this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2024
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The absolute fucking rancid vibes everybody emitted when I took my kids out alone in public. I even had the cops called on me once, when one of them was throwing a tantrum at the grocery store. I am so grateful that I was paranoid about that exact scenario happening, and carried copies of the kids' birth certificates at all times. No officer, I'm not a stabber. Just a very tired dad. Kindly stop detaining me, thanks.
It's well over a decade since any of them have been that small, but the experience is still haunting.
edit: I just realized I still have the laminated birth certificate copies in my bag. I should probably get rid of them. Carrying around another grown-ass-man's birth certificate is weird for entirely different reasons.
I volunteer with kids on international camps, which means I get given legal guardianship of them for the duration of camp, and a bunch of paperwork to go with it. When travelling, I always keep that paperwork as the closest thing to hand, because I'm a young adult travelling with 4 kids that are obviously not my own so everyone and their aunt wants to make sure I'm not a kidnapper.
Anyway, I brought it up during training one year and found out none of the women have ever had to deal with that. The closest they'd got was one particularly short woman who had trouble convincing airport staff that she was actually the responsible over 21 adult, and not another child.
Now in my particular case I don't think regarding me with suspicion is unwarranted, but it even more clearly demarks how society treats men and women around children - Men aren't trusted even with their own children, while women are trusted with absolutely any children, both of which are seriously problematic.
A flipside of this is that when you aren't around a bunch of breathless nitwits who think a father solo parenting is actually a child trafficker, there are also women who look at you like
just for existing positively with children. Expectations are both too damn high and too damn low. It's so stupid.
I wouldn't know. My children were all born girls. Most of them weren't girls, as it turns out, but that's another story. And it probably colored my experience a bit differently.
This is a good point. I have a son and most of the kids involved in the programs I volunteer with are boys (or at least male presenting, they're young so who knows who they will be in 10 years). You saying this has helped me appreciate how my experience has been colored. When I am a male mentor figure to a boy, his mother sees a positive male role model teaching and supporting her son and dad sees a patriarch training a recruit. There's the same low level paranoia about pedophilia that permeates any interaction an adult man has with any child, but it's not the same level of paranoia as when an adult man interacts with a girl child. When I am interacting with girl children, mom is more likely to see a threat and dad is more likely to see a queer, because interacting with children is women's work. Also, by age 8-10 I'm sure girl children have started internalizing the very real dangers of maleness to them as young women.
I'm thankful that for the most part these are just vague societal undercurrents and systemic forces rather than factors that play a real role in my day to day life doing volunteer work. Really I just want to be a safe person to kids including nd/queer kids and teach them to value and understand the natural world.
I appreciate being seen. That means a lot to me.
You hit the nail on the head. If I brought a couple boys to go play with dinosaur toys in the sand at the park, and I watched them intently, and engaged with their interests the whole time, I'd be the coolest, most extremely bangable single Dad in the region.
But I brought a couple girls to go play with dinosaur toys in the sand at the park, and I watched them intently, and engaged with their interests the whole time. There's now a weirdo playing with little girls at the park. Where are their mothers? POLICE???
Living with that hanging over your head as a dad who's a primary caregiver really fucks a guy up.
Also, just based on my experience pushing a giant stroller around, I could probably rant for a week straight about wheelchair accessibility in public spaces. And I was just pushing a baby around! I didn't have to deal with that ABSOLUTE FUCKING BULLSHIT for the rest of my life! And I'm still mad about it! Imagine how wheelchair users feel! Holy shit. I am mad again.