“He keeps doing this,” lamented our friend, and the four of us wondered aloud if this behavior meant anything. My son walks around the house pretending to put out the fires and roar like a T. rex, and I’m not worried that he is an arsonist or has an unhealthy obsession with the Cretaceous. So why should dads be different? I suspect it is because we assign importance where there is none.
Becoming a parent does not erase personality – although our children may disagree – and our own insecurities follow us into the role. Women whose mothers have forced them to consciously diet communicate with their own children about food. Children whose parents have been fighting constantly may try to avoid the same fate when they have children, and same-sex parents may be on high alert for behavior suggesting that our children are missing out. heteronormative family experiences. Most of us want our children to have it even better than us, but we don’t always know how to do it, or what it looks like, and it sounds like a universal parental challenge not to project our own fears onto our children. .
This theory is based solely on my own experience as a mom, so I contacted psychologist Susan Bodnar. “There is a lot of vulnerability and fear, and every family has this adjustment to the world they create inside their home and to the world that exists” there “,” she said. “Same-sex couples have incorporated something into their relationship. It is never easy. “
I immediately understood this “thing”. As same-sex parents, my wife and I want to shape our world at home to be more compassionate than the one “there”. At home, we cultivate kindness and creativity, but we think of safety, a word that we define in relation to the immediate well-being of our children. “There is no 100% safe place,” said Bodnar, “but this may be true for all kinds of families. We all have different things that we are afraid to expose our children to outside family culture. “
I think that’s why my friend was worried when our little boys were playing daddy – that creeping concern that maybe the boys were expressing complicated feelings about not having dads. But there is not always a deeper meaning in everything a child does, and it is healthy for them to incorporate concepts and playful relationships that they may not fully understand. Have you ever heard a girl declare that her teddy bear is dead? How about a preschool boy announcing that he wants to have a baby in the womb one day? Playtime is a chance to explore and make sense of both their world at home and that away from family safety.
I asked my friend if she agreed with this. “It seems like the whole world is about mom and dad,” she said. “My son’s house is dedicated to mothers.” She said she and his wife had crossed out dad of all of their son’s books. I understood the impulse. My son has a bedtime book for trains – steam trains and monorails and passenger trains – and when he started talking, I found myself trading dads for moms. Even if LGBTQ parents like me want to be represented in places like children’s literature, it is imperative that our children have the whole family life, including books with conventional family structures.
“Every family is struggling with this,” said Bodnar, adding that same-sex parents have a particular struggle because of prejudice. “You can deal with it by pretending that” our world is the world, “but that may not be particularly healthy. My inclinations as a psychologist are towards exposure. Set a frame for how they can think of this stuff later. “
Sometimes I feel like being a family of two moms promotes defensive parenting. It is one thing for my wife and I to understand how and why our family is different, but our oldest son is approaching an age where prejudice could affect him, so while we make our home safe and supportive, it is also of our responsibility to prepare him for the world away from us, and for the questions and opinions he will face. Our children will encounter situations that we cannot control, so we must prepare them.
Bodnar suggests following basic guidelines based on the type of child you have. “If you have a sensitive child, they might handle things a little differently than a more independent child.” With young children in particular, she suggests keeping things simple and using their words. “Listen to your child, ask them questions, find out how much they want to know and how much they want to be exposed.”
I want my son’s imaginary play to be unlimited. I want to read her books with moms and moms, dads and dads, grandmothers and grandfathers, and trains that can talk. Her home should absolutely be a haven of peace and a stimulating environment, but I also want nothing to be banned from her, including honest conversations about what makes her family different, how to talk about it “there” and, of course. , the word daddy.
Laura Leigh Abby is a writer, wife and mom living in the Hudson Valley in New York. She is the author of “2Brides2Be: A Same Sex Guide for the Modern Bride” and “The Rush”, an Amazon Kindle single.
