In this year's virtual installment of The Child Development Institute's annual Wright Lecture, activist Jodie Patterson introduces the concept of front-loading Mothering as a proactive strategy for building better, stronger, more cohesive communities.
Jodie Patterson is a mother of five, an author, and a globally recognized LGBTQIA activist. As a public speaker, Patterson uses her platform to discuss topics of radical parenting, identity, and gender. When her son announced at the age of 3, "Mama, I’m not a girl. I am a boy," she set out to inform herself, shift her own bias, and change the way her community understood gender. Patterson chronicles this journey in her memoir, The Bold World: A Memoir of Family and Transformation, hailed by Alice Walker as "marvelous."