Impending motherhood has changed my outlook on a lot of things. I personally believe that the process of becoming a mother (here, I mean parent) starts whenever you start actively preparing to be one, whatever that means for you. And for me, and a lot of other queer folk and non-queer folk too, that means it begins when you start mobilizing yourself and the crew of people who will be part of that journey and your children’s life. To start with, what does that mean for me, myself? My mother told me yesterday that she thinks it is a terrible idea for a chosen family like mine to bring a child into the world. ‘Those are not normal circumstances,’ she said. ‘How will that child ever feel safe? How will that child deal with not getting the normal experience of a family?’ ‘My children will be fine, ma,’ I said ‘They will have three parents who will love them so goddamn much and who will do everything in their power to show up for them. We have been working for this. We have been earning for this. We have been saving for this! All children need to thrive is an environment that nurtures them, and we will provide it. Children grow up with no mother, no father, no parents and so on, and they turn out fine. Ours will turn out fine too’ ‘But what if something happens to one of you?’ she retorted. ‘It is fine that you all will do this, but if you are not there who will take care of the child?’
What an unfair question.
Not that the other questions were fair, but this one particularly hurt. I’ve been told that having a child reminds you of your mortality like nothing else does. My children are hypothetical at the moment, and my own mother chooses to throw my mortality in my face? My own mother reminds me that my nightmares of losing my partner and co-parents – to disease, to police violence, to environmental racism, to chance – are real? She further says that is a reason for me to never have a child?
Delightful. We are off to an excellent start.
‘We have a massive family of friends, ma’ I say. I list a number of my friends who categorically do not desire to ever have children of their own but who are queueing up to be aunties and uncles and whatever gender version of chaotic adult-child they will show up as to delight in and spoil my future babies. That last part I kept to myself – this conversation was already going so well. ‘They will all be there, ma. My cousins will all be there. You think no one will help me? You think none of them will want to show up if I’m struggling? You are wrong. And you will see for yourself. For heaven’s sake don’t start by saying negative shit about what this will look like’
This conversation went on for a while until she got tired of it. Particularly infuriating was the fact that she would say child, when I would say children. Things particularly came to head when I told her that we were starting the process this year and that if things went stupendously well, I would have a baby next year even, and that was something I wanted.
‘That is insane,’ she said. ‘Why would you have a baby when you do not have even a degree?’ ‘I have three’ ‘No, you do not have the main one. Who gets pregnant while trying to defend their dissertation?’ Ah. We had come to the core of the problem. She was scared of the immediacy of it. She was scared she could not hide such a big truth. I pointed out that I would not be going first. I would wait to get pregnant while one of my co-parents would start trying later this year. Her face immediately shifted. She looked visibly calmer. She was no longer interested in arguing with me. It did not matter what I said next – I did not really need to point out that the child would still be mine or that I would anticipate and love them with the same fierceness or I would be taking on the labor of care and staying up all night. As far as she was concerned, if I did not give birth to the child, she did not have to think/worry about it.
Delightful. A ringing endorsement of how she planned to show up for my own motherhood.
At which point do we become parents? At which point does it count as starting to prepare? To me, this conversation is a part of preparing too. I’m not just informing her of where we are in this process, I am also figuring out who I can count on and who I can’t lean on. I realize those things will shift too – and as realities shift, capacities shift. Caring for another human has to be a dynamic process. I know I need to run with the punches. But it is also fun to dream? It is fun to delight in the possibilities and speculate together. It feels euphoric sometimes when I have a conversation with one of any number of my future children’s queer godparents – we laugh about what the children will call them, how diabolical they will be, how my friends will become the adults they always knew they will be, and how they plan to spoil my babies rotten. In those moments, they are not just my future children – they are their future children too. My friends respond with texts and reels, and random asides about my impending motherhood in unrelated conversations. In those moments, my children are real. The love and the anticipation and the ringing thread of hope makes them real.
To me, we become parents when we start preparing to be them. It begins with hypotheticals that are peppered with excruciating detail. It begins with therapy sessions or reflective rants where we are determined to break cycles and show up differently. It begins with difficult conversations and absurd ones. It begins with a certainty that we will be family – and we are in it for life, no matter what the ups and downs of that look like.
So to you, my family, my people who are planning this with me. To my loves who are fully in this with me. You have my whole heart and the rest of my lifetime of insanity. I cannot wait to begin. Let us do this!
♥️♥️♥️