Pride Week Guest Post from Steff F. Kneff: How Do Two Mums Deal with Father’s Day?
How do lesbian parents deal with the “Father’s Day” extravaganza that Hallmark and its associates have blown into proportions reminiscent of The First Christmas?
I have no idea. It’s our first time.
As the holiday approaches, I find myself giving a wide berth to the “Daddy and Me” themed books at the library, and altogether avoiding the giant kiosks of flamboyant ties at the mall. Frankly, I’m hoping my eleven-month-old daughter won’t notice them for another few years. We need more time to figure out our strategy.
“You can celebrate Father’s Day!” people chime in, enthusiastically. “One of you can be the Dad!” *Cue big band music for brilliant suggestion!*
Evolved Publishing, July 2014.
My wife and I look at each other, wondering if people are truly that oblivious. Maybe they just need so badly to fit two pink triangles into square and circle spaces that they genuinely think this is a good suggestion…?
We’ve considered voting in a second Mother’s Day, since we have to share the May holiday. Seems fair. Other mothers get a whole breakfast in bed to themselves, but we have to split the pancakes. Not to mention sharing the present—or, at least we will when our daughter is old enough to make us macaroni art.
A second run seems like a nice idea. But who would get the ‘real’ Mother’s Day, and who would get the ‘Father’s-turned-Mother’s’ Day? It’s kind of like the deciding who gets to be called “Mom,” and who gets the Mother slot on the birth certificate. It’s kind of like the square and circle…
We patiently explain to other parents at play groups that asking us “Who’s the real mother?” is like asking a heterosexual couple, “Who’s the real parent?” An absurd question. Our kid has two parents—both of whom are female. Both of whom answer to “mother.”
I carried our daughter.
My wife held her first.
I breastfed.
She changed every diaper for a week while I recovered from the C-section.
Our daughter looks like me.
But has my wife’s last name.
She is ours—from the very first glimmer of the idea, to this very moment when she’s throwing strawberries on the floor and giggling maniacally, she is ours—just like every other child in our neighbourhood.
Interior illustration from EMLYN AND THE GREMLIN.
When she gives me the Mummy-shove and clings to her other mother, my heart breaks just a little—and at the same time, I’m overwhelmed to see how close a bond our daughter shares with her non-bio mom. Equal bonding is not easy to achieve.
When my wife says things like “Don’t you know by now that she likes her toast in soliders?” I get a little testy. I’m her mother too, for God’s sake, I don’t need parenting lessons! I carried her; I have rights! Yes, well, so does she. Maybe more so, because she carries her all day long as the stay-at-home parent in this two-triangle marriage.
We’re equal parents. One by blood, the other by love.
One day, I hope that people will just take that as a fact without need for further explanation. For now, we’re not there yet, and the LGBT community seems to agree on the need for education about ‘diversity.’
Let’s be honest: “All families are different. Some have a mommy and a daddy and some have two mommies,” only works until the kids are three or four. By the time kindergarten strikes, there’s an app for that has given them more biological and anatomical knowledge than I had going into high school.
“Yeah, okay, we get that she has two mothers, but where’s the father? He must exist somewhere…”
I hope, fervently, that she won’t look at us one day and ask how the hell she got stuck with two mothers. I hope she won’t come home crying because she didn’t get to make a Father’s Day card.
Looking ahead to kindergarten, I wonder, could I suggest that classrooms nix the label of “Father’s Day craft” and hold a “Gift-making craft” instead, without being called the Scrooge of Father’s Day? Can I make the world a little easier for my kid without alienating the people she has to spend each day with?
Our daughter will probably never know how much thought and time and consideration went into her conception and birth. How many nights we stayed up late, talking about what we’d do when she faced discrimination. How would we help her to explain her family to her new friends at school? How could we make her feel secure while still preparing her for the questions people would ask? How could we help her celebrate her difference?
In the wake of these conversations, EMLYN AND THE GREMLIN was born. Rainbow families in kid-lit are still rare, and I truly believe that under-representation in media and literature directly correlates with misunderstanding and hostility toward minority groups in real life.
Our kids need books that represent their families, not only so that others will understand them, but so they understand themselves and where they’ve come from—in most cases, a place of deliberate planning and extraordinary love.
I wanted to write a kids’ book that teachers, parents, friends, and our daughter herself could pick off the shelf and enjoy for what it was—a fun adventure that featured a two-mum family in a totally natural way.
I wanted an iconic, recognisable example that people could point to, like Ellen & Portia. “Oh, your friend at school has two mums? Like in the EMLYN AND THE GREMLIN books?” A story that lesbian parents could read aloud to their kids, wrapping their families up in a story that represented their experience.
Our little girl has to come up in this world, which still has a little ways to go in terms of open-mindedness and acceptance. I want her life to be inclusive and fun, as well as bright, colourful and happy. She’s a rainbow kid, after all. J
Steff F. Kneff.
Steff F. Kneff is an English professor and a PhD student in the field of creative writing. She devours books for breakfast, lunch and tea, and spends a good portion of every day reading to her young daughter and Great Dane while her wife makes excellent rainbow cupcakes. You can visit her at www.SKneff.com !
Steff’s alter-ego, Stevie Mikayne, is the author of JELLICLE GIRL, an Indie-Excellence Award Finalist. Her debut mystery novel UNCATHOLIC CONDUCT is forthcoming from Bold Strokes Books this December.
