The first time I met our nanny, he had come to dinner at our place with a mutual friend. Before bringing him over, our friend had mentioned briefly, "He prefers male pronouns."

I'm fortunate to live in an environment where phrases like that don't give me much pause. So our dinner guest would be trans? I just hoped he didn't mind vegetarian food.

Over dinner, we all got along famously. My husband and our future nanny cracked each other up about Lord of the Rings and Settlers of Catan — terrible, terrible jokes that still make them giggle to this day. By the end of the night, we'd learned that our dinner guest was tiring of his day job as a caregiver to a quadriplegic and was looking for work that would allow him to go back to college.

"We just lost our regular babysitter," I mentioned. "Any chance you're good with kids?"

I figured that a person used to providing full-time medical and personal care to a wheelchair-bound adult was more than qualified to help potty train my toddler and make mac n' cheese.

By the time he left, we had cemented the deal. He'd come to our house the next week, and my husband and I would take a much-needed date night. In the year since, hardly a week has gone by without our nanny helping my children with everything from making scrapbooks to brushing their teeth. He's a part of the family.

Sometimes, people seem alarmed, or worse, when I mention that our nanny is trans. Their misinformed fear makes them come across as bigoted, and they sometimes say outrageously offensive things. They ask, "Will your children will be confused about their gender since their nanny is trans?" They wonder, "Aren't you afraid he's some kind of sexual predator?"

I try my best to take a deep breath and answer as calmly as I can.

No, I'm not "worried" about my children becoming confused about their gender identity. Lots of children do become confused about their gender identity, and that has to do with the messages society gives them about being a boy or a girl, and how those might conflict with how they feel on the inside. Having a trans nanny doesn't mean my children feel less at ease in their own gender. They have the same statistical odds of a transgender identity as any other person.

No, I'm not concerned in the slightest about our nanny hurting my children. He's an incredibly caring, compassionate human being, with a wealth of experience caring for people needier than my own children. He's a gem of a childcare worker, as well as a general mother's helper and more. The fact that he's gender non-conforming has as little impact on whether he's a danger to another person as his dairy allergy is.

What I expect my children to gain from having a trans nanny, and a trans figure in their lives at this formative stage, is that they'll be more open-minded about transgender people as they get older. When they meet a person who reads as male and prefers female pronouns, they won't spend 20 minute interrogating them about their private parts and surgical history. They won't lecture them about God's will or being inherently wrong. They'll be prepared to accept the friendship of another person without judgment, and for that I am grateful.

For the last year, our nanny has been a central figure in helping my children grow into the people they're becoming, and I have no doubt that all of his influence has been positive.

I'm glad he's a part of our family. We're better for having him.

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