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Articles

Unsex Mothering: Toward a New Culture of Parenting

I was, until recently, a pregnant man. I explored some of the issues that arose along my path to parenthood in a recent essay titled Pregnant Man?: A Conversation. My husband and I began the process of having a child several years ago when we hired a surrogacy agency that works primarily with gay male couples. After a complex process, we are now raising our daughter.

As a parent, I confront a far more sexed area of life than I have ever encountered before. Everyone congratulates my partner and me on being "fathers," even though within our home we share responsibilities and flip roles, including a mothering role, with some fluidity. The outside world, it seems, needs to box us into the "daddy" category as much as it invests women with the power of motherhood.

Some time ago, I was in a taxi with my daughter, riding to a law school event at Grand Central Terminal. She fussed a bit and the driver said, "Where's the mother. Only the mother knows how to do this." Avoiding a complex explanation that I view myself as both mother and father, I said she has two dads. He still seemed perplexed that a man could know how to care for a child. I left the taxi and wiped a saliva-soaked Cheerio from my daughter's chin, feeling less of a parent because I was perceived as only a father, and not the primary parent — a mother. It is a feeling constantly reinforced for gay male parents I know who report that when in public — at markets, stores, and restaurants — they get asked by women: "Is it mommy's day off?" It is challenging to come up with a responsible response.

Behind the confusion in faces of people like the taxi driver, whom I tell about our family structure, I can see that they are thinking that a child without a mother is akin to an orphan — taken care of, but not supported and nurtured the way only a "mother" can. Again, "[only] the mother knows how to do this." This is why I wanted to be a mother: because it was about learning and knowing how to parent in the most challenging situations. In reality, to the extent that traditional definitions of "mother" and "father" mean anything, many of us flip and shift among those roles. I have begun to wonder whether society would benefit from unsex mothering (and fathering) to foster unsexed parenting. This Article explores what that would mean and why it is desirable.

[button link=”http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2003427″ style=”download” color=”silver”]View Full Article (PDF)[/button]

 

 

 

 

 

 


3 Comments

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Comments

  1. Jeanmarie Amend says

    February 13, 2012 at 1:43 pm

    Your diction may be improved by rewriting for precision and clarity: 'sexed' is not what you mean, but 'stereotypical' or 'role-based' or 'cliched' or 'traditional' or 'conventional' and the unsophistication then causes reader interest to drop off.  Why not look into the status of premise issues, next article? Motherhood is a state of nature which fathers do not have in mirror or other kind of symmetry; your several illogical correlative implied relationships of analogy are not a case for further development in the use of the words.  Premise, however, of person, status and state in cognitive and human development, promise to be forms of statement you can explore within the tradition and in respect of contemporary context of the specialty in law, gender.  Your general acceptable remark favoring the legal protection of leave for parenting, however, also, deserves refinement as it is a separate area of law and also a specialty (benefits) and merits description of comparative and current findings.  Good luck!

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Trackbacks

  1. Online Colloquium About Mothering | says:
    February 9, 2012 at 12:12 am

    […] Unsex Mothering: Toward a New Culture of Parenting, Darren Rosenblum critiques the way society strongly ties aspects of child care to biological sex […]

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  2. Live Blog: Unsex Mothering Colloquium | Harvard Journal of Law and Gender says:
    March 27, 2012 at 8:14 pm

    […] you haven't yet read Prof. Rosenblum's piece, which is being discussed today, click here to view a PDF of the article.   […]

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