It’s time for baby classes! As it made the most sense under our circumstances, I’m on parental leave, so I take the twins to these. The only class where there’s another dad is baby gym, and even then, he’s seldom there, and never without his wife. In all the other ones, babies are brought in by women, mostly mums and the odd nanny. Most of the time, I’m the only one with twins.

My maleness is remarked upon every time. Mostly in a positive way, insofar as with any sort of domestic related labour, a guy showing up at all is praised. I’m merely doing what is taken for granted of cis women. But this praise comes with relentless scrutiny.

It’s tough for any parent in public, regardless of gender. Perfect strangers, whether or not they’re parents, without solicitation or potentially important context, inform you how they’d be handling whatever, down to minutia.

Spoiler alert: I don’t care. You probably didn’t witness whatever preceded whatever is going on. A meltdown before the nap in a funky position? An overflowing diaper that hasn’t been changed already because your co-parent accidentally left with the diaper bag or forgot to grab some? A toy that’s been thrown for the Nth time, and has now been put out of reach? You don’t know the child or the situation better than I do. Maybe you did witness what came before, and were commenting on how efficiently you’d get things sorted. We might agree, we might not agree on method, that’s besides the point. Not your baby, not your responsibility; I don’t need your commentary. Bonus round: Many things that work with a single baby don’t work with twins. It’s been tried, it didn’t past the test, it isn’t true for twins. Trust. Or don’t. That’s how much I don’t care./



[Photo from Unsplash. Description: a spiral sculpture that recalls DNA seen through a glass ball that’s inverted the image top to bottom, so the ground appears on the opposite side in the background. The glass ball is held by a hand.]

The babies have been getting the lay of the land, when the woman animating the class asks for carers to put their child on their lap. The mums get a hold of their individual child, sit down, and do as requested. I grab one child, and the other. She makes some “positive” comment about how impressed she is that a father is there. I sit down, get one child on one leg, and as I get the other child on the other leg, the first child starts climbing to go over my shoulder. I grab his back with one hand to get him back down on my lap, the other child gets up, and I struggle to grab him with my other hand. “Ah… it’s obvious you’re not as good at this as the mums.”

Inner monologue: is it cognitive dissonance or an underlying unease with a guy involved in this aspect of baby development that prevents her from spotting the obvious: all the others have a 1:1 ratio of parent to child? Having 2 hands to hold a single child on the whole of one’s lap is so much easier than doing this with a hand per independently thinking and moving child trying to share a single lap… oh, never mind./

She goes on and on about the wonders of women as natural nurturers, and how much I have to learn because I’m a guy. I came for the twins to socialise with other babies, not for bullshit gender essentialism. Even if I’d had a single child with me and struggled, not a reason to make it about gender.



[Photo by Timon Studler from Unsplash. Description: 2 lion cubs next to each other in grass. One is sitting,the other is laying down.]

I’m so bloody grateful she doesn’t know my medical history. More than a few people who know it instead make comments about how it’s not surprising I’m generally good with the twins because, deep down inside, apparently, my “motherly intuition” is innately there, helping me out. Sigh

I’m so very grateful I’m confident, and secure in my gender. I don’t gender everything in my life, including parenting. I’m a good parent because I’m there, involved, and trying my best. Not because I’m doing it “despite” having higher levels of testosterone running through my veins or “because” I have “female intuition.”

I’m constantly relieved it’s been years since I was visibly gender non conforming. I’m glad I’ve gained skills at managing dysphoria from acute focus on my gender.

I’m not in a hurry for them to grow up, but I won’t miss baby classes.



[Photo by Bethany Legg from Unsplash. Description: a person dressed in a suit, walking across a street in front of “STOP” written on the road.]