A trip to the Dad Shop
Plus: Is bio parenthood a human right? The joy of kittens. A half-term art and stories family meet-up. 50 % Off subscriptions for one week only!
“I actually want to have a Dad”, said my four-year-old apropos of nothing. With a mischievous glint in her eye and a half smile that I know so well, she continued, “I don’t really need two Mummies”.
It was one of those out of the blue parenting moments where you have to decide in a split second how to handle it. My options appeared before me in a flash: A) Explain that such a comment, even when delivered in a cheeky, teasing way, really hurt my feelings as her ‘other’ mother. (Subject for another newsletter - do I regret teaching my kid to be so sassy and excellent at what we call ‘Mickey-taking’ from such a young age? Yes maybe). Or option B) Approach with sensitivity - explain it’s ok to feel these things, see it as an opportunity to reinforce her life story and remind her of all the people who love her including her uncles and granddads and Guidefathers.
“Well we can go to the Dad shop this afternoon and you can trade me in if that’s what you want?”
Or C) match the evident humour with which she delivered the cutting blow in an equally flippant response. Or …D) Option C, but take it way too far, possibly overcompensating for the fact that in some deep way her comment rattled you more than you’d like to admit.
Which would you have chosen?
Reader, I duly ticked option D and said in a hammy, oh okaaay, bring it on kind of a voice, “Ah fantastic, well we can go to the Dad shop this afternoon and you can trade me in if that’s what you want?”.
“Yes it is”, said my daughter, now unable to hide the fact that she finds this conversation extremely amusing but isn’t about to back down (damn you ‘nurture!’).
I blurt out indignantly, “but I hang you upside down and chuck you about all the time!”
“What do you think a Dad can do that a Mummy can’t”, my wife asked.
E ponders the question for a moment then says, “Daddies can throw you in the air, and hang you upside down and stuff”.
Without thinking, I blurt out indignantly, “but I hang you upside down and chuck you about all the time!”
Then to prove my point I grab her from the sofa by the ankles and pick her up from behind so her knees are over my shoulders, her head dangling at my bum. As she squeals with delight I feel a hot stab of pain hit the side of my neck. I place the child carefully down.
Three days later and I can barely move my neck without being in agony. The moral of the story? What do you think?!
“I’M DOING IT, I’M REALLY DOING IT!”
My wife is away for a week so I’ve been watching the kind of TV I just wouldn’t with her around (we’re midway through season 2 of The Capture on BBC which is GREAT btw). So I’ve been binging old Ab Fabs, the reboot of Heartbreak High (so queer, so trashy, so fun) and on a whim, last night I rewatched episode one of the original Queer as Folk. Wow - what a stunner of a series opener. So much happens! You get such a great sense of all the characters! He’s 15! That didn’t seem shocking at the time - probably because I was roughly the same age when I watched it, but OMG.
The element of this masterclass in screenwriting that I realised I totally didn’t engage with at the time, and had forgotten even happened, was that Stuart is his lesbian friends’ sperm donor and their baby is born in the first hour of action (just when he’s shagging a teenager - oh the layers!). In 1999 when the show first aired this must have been beyond shocking. I’d love to get my hands on a Daily Mail from the time.
I haven’t bothered with the third generation Queer as Folk reboot. Have you? Is it anywhere near as good as the original?
ONE IS NOT BORN, BUT RATHER BECOMES A CAT PERSON*
I have spent my adult life clear about the fact I am not a pet person. Give me a kid any day, but a dog, cat, reptile, fish - no thanks, not interested. While I was in New York, my wife acquired two kittens, ostensibly for our daughter. I got a tattoo so we were kind of even on the reckless decisions front. Fine, I said, but I’m going to be the beta cat parent. I’m not doing the emotional labour. I want to be that parent that swoops in for a fun time every now and then, but cannot be trusted to feed them and pretends not to know how to change nappies (or litter trays) so they never have to do it.
Five days later and I’m googling ‘kitten diarrhoea, normal???’, spending £70 on probiotics and special diet food and letting these little stinkers worm their way into my cold, cold heart. Last night I stared into the grey one - Jones’ - eyes, blinking slowly as I had learnt to do from the Netflix documentary How To Talk To Cats and thought, god damn it, I’m falling in love.
*If you get this reference, we can be friends
NEWS FLASH!
FINALLY!
Cuba has legalised same-sex marriage and adoption in a national referendum allowing surrogate pregnancies and giving greater rights to non-biological parents. Read more about LGBTQ activism in Cuba here
IS BIOLOGICAL PARENTHOOD A HUMAN RIGHT?
If you click one link from this week’s newsletter make it this one
‘We are expected to be OK with not having children’: how gay parenthood through surrogacy became a battleground’. It’s a fascinating insight into the case of a gay couple fighting to make their insurers pay for fertility treatment. As The Guardian puts it, they have “found themselves in the middle of a culture war. What happens when the right to parenthood involves someone else’s body?” While we could have done without a certain ‘women’s studies’ professor being quoted, and one man the reporter spoke to has a deeply problematic view of adoption, the piece nevertheless gives a comprehensive overview of what Nicholas Maggipinto, and Corey Briskin are trying to achieve. Ron Poole-Dayan, executive director of Men Having Babies, sees the “situational infertility” gay men face as equivalent to medical infertility. “We define infertility as not just a condition or a disease but also a status that defines our inability to procreate with our partner.” It doesn’t matter if you have healthy sperm, eggs and wombs; if you can’t make a baby with your chosen partner, you are infertile, by this definition. “Situationally, we are the most infertile, by measure of the level of intervention that is required to achieve a pregnancy. We’re also expected to be OK with not having children. This is the kind of discrimination we’re trying to fight the most.”
I’d love to know your thoughts on the issues this piece raises
CHOSEN FAMILY
There’s a great essay by June Bellebono on gal-dem about queer, Black family structures. June writes:
“Auntiness” in itself was never something I attached to biology. In fact, a lot of the aunties who have brought me up and fed me don’t actually share a single gene with me. They’re family friends whose bond was strong enough for my mum to trust them with my upbringing, and they loved me enough to ensure I was taken care of.
An understanding of family outside of Western structures can prove beneficial in seeing a better alternative. However, when you’re queer, biological relatives can time and again fail to provide unconditional love. Historically, these people have had to create their own families who were not assumed but chosen.
Read the full article here or even better, by the print edition of gal-dem that this article appears in UTOPIA / DYSTOPIA – order your copy here!
SAVE THE DATE!
Lotte is teaming up with Jodie Lancet-Grant author of Pirate Mums and
Freddy McConnell author of Little Seahorse and The Big Question to host a big queer family day at Queer Circle in Greenwich. Come and say hi! You could coincide it with a trip to the trampolining place in the 02 - you know you want to!
Here are the details
Fantastic Families
Friday October 28
11.30-4.30.
This half term why not bring your family to hear a trio of LGBTQ+ children’s authors? Jodie Lancet-Grant (The Marvellous Doctors for Magical Creatures), Lotte Jeffs (My Magic Family) and Freddy McConnell (Little Seahorse and The Big Question) will read over the day, at 12.00, 1.30 and 3.00. Activities in our workshop space, provided by artist Joceline Howe, will enable you to make your own fantastical family outfits. Plus plenty of family-friendly activities on the Greenwich Peninsula to explore. Open to all families.
In partnership with Oxford University Press and Puffin books. Part of QUEERCIRCLE’s exploration of creative health and well-being