“She’s a mommy,” he concluded, apparently giving up on the categories I had offered. “Well,” I answered, “what is she now? Is she a woman or a man?” “She probably did have an Etch-a-Sketch,” I answered, “but did you know that Mommy Kellie was actually a little girl and not a little boy?” And yet, apparently his understanding of gender categories had some room for variation. My son has never attempted to call my partner “Daddy” and has never stumbled over gender pronouns. She’s the one he runs to when one of the handles has fallen off of his dresser she’s the one who brings him to the dump and stops for hot chocolate along the way.
But my partner Kellie goes by “Mommy” too. I am his birth mother, and so far have played the traditional role of “Mommy”: I’ve been the breast-feeder, the diaper-changer, the lunch-packer, the medicine-giver. To begin with, of course, my son has two moms. The wording of this question reveals a lot about our family. “When Mommy Kellie was a little boy, did she have an Etch-a-Sketch too?” When my son was three, as he sat at the kitchen table playing with his Etch-a-Sketch, he offhandedly asked me the following question:
0 kommentar(er)
