Education is Resistance

By Kara Warren 5/11/25

My oldest was born in October 2020, and my youngest was born in November 2022, which Roe v. Wade got overturned right when I was pregnant. When I was two, my brother was stillborn, and my mom almost died.  My kids are the same age difference that my brother and I would have been.  It was before I had my anatomy scan with my daughter. I remember thinking "Am I going to die, leaving my two-year-old, and husband to not have me?" Both my kids were planned and wanted but I was just like, "what if there's something wrong with her? What if  our baby doesn't have lungs and I have to go through with the pregnancy and just wait for the baby to die or give birth and then have the baby die.” Michigan, thankfully, upheld reproductive rights.

Another little fun fact is that I'm physically disabled as a result of my pregnancies. With both pregnancies, but especially the second one, I got a tilted pelvis. It’s messed up my hip, my leg, my butt, and  my back. It's been hard. I've done physical therapy, and I take pain medication but I don't like to take it when I'm often with the kids. It limits what I can do. I was pregnant with my oldest during the George Floyd Black Lives Matter stuff. I really wanted to go protest, but I was terrified that I was going to get a rubber bullet to the belly or something. It hasn't happened a ton of times, but it’s happened to pregnant women who have lost their babies at a protest because of police brutality. Ironically, me, the pro-choice pregnant woman, was afraid to go protest because I didn't want the cops to kill my baby.

My husband is trans. We worry about him being able to get his gender-affirming care. We worry about hate crimes. Our oldest is autistic and nonverbal. We worry about everything with RFK Jr. and the "oh, we got to figure out the autism epidemic." It's stressful because people already don't understand autism and aren't always the kindest about it. He’s saying “autism destroys families," well, no. My family was made by the addition of an autistic child.

It has unique challenges, certainly, but I signed up to be a parent for whatever challenges. Some parents act like they're just martyrs. I know it's hard and stressful at times but it makes me sad that so many people think that it's some epidemic, some disease, something that needs to be cured. I never really thought about the practicality of it, but there are moments that hit me where everything's falling apart and I have to do the dishes.This time is interesting because it gives me insight into these things throughout the past. People still had to go to work and clean the house. The Nazis are bombing, but we gotta do the dishes. It's insane. My husband might lose his gender-affirming care, but I still gotta do laundry.

Even though my husband works from home it's very isolating as a stay-at-home- parent, not having other adults to talk to or help. My kids are two and four, so they're at an age where they don't listen. I need to make them food. I need to get them dressed. I need to brush their teeth, brush their hair. I'd had mental health problems before I had kids. Before I would think “I'm having a really bad depression day. I'm just gonna stay in bed.” Now it's, “I'm having a really bad depression day, but there's two little people that depend on me for everything.” On the one hand, I can't fall apart because I have people that rely on me but on the other hand, it's just exhausting having to pretend to be functional. That’s part of the postpartum. They're good kids, but I’m not gonna lie, but there's some days that I'll just go in their room and lay down on the floor. Mommy's struggling today, but we'll hang out.

It's hard as homeschoolers more on the progressive side trying to find community. So many are like “We homeschool because we don't wanna learn about gender stuff in school.” I'm homeschooling my kids so they can learn gender stuff. Everything with the Department of Education, all the anti-DEI made the decision of going to homeschooling a lot easier. 

With my kids being two and four, we're just kind of doing a little bit of preschool stuff, but looking ahead and just trying to buy books. We’re trying to get Black history, queer history, women's history, Asian-American history, indigenous history- trying to elevate those voices that are not being supported by the government. I’m a disabled parent of two young children. I can't go marching in the streets. My mantra is "Education is resistance. Education is activism. I'm teaching my kids about the parts of history that are being hidden.  I'm teaching my kids about different kinds of people and different identities. I've been trying to stock up on books that might be difficult to get. I've looked at banned books at different places. I was telling my friend about all these books I was buying and she's like, "Aren't you just gonna use the library?" I’m worried that the libraries are going to go away and I want to be assured that I own these books.  If things get really dire, I have a bit of a community here of secular homeschoolers. If shit really hits the fan, I've got these great books and I can have other people's kids over. I can read these books to them. I can loan these books to them. 

With my daughter being autistic and non-verbal, I was really hesitant to send her out of the house to begin with, because maybe not even the worst-case scenario, but what if the teachers are mean to her and she can't tell me? A lot of studies have shown that many neurodivergent kids don't do great in a school setting, so they're just going to spend seven hours somewhere else being overstimulated, burned out and miserable, and then come home and decompress and be miserable and then go to bed. I'd rather spend time with my kids and teach them good things and how to be good people.