s best for all children in their community. Dr. Baxley helps readers take inventory of their actions and beliefs, develop self-awareness and accountability, and become role models. Poised to become essential reading for all parents committed to social change, Social Justice Parenting will offer parents everywhere the opportunity to nurture a future generation of humane, compassionate individuals.

A progressive Christian parenting book with a social-justice orientation How do we build a better world? One key way, says Cindy Wang Brandt, is by learning to raise our children with justice, mercy, and kindness. In Parenting Forward Brandt equips Christian parents to model a way of following Jesus that has an outward focus, putting priority on loving others, avoiding judgment, and helping those in need. She shows how parents must work on dismantling their own racial, cultural, gender, economic, and religious biases in order to avoid passing them on to their children. “By becoming aware of the complex ways we participate in systems of inequal­ity or hierarchy,” she says, “we begin to resist systemic injustice ourselves, empower our children, and change our communities.”

Looking for support in talking with kids about topics like immigration, racism, homelessness, and gender identity? This heart-centered book provides tips and tools, including plain-language conversation starters, to use with children ages 0-10. Stories from diverse parents across the U.S. are woven into chapters on race, class, gender, disability, healing justice, and collective liberation. Whether in your family or your wider community, the time has never been better to introduce kids to the knowledge, attitudes, and skills they need to show up for social justice.

Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind is a collection of concrete tips, suggestions, and narratives on ways that non-parents can support parents, children, and caregivers in their communities, social movements, and collective processes. Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind focuses on issues affecting children and caregivers within the larger framework of social justice, mutual aid, and collective liberation. How do we create new, nonhierarchical structures of support and mutual aid, and include all ages in the struggle for social justice? There are many books on parenting, but few on being a good community member and a good ally to parents, caregivers, and children as we collectively build a strong all-ages culture of resistance. Any group of parents will tell you how hard their struggles are and how they are left out, but no book focuses on how allies can address issues of caretakers’ and children’s oppression. Many well-intentioned childless activists don’t interact with young people on a regular basis and don’t know how. Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind provides them with the resources and support to get started. Contributors include: The Bay Area Childcare Collective, Ramsey Beyer, Rozalinda Borcilă, Mariah Boone, Marianne Bullock, Lindsey Campbell, Briana Cavanaugh, CRAP! Collective, a de la maza pérez tamayo, Ingrid DeLeon, Clayton Dewey, David Gilbert, A.S. Givens, Jason Gonzales, Tiny (aka Lisa Gray-Garcia), Jessica Hoffman, Heather Jackson, Rahula Janowski, Sine Hwang Jensen, Agnes Johnson, Simon Knaphus, Victoria Law, London Pro-Feminist Men’s Group, Amariah Love, Oluko Lumumba, mama raccoon, Mamas of Color Rising/Young Women United, China Martens, Noemi Martinez, Kathleen McIntyre, Stacey Milbern, Jessica Mills, Tomas Moniz, Coleen Murphy, Maegan ‘la Mamita Mala’ Ortiz, Traci Picard, Amanda Rich, Fabiola Sandoval, Cynthia Ann Schemmer, Mikaela Shafer, Mustafa Shakur, Kate Shapiro, Jennifer Silverman, Harriet Moon Smith, Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie, Darran White Tilghman, Jessica Trimbath, Max Ventura, and Mari Villaluna.

Raising Antiracist Kids is a practical guide that equips parents to talk to white kids about race right now - whether they're toddlers or teens - and go beyond conversation into action. The real life stories, strategies, practices, tips, and resources in Raising Antiracist kids help parents:- respond to children's questions and comments about race with calm, compassion, and truthfulness.- mentor kids into speaking up against stereotypes, exclusion, and racism.- choose the right words to explain painful topics like systemic racism and white privilege. - take antiracist action in age-appropriate ways. To support busy parents, the book is subdivided into sections for talking to and taking action with toddlers, preschoolers, elementary age children, and middle school age children.

No one is immune to the byproducts of compulsory schooling and standardized testing. And while reform may be a worthy cause for some, it is not enough for countless others still trying to navigate the tyranny of what schooling has always been. Raising Free People argues that we need to build and work within systems truly designed for any human to learn, grow, socialize, and thrive, regardless of age, ability, background, or access to money. Families and conscious organizations across the world are healing generations of school wounds by pivoting into self-directed, intentional community-building, and Raising Free People shows you exactly how unschooling can help facilitate this process. Individual experiences influence our approach to parenting and education, so we need more than the rules, tools, and “bad adult” guilt trips found in so many parenting and education books. We need to reach behind our behaviors to seek and find our triggers; to examine and interrupt the ways that social issues such as colonization still wreak havoc on our ability to trust ourselves, let alone children. Raising Free People explores examples of the transition from school or homeschooling to unschooling, how single parents and people facing financial challenges unschool successfully, and the ways unschooling allows us to address generational trauma and unlearn the habits we mindlessly pass on to children. In these detailed and unabashed stories and insights, Richards examines the ways that her relationships to blackness, decolonization, and healing work all combine to form relationships and enable community-healing strategies rooted in an unschooling practice. This is how millions of families center human connection, practice clear and honest communication, and raise children who do not grow up to feel that they narrowly survived their childhoods.

In this Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Book of the Year, Paula Young Shelton, daughter of Civil Rights activist Andrew Young, brings a child’s unique perspective to an important chapter in America’s history. Paula grew up in the deep south, in a world where whites had and blacks did not. With an activist father and a community of leaders surrounding her, including Uncle Martin (Martin Luther King), Paula watched and listened to the struggles, eventually joining with her family—and thousands of others—in the historic march from Selma to Montgomery. Poignant, moving, and hopeful, this is an intimate look at the birth of the Civil Rights Movement.