I'm not talking about teen/adolescent/young adult lit. There are more of those that touch on and/or address transgender parents than I can count. But I've been scouring the internet for days on end, trying to find books directed at young children that address transgender parents.
I've found some good ones dealing with gay and lesbian parents (the most well-known being Heather Has Two Mommies and Daddy's Roommate and And Tango Makes Three. All are very well written and have been enjoyable to me since I was finally able to lay hands on them once I got to college and it dawned on me that the real world does, in fact, include LGBT people, and that I was one of them).
Family is one of the most important things in the world to me. Whether I wind up married or not, to a man or a woman or someone off the spectrum, I intend to have children.
If I wind up single and adopting/artificially inseminating/somehow getting children, then any children's books I own about gay parents will most likely be useless in relation to our specific family.
If I wind up married/committed or whatever, and my partner and I have children, any children's books I own on lesbian parents will be useless in relation to our specific family.
*However, if I mary/commit to a man, any books I own on gay male parents WILL be useful.
BUT...
Regardless of who I wind up committed to, if I do wind up committed to someone, what resources will my young children have? It's difficult (and pointless) to keep a secret from my child(ren). What good would come of claiming to be biologically male? My family is huge and gossipy and the so-called "secret" couldn't be kept for more than thirty seconds.
My children WILL know that I am trans.
But how can I show my young future-children that they are not alone in having a transgender parent (specifically a female-to-male transgender father)? As far as I've discovered, there are a grand total of zero--at the most--publications for young children on this subject.
I would love to read my kid a bedtime story that starts out, "Bobby's daddy wasn't always a boy..." or "Mary is from an unusual family, because her daddy was born a little girl, like her..."
So what do I do?
You tell me.
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