When adults who care for children make the choice to dismantle gender and sex normativity in their own lives, they make room for children to embody gender, race and sex on their own terms. They empower children to see people as people.

Queer parenting is not a fad. It isn’t something people do for a pat on the back. There are a lot of us non-heterosexual or gender-nonconforming parents who engage differently with gender.

The fact is: Queer parenting is a deliberate choice to raise children as free as possible from the limitations that labels, stereotypes and gendered norms place on marginalized people in the United States.

While these decisions have garnered sneered noses and scowls from more traditional parents, those people who believe “children should be children” rather than politicized actors, I am keenly aware that my black children will be politicized whether I like it or not.