Bunchland

Meri Perra blogs about the challenges she and her partner face in trying to raise their girls with feminist values

Meet Strawberry.
He’s our 2-year old, Lilieith’s imaginary daddy.

Homophobic crusaders against queer family structures rejoice now. Study that says lesbians are actually better parents than you guys be damned. Our kid wants a daddy so bad, she’s made one up of her own.

It all started so innocently. Of course it would, Lileith is two.
One morning our Lileith was playing with her sister’s backpack. She put it on. The thing’s almost as big as she is, but she manages. She tootled over to us, “Goodbye, I’m going to school,” she said, waving. Meanwhile, us moms were going through the “why can’t I find two socks that match” chaos that is our every morning.

“Bye,” we said.

“I’m going to school in the other room,” she said.

“Ok, have fun, where’s the hair dryer?” I said.

And then the d-bomb dropped.

“Ok, I’m going to go look for my daddy, now.”

She turned and left. I looked at Catharine, in a, ‘just go with it type of way’. We shrugged.

“Ok, say hi to him,” we called after her. Totally not a big deal, right?

The next day, at a.m. chaos hour, Lilieth grabbed the backpack and began the daddy search again. We felt the need to probe further this time.

“Whose your daddy Lileith?” Catharine asked.

“You are!” Lilieth said.

For the non-birth, nowhere-near daddy identified lesbian mom, this had a bit of a pang. But no worries. Five minutes later, it was my turn.

“You’re the daddy, mommy!” Lilieth said to me.

Ok. We’re daddy-mommies. Fine.

It happens that we’re in a neighbourhood full of single mom households. But it also happens that almost every child in Lilieth’s room at day care has a mom, and a dad. Where we live, honest to goodness, that’s a fluke. Also, one of Lileith’s teachers is a dude. So it’s like it’s raining men at Lilieth’s daycare. And don’t get me wrong, it’s wonderful. These daddies are good, gentle dads. These are the type of dads who know all the kids in the room by name, dads. They are the dads whose eyes light up when they pick up their toddlers at the end of the day, dads.
They just may be the reason why Strawberry has hit the scene so soon. But who knows? Lileith would have noticed daddies sooner or later. By luck, she’s surrounded by good ones right now.

The next day: Morning chaos. Pink backpack. Lileith.

“Bye, bye Mommies. I’m going to look for my daddy. His name is Strawberry,” she says.

Is it me, or is this evolving here? Is it normal? I found some examples online of parenting forums, where, usually single moms asked: “Is it normal my kid has an imaginary dad?”

And the answer, according to the forums and common sense, is that yes, it’s normal.

But there’s another pang. First, how quickly our kids absorb the hetero-norm. Second, she’s always looking for him, but Strawberry hasn’t shown up yet. That’s kinda sad. Margaret Somerville, the founding director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University would say it’s tragic. She refers to kids like our’s as “genetic orphans”. In 2007, she wrote about adults conceived by anonymous sperm donation. In an article entitled Dispossessed and forgotten: the new class of genetic orphans, she says:

“Recently, a growing number of these children, who are now adults … have been speaking out forcefully against the way in which they were “brought into being”. … They describe feelings of multiple losses as a result of being “genetic orphans.”

Later she says:

“In short, genetic relationship goes to our deepest roots of who we are and to whom we bond.”

According to Sommerville, our Lilieth is already searching for the deepest roots of who she is. And his name is Strawberry.

This morning Lilieth’s older sister Rosa told us about her dream. She saw two ducks have a new baby. Out of the egg came her favourite doll. Her doll’s parents were mommy and daddy ducks, she said. We listened, and told her it sounded like she had a wonderful dream. We asked how she knew the ducks were a mommy and a daddy. She told us, because you need a mommy and a daddy to make a baby. She’s not wrong, technically.

We listened, and told her again about the gay penguin dads in the New York City‘s Central Park Zoo. She wasn’t entirely convinced, until we told her they got the egg from another penguin family. Then she understood.

Oh Sommerville. You would have so much to say. And all of it would make me want to vomit in my mouth.

What I have to say is: of course our kids are going to be, to varying degrees, curious about their genetics. It’s our job to support them, and to answer questions as their curiosity evolves. But for now, we’re just trying to find room for an imaginary dad named Strawberry. Maybe he’ll live in our imaginary basement. And Tango Makes Three is so going to be the bedtime story tonight.

Meri Perra is a community worker-turned-journalist living in Toronto’s Riverdale neighbourhood with her partner and two daughters

Photo by shyb via Flickr