For Father’s Day, I’m very pleased to share a guest post from David Dodge, executive editor of Gays With Kids, a site for gay, bi, and trans men who are fathers or considering fatherhood. David chronicled his own journey to fatherhood in Sperm Donor Diary, a series of personal essays for The New York Times. Here, he ponders the value of Father’s Day and Mother’s Day for us LGBTQ parents, and finds no simple answer.
At no time of year do we at Gays With Kids (GWK)— a site dedicated to gay, bi and trans dads and dads to be — get more emotionally fraught messages from our followers than in the weeks leading up to Mother’s Day. Each third Sunday in May, queer dads raising children without a traditional “mom” often struggle to know the best way to celebrate, or not, the holiday.
This is why we invited Dana Rudolph, founder of Mombian, to write a message to our readers in the lead up to Mother’s Day this year that offered touching, helpful advice to our audience. “Please also know that however you may celebrate (or not) on this day,” she wrote, “that this lesbian mom appreciates having role models for her son that include men who are gay, straight, and bi, cisgender, transgender, and otherwise queer.”
As the Executive Editor of GWK, I’m honored to have been invited by Dana to offer a similar message to her audience in the lead up to Father’s Day this year—which not doubt can present similar anxieties for lesbian, bi, trans, and genderqueer moms. And I’ll echo her words: however you choose to celebrate, or not, this gender-based parenting holiday is completely valid if it works for you and your family.
Some dads in our community choose to honor the many women in our children’s lives who helped us become dads, like birth moms, surrogates, egg donors, or parenting partners. Others choose to lift up other important women in our children’s lives, like grandmothers, aunts, and female-identified friends. Still others choose not to celebrate the holiday at all. No option is better than any other.
In some ways, it would be best for our families if Mother’s Day and Father’s Day ceased to exist at all. Over the years at GWK, we’ve explored the idea of celebrating a gender-neutral “Parent’s Day” instead—the little-known holiday is actually already in existence and celebrated the fourth Sunday of each July. Interestingly enough, the holiday was actually the brainchild of former Senator Trent Lott, a rightwing conservative, who proposed the holiday as a way to honor the importance of “traditional” childrearing by two parents, a mother and a father. But who better to co-opt something originally meant to subjugate us than the queer community?
Better still though is the holiday proposed by Dana herself—#LGBTQFamiliesDay, which takes place each June 1st, at the beginning of Pride Month, right between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. She started the event, she said, specifically “to honor families who don’t fit into the Mother’s Day/Father’s Day dichotomy.” The idea has caught on in recent years, popularized in part by LGBTQ organizations like GLAD. I know our community of gay, bi, and trans dads would be happy to share this parenting day with all parents that fall outside the traditional mold—and we look forward to making it a bigger and better event each year.
Of course, none of this means that Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are simply going to go away anytime soon—these holidays are deeply entrenched in our culture. How long would it take, really, to convince our school systems, daycares, and, perhaps most importantly, the all-powerful makers of Hallmark cards to get onboard with the idea of a gender-neutral day celebrating caretakers of every type?
It may very well be worth the fight. But it wouldn’t just be our straight and cisgender friends and family members who would mourn the loss of these holidays. There is something validating about participating, as openly queer, trans, and nonbinary people, in traditions that have long excluded us, for so many years, when it was more difficult for our community to become parents.
So while we create alternative ways to celebrate our families, let’s also recognize that Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are likely here to stay for the near term, and that they will continue to pose more of a challenge to LGBTQ parents—among others, like single parents, grandparents, or those parenting in blended households. Still, while it may take a generation or two, it’s also worth knowing that these less “traditional” settings are quickly becoming the majority. According to Pew Research, today less than half of American children (46%) are living in the household headed by a father and a mother who are both in their first marriage.
However you choose to celebrate Father’s Day this year (or not), know that there is a community of gay, bi, and genderqueer dads—and many other nontraditional families—who can relate to the joys, and challenges, of a gender-based holiday. So however you choose to celebrate (or not)—good for you.