How the Lesbians Stole Father’s Day
Although Father’s day is not a holiday we celebrate in our home since my kids have two moms, I had no tacit schemes to cancel it for any other families. And yet that is exactly what ended up happening at my kids first year of preschool.
Contrary to popular belief, I don’t wake up each morning, touch up my blue hair while hexing the patriarchy, feed my twenty rescue cats avocado toast, sip my turmeric oatmilk adaptogen latte, check my woke agenda and declare “another day, another beloved social ritual to destroy.” Yet, sometimes simply introducing differences to the established norm can have a cascading and surprising effect. And even the most well-meaning among us can get the solutions wrong if we don’t actually have the “different” folks in the room where decisions about inclusiveness get made.
At core, that’s what this scary DEI is all about: granting more access to the spaces where decision-making happens so that solutions work for the world as it is, not some narrow version of what some wish it was.
In our daughter’s first year in preschool, my wife and I each received two lovely Mother’s Day cards (read: scribbles with glitter). Upon their receipt, we knew we had to address what the messaging would be around Father’s Day so that our daughter wasn’t left out, or perhaps worse, we could end up with two more glitter scribbles and nobody to pass them off on. Since this was a San Francisco preschool, our daughter was not the only student without a father, so we assumed there would be an option to make unintelligible crafts for other family members. Perhaps we would just receive more “artwork” with a carefully transcribed, fill-in-the-blank quote like some of my past favorites: “These are pebble people, not monsters. I love you;” “I love my moms because of…snacks;” and my personal favorite, “My moms look beautiful when they…go to the bar.”
But before we could start a dialogue the school actually cut us off at the pass by including a note about Father’s Day in their May Newsletter:
We are aware that there are children in our school who are not in a traditional nuclear family. Being sensitive to the diversity of our families when we are making gifts, we will refer to these gifts as a time to celebrate family and make a special offering for someone who means a lot to us.
I read this note as I was heading in for pick-up and found myself avoiding the other parents’ gazes in the hall. It felt odd coming off of celebrating Mother’s Day (or as we punctuate it, Mothers’ Day) to have father’s day canceled. Was I unwittingly part of an alliance of lesbians and single moms who had taken away Father’s Day with my non-traditional ways? I wanted to let everyone know that this had not been our ask. Contrary to popular belief, lesbians don’t hate men, and we don’t hate dads. Most of us even had one. Aside to any dads reading this: as someone who often passes as a straight woman, I will tell you this: Get a group of straight moms together and hating on men/dads/husbands is a pretty hot topic. While I feel for my terminally hetero sisters, some of whom may certainly feel Father’s Day is not always earned by their spouses’ behaviors, it is not my goal to take down man-parents.
What struck me first about this note was the phrasing. “Traditional” hits a particular chord. Yes, my kids have two moms. But aside from this one deviation from the norm they live a strikingly, almost cloyingly, normal life. As someone who was raised on a hippie commune complete with polygamist guru, questionable homeschooling, and lots of “mind expanding” substances being generously distributed, I can say that my kids have experienced a whole lot of traditional nuclear, two-parent family life even without having a dad. I do give this school lots of credit for their efforts and also for communicating ahead of time, but starting with our “non-traditional families” made it feel like we were a problem to be solved instead of leading with the school’s desire to be inclusive, which I believe is an earnest one.
A few years and one kid later, we are living on the east coast, where our youngest is enrolled at an equally progressive preschool. We received a text from a teacher asking what special man in our son’s life we would like him to make something for on Father’s Day. Once again, I believe this was a well-meaning attempt, but as an assignment it would at best perplex my little one and at worst it would carry an implication that a child, especially one assigned male at birth, should have a man involved in his immediate family as some kind of a dad stand-in. Also, it expects that kids would, in preschool, be categorizing special people in their lives by gender. Since we avoid making gender a central organizing theme of relating, this prompt would’ve certainly confused our little one. A framework that defaults to heterosexuality and cisgender as the norm is the definition of heteronormativity. Instead, we must ask queer folks to be part of the problem-solving process.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion has been under attack and it seems that almost anything from plane crashes to economic woes can be blamed on it. It’s the new bogeyperson of the right. It’s almost as scary as literate drag queens. In this climate, it can feel like one should take whatever we can get. At the same time, if we don’t take the time to educate people who want to be allies, who want to be inclusive, we are doing everyone a disservice. DEI work is not about taking things away, it’s about creating access for all and minimizing moments that will exclude certain kids or families. Sometimes this means a small tweak to language used in the classroom or a lesson plan review. Other times it can be a bigger back-to-the-drawing-board type of moment. Gender-based events like daddy/daughter dances always left some kids and families out, so many schools have found ways to still have dances that are about kids connecting with an adult family member without making it about gender.
Sometimes I can see this all clearly and I feel energized to do this work for other families that are like mine as well as those that are different from mine. When it comes to the Father’s Day/Mother’s Day situation, personally, I can’t in good conscience demand inclusive language around Father’s Day but allow schools to be all in for Mother’s Day. So we need to come up with lasting solutions that take the changing compositions of our classrooms into consideration.
Much of the time, I can have deep empathy for the ways that even small changes can feel like a loss of tradition and history, even though this investment in tradition and history is often a sign of privilege. But, sometimes I get caught up in the uneven stakes of it all. Straight people risk feeling awkward or wistful. LGBTQ+ folks are in actual danger; we are still being killed and killing ourselves at alarming rates. When we create ways for LGBTQ+ folks to feel included and represented, we save lives, full stop. Recently, I have noticed that previously supportive folks bristle when asked to make adjustments for inclusion, and it feels like we are fast-tracking back to a pre-Glee America. The states I have lived in, California, New York and Connecticut, are all liberal and LGBTQ+ friendly. But, with the political backsliding of the last decade, and the quickening in the last year, even these previously impermeable bubbles feel less and less structurally sound.
I have nothing against Father’s Day. Like Mother’s Day, and so many other things, it exists on a spectrum from a lovely and meaningful reminder to gather family and appreciate certain family members contributing, to an empty capitalist Hallmark holiday. No one’s trying to erase it. But especially in early childhood settings, where preschoolers aren’t yet organizing their worlds around gender roles or binaries, there’s no harm, and a lot of benefit, in softening the edges of tradition. If a classroom is making cards or hosting an event, just invite other caregivers too. It doesn’t diminish the love for fathers for those who have them. It simply affirms that all families deserve acknowledgement and deserve a place at the table (or craft station). That’s not erasure or denial. That’s a reflection of reality.
So happy Father’s Day. I am officially extending my rainbow flag and generously allowing Father’s Day to remain, in June, nonetheless. And to the stellar dads out there, trying to raise good humans, we are in this together. This hex is for you.
About the Author
Allegra Hirschman is a writer, multimedia storyteller, outspoken bisexual, and flash mob initiator, and feminist Born and raised in the Bay Area, she now lives with her wife, two kids and their goldendoodle Cupcake in the northeast suburbs of all places. When she is not doing strategic operations for mission driven orgs as a day job, she helps folks have better connections as a Somatica Sex and Intimacy Coach. Her writing has appeared in Huffpo, Buzzfeed, and most importantly, right here at MUTHA.
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