How can I be a loving, caring parent while being transmasculine?

This is one of the questions I struggled with when I first started transitioning. It is still something I think about, but I’ve accepted that it’s something I can solve just for myself and I have to learn to live within an unresolved space.

Care is understood as a feminine trait, one that woman and girls are “naturally” predisposed towards. It’s strongly ingrained to think of things this way, even many feminists will often joke about how much better the world would be if run by women.

I wanted children. I want to care for them but there was always something in me that resisted the way I was supposed to care for them, the way a woman is supposed to care.

But I also live in a world where I am judged if I am not gentle enough, nurturing enough, worrying enough—that it is my responsibility to run the household and it is my fault when something goes wrong.

The pressure to be a mother doesn’t end with reproduction. The requirement to be a caretaker continues all through a child’s life, and it also involves how a wife is supposed to nurture and teach her husband how to do his part. It is also about caring for elderly family.

What does it mean to transition while being in the position of the main caretaker? Is there a way for me to be masculine and caring? A husband may be praised for doing the smallest things in the household, maybe to “babysit” the kids, or maybe to be nagged to take out the trash.

And there is still a lifetime of experience for the kids where I’ve been in the role of mother. I went through pregnancy and nursing and sleepless nights. I left my job to stay home, I kept track of everything and worked to sure everyone got what they needed.

But also, I never really quite did motherhood right. No one ever really can, even the most feminine cis women--but it never felt like it fit, and I never wanted to be a mother. I did at one time think that maybe if I tried hard enough that I would, but that never happened.

People don’t want you to stop being the caretaker. This is the reality of life for trans men and transmasculine people. Many of us have been performing caretaking roles and people will be very angry at us because they feel that by transitioning, we are trying to get away from it.

We are expected to stay in our place. I am lucky that my transitioning has not been met with violence or coercion. But even for me, people want me to perform that role. I am still expected to fulfill my “feminine” caretaking role, as my voice deepens and hair grows across my face

If I was even luckier, then I would have supportive family who would be willing to renegotiate what it means to care within the family. How I can be masculine person, how I can have experienced motherhood, how I can care and love and be nurturing and still be masculine.

The thing is though, that I don’t actually really want to be the dad either. Not as being a dad is often understood in my culture. But I also don’t know what that would look like, to occupy that space.

Early in my transition, as I was grappling with what it meant to transition for me, I watched a TV show called Tales from the City, that had a trans man also grappling with his transition.

He is caretaker and there is a part in the show where he helps with a home birth and then after is holding the newborn baby to his post-op chest while gazing through the window. I cried so hard while watching that scene.

How can I be a loving and caring transmasculine person and a parent? Here it was, in this TV show and in this character that gave me this possibility.

This thread is slightly edited from this blog post. https://riverraven.substack.com/p/on-caretaking-and-transition?r=87ciz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy