“As a mom,” my friend began, then went on to describe her behavior in response to something that had occurred with one of her children. When I heard her opening line, I ground my back teeth to powder, but listened — more or less, respectfully — to her actions. My friend is fond of using the terms “as a mother,” or “as a woman.” She is both of those, so I am loath to challenge her about those designations, but some of the situations that she is describing are nearly identical to things that I have been through, and I identify as a man.
I will accept a person staking claim to “I sit to pee,” or “I stand to pee.” When I took my two youngest children on a rafting trip with friends, my son climbed from the float and went behind a tree to urinate. His sister said to me, ruefully, “I wish that I was a boy,” for she too, had to urinate. My double-X chromosome friend took my daughter behind a tree and taught her how to “drop and squat,” thereby equalizing the advantages.
When a woman says, “as a mom, I nursed (breast-fed) my child,” I cannot contend against that, for, as a man — absent a hormonal imbalance — I do not lactate. (I also do not ovulate, being devoid of a uterus.) But every other thing that “a mom” has provided for a child, I have also. When my eldest child was 4 years old, her mother went back to college to get her Master of Business Administration. She would leave our home on Sunday night to attend classes and return on Thursday evening. I was our child’s caretaker in the interim, and everything that I did for her was as the person who was her father. I fed, bathed, and dressed her, took her to the daycare, and picked her up after my work was done. Twenty years later, I did the same things for her sister, born to another mother. And as her daytime caretaker since she was 5 months old, I have taught my youngest granddaughter (now 7 years old) “front to back and drop.” For those of you reading this who are women, you know the cleansing routine to which I refer. And you men: Ask the women.
I watch a lot of “judge shows” on TV — thanks, mom — and on many of them, one of the litigants will say, “as a man” as an explanation for his behavior. Most of the time, the behavior is not gender specific. Of course, a woman will chime in with an equally empty statement, saying “as a woman,” and describe behavior that could be attributed to any person. (And just to veer off on a tangent for a moment, what does it mean when a person describes their behavior by saying “me being me?”)
I briefly researched the concept of a “maternal instinct,” and my shallow dive into the pool of information showed that the instinct is not necessarily linked to gender, but can be attributed to circumstances, learned behavior and cultural norms. I imagine a Cro-Magnon man being surprised by the birth of a Cro-Magnon baby and deciding to chuck the child back to its deliverer. “You bore it, you feed it,” the Cro-Magnon might have grunted. In retrospect, that chuck and catch may have been the genesis of the concept of “as a mom.”
As for me, I will care for my children and grandchildren in loving and nurturing ways, the ways that I observed and learned of and embraced, “as a person.”
cjon3acd@att.net