Part memoir and part parenting guide, this thoughtful and inspiring book manages to tell a story that is specific to the author’s experience as a gay, trans dad while also offering universal advice on parenting, relationships, and more.
Readers here may already be familiar with Trystan Reese, a long-time LGBTQ advocate, educator, and parent who has often shared the story of becoming a legal guardian to the children of his then-boyfriend’s (now husband’s) sister (on The Longest Shortest Time podcast) and being pregnant as a trans man (on NOVA’s “Fighting for Fertility,” among other places). He posts on Instagram at @biffandi, and even appears in the board book We Are Little Feminists: Families, by Archaa Shrivastav (Little Feminist). Even those who have listened to or read about his family story, though, will probably learn something more from How We Do Family.
Here, Reese has more space to talk about his family in detail, from first meeting and dating Biff Chaplow to taking in Chaplow’s niece and nephew only a year later, when the children were about to be removed from their home by Child Protective Services. One-year-old Hailey and three-year-old Lucas had survived abuse and neglect, and Reese and Chaplow scrambled to give them the safety, comfort, and love they needed. After this sudden plunge into parenting, they later adopted the siblings, got married, and decided to expand their family with a baby that Reese would carry.
Reese isn’t afraid to pull back the curtain on the struggles they faced, including homophobia and transphobia, the steep personal learning curve of becoming an unexpected parent to children who needed extra care, and the interpersonal difficulties of balancing household duties, relationship, and more. He addresses some situations specific to queer parents, such as talking with their children about their family and supporting them in their varying levels of comfort about disclosure, but also explores the worries and frustrations many parents of all types encounter when they are tasked with raising small humans. Yet the story is neither a grim slog against adversity nor a rose-colored look at overcoming it, but an honest and ultimately hopeful look at how one family navigated it all.
And yes, he writes of his pregnancy and the media explosion around his status as “the pregnant man” (though he was not the first or only one), noting wisely that “The trouble with the single story narrative is that one person ends up representing all people in their community.” His story is more than just that part of it, however, and the book is also more than just the narration of how his family came to be. Throughout, Reese shares thoughts on how he approached many situations, offering readers wisdom to take with them into their lives. After a fight with Biff, for example, he asked himself “whether I wanted to be right or in a relationship. Because there is no ‘right’ in a relationship—there is my perspective and there is his perspective, and my job is to meet him on the bridge between the two.”
In between each chapter, Reese gathers many of these thoughts into sections offering more direct guidance on parenting; preparing for parenthood; dealing with other people’s opinions about how you should be pregnant or parent; being flexible, resourceful, and humble in a relationship; talking with kids about sex and procreation (which for us queer folks aren’t always coterminous); being an ally; and maintaining one’s strength and sense of self through it all. He also offers advice on talking with kids about transgender people and about anti-racism. He brings his skills as a trained diversity, equity, and inclusion facilitator to bear—but they are underpinned with the hard-learned lessons of personal experience.
If you only know of Reese as “the pregnant man” or even “the pregnant man with the other two adopted kids,” not only are you oversimplifying his experience, but you’re missing out on just how thoughtful he is about topics that affect so many of us. I’ll go out on a limb and say that there are few parents or parents-to-be of any gender or sexual orientation who would not find something useful, thought-provoking, or inspiring here. As Reese writes, “[Queer people have] had to DIY the crap out of everyday systems. But deciding to do things your own way isn’t just for queers anymore.” Get this book for everyone you know.
Learn more about Reese and his work at Collaborate Consulting, which he founded to provide training about social justice for individuals, organizations, and communities.
