Maybe on Mother’s Day we suspend the debate about who has it
harder but it’s always kinda there. There are cultural roles and expectations.
Moms who work get hit one way and Moms who don’t have it the other. And Dads
work too much or not enough and are they doing enough at home?
Who is too rough? Who is too soft? We attribute the differences to gender and socialization. But for all the struggles we have in either role I
can tell you—even without knowing you—that no matter where you fall on the
Mother’s Day angst and Parenting spectrum you have it easier than Jennifer Finney Boylan.
Boylan was a father for six years and a mother for ten years and in-between she
was, well—in-between genders.
Yes. When Jenny Boylan was a young Dad she came out as
transgender and she transitioned from a man to a woman and from a father to a
mother.
Boylan’s new book, “Stuck in the Middle With You” is her
story of the transition. And it was so much more than going from he to she. Boylan
has a wife, Deirdre, who was with her through all of this and two kids who have
had to make a challenging transition as well. And they all seem to have done
this pretty well, which makes the case that in parenting and marriage and
stepfamilies and cancer and caregiving and all of it—it’s about love.
Happy Mother’s Day!
No comments:
Post a Comment