When I was growing up in our extended American-Mexican family, a Mother’s Day celebration included our mother and her mother, our grandmother, and several aunts, whom we honored with home-made cards and bunches of flowers from our yard. The festivities were all day, starting with Mass and ending with a tamalada.
Father’s Day? My dad got similar crayon-crafted cards, usually with a requisite ill-constructed necktie that my siblings and I purchased at the local Sears. We fixed him a pancake breakfast and then not much more happened until dinner, when we presented him with his favorite cake–––“white for in and white for out”–––which he doused with evaporated milk.
Thinking about the ways such family traditions and cultural influences affect celebrations, I arrived this year at a decidedly 21st century question: “How do families celebrate the holidays of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day with transgender parents?”
Gabrielle is a divorced, white, 48-year-old systems engineer and transgender woman living in Fremont, a suburb of San José, California. Her former wife is a public safety worker whose job responsibilities have made it difficult for her to parent their daughter. As a result, Gabrielle is a single parent with custody of their 17-year old daughter.
I had contacted Gabrielle with the idea of learning more about a Mother’s Day/Father’s Day duality for transgender parents that I had rolling around in my head. I ended up learning much more about one woman’s approach to parenting that is grounded in a mutual respect of the roles carried out by parent and child.
Gabrielle made the painful decision to delay her gender change, in spite of her desire to begin the evolution, in order to provide her young, at the time, daughter with a traditional father role. She said, “One of the reasons that I didn’t transition sooner is that my daughter needed a father, a male figure in her life. Inasmuch as I so desperately needed to change, she was more important.”
Her remarks underscored the sacrifices that parents will frequently make for the sake of their children. Immigrant parents will journey across dangerous social and geographic terrain to arrive at a place where they can create a better life for their families. Working parents will take on multiple jobs to pay for their children’s college education. Gabrielle believes that children’s needs are paramount, and that parents must place those needs ahead of their own.
“If I could give one bit of advice to someone who is thinking about transitioning, male to female or female to male, think about your obligations with your children first. They really, really need you to be there. At that point in your life, you need to be grownup enough to learn how to sacrifice and put those feelings aside. Be patient because they need you more.”
Gabrielle’s comments prompted a question, “How has the conscious disassembling and refiguring of gender roles contributed to this family's ability to successfully, if not imperfectly, travel such uncharted social waters?”
“I will always be her father,” Gabrielle says when speaking of her relationship with her daughter.
“She has one mother, who birthed her.
“Let’s face it, a father is, by definition, somebody who begat a child, an offspring. I will always be her father regardless of what gender I present.”
But what about Father’s Day?
Gabrielle says, “I don’t care one way or another whether there’s a Father’s Day. I don’t need Father’s Day for my daughter and I to have a really great relationship.
“Every day is Father’s Day for her and I.”
Gabrielle points to one way in which her daughter acknowledged and supported her as she transitioned from her male to female self.
“She knew I was really having a hard time with the name change process. She actually went to court with me, where I had to do a legal petition to change my name. She was there with me.”
One lesson that I carried away with me from hearing Gabrielle’s story is that if parents are able to communicate their humanity in ways that don’t rely on selfish, guilt-based, manipulative processes, or that are accompanied by threat of punishment, there might be a time when every day, although probably not every moment, is a celebration of parenting, regardless of gender.
Mother’s Day. Father’s Day. How did these observances get started in the first place?
Some historians say that honoring mothers dates back to festivities, which celebrated Cybele, a goddess whose origins are rooted in Greek/Phrygian/Minoan/Mycenean traditions. Accounts have described Cybele’s male worshippers as ritually castrating themselves, dressing in women’s garb, and assuming women’s roles, in her honor.
Oh, really?
That was so sweet. A touching story about a real mother's/father's day: Unselfish giving from parent to child and child to parent.
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