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Partly in service to the students in the class I spoke to the other day whose online questions I didn't have time enough to answer in person, and partly in service to the random assortment of you readers who may have asked such questions at one point or another, if goaded to by a class requirement, I offer up the following smattering of Qs and their As.
To make matters reasonable, I am going to pull off the feat of keeping all the answers to Twitter-length, otherwise known as 140 characters or fewer. For those of you who are not Twitter denizens (Twenizens?), you will see, over and over again, both its strength and its weakness. Brevity: the soul of wit, but also of vast oversimplification.
When kept to this constraint, we can see that sometimes a pithy reply is best. Many Twitterers (-erers), however, myself included, are compelled to post strings of related tweets when one won't do. Do let me know if you think a thought/conversation ought to be strung out a bit more, and we can carry on in comments or in another post.
For context, students were assigned the six-part essay I excerpted here a few years back: "Confessions of a Lesbian Dad."
Q: Has your brother, brother's wife, partner's mother and spouse adjusted to you referring to yourself as "baba" or lesbian dad?
A: Easy, on the one hand: I’ve never been anything else. But family slipped a little 1st few wks; newbies do weekly. I explain; it all works out.
Q: How old is your child, and how is your child handling having a mom and baba? Does the child refer to you by those titles or has the child opted for something else?
A: Girl 5, boy 3. They’ve only known us, so our family’s the baseline reference pt. Gal often calls me Babbi. I try not to think of the kid in The Brady Bunch.
Q: Do you regret not being the one to bear the child or labeling yourself as "baba" or lesbian dad?
A: Never, never, & never. Much to my great relief on all points. I use descriptor “1/2 way betw. a mama & papa” most often. Makes sense to all.
Q: " ... the more we talked, the more I realized ... how clearly the existing paradigms make space for biomom and biodad. Bio, bio. And then me: nonbio. I was off the radar, legally, socially, viscerally." What did the term "bio" mean to you? How did you define it? And did it change after your child was born?
A: Good Q. It meant a ton more before kid than after. But 1st yr was challenging. Now? Hardly relevant, except in eyes of the law. There? Huge.
Q: Did you suffer from an identity struggle? If so, how did you overcome it?
A: I’ve not met the queer person my age who didn’t. Closest I got to suicide: 1st yr in love w/ my best friend. Overcame slowly, w/ community.
Q: I found it particularly interesting that throughout all of the articles, one main thread that wove the events together was the concept of legitimizing. Whether it was your relationship, your feeling "non-mommish," the idea Baba. How important do you think it is to express and begin to formulate concepts like the kind you have made recently?
A: H-UGE. W/out sense of clarity re: who I am, parentally, this all might not have been possible, or so easy/rewarding. Me AND kids benefit.
Q: All of these articles resonated innovation of ideas, definitions, and behaviors that go against the ones society is used to. How have you dealt with this in the past before, that has helped you when dealing with something like parenthood?
A: I think it was great that I was very stable w/ my gay identity before parenthood. Faced, won the battles. P-hood requires focus on the KID.
Q: How has your role as a Baba evolved or grown than what you expected it would be like?
A: I find I’m who I’ve always been, just now the parent version. But I do float in space between straight dads & moms. That’s been interesting.
Q: What is the toughest part about being a parent?
A: 1. LACK OF SLEEP! 2. Obligation to confront own character flaws daily (ouch).
