Oh, Mr. Mutchnick....

Take a look:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-mutchnick/my-daughters-have-no-moth_b_170614.html

My reaction to Max Mutchnick's self-affirming little piece mirrors so much that I find hard to articulate about LGBT parenting.   In a nutshell - it pisses me off.  My boss and I often use the term "good people, working hard" to describe failures in inner-city education: people working long hours, with good intentions, but not changing systems, just spinning their wheels, feeling better about themselves.  That's pretty much my impression of Max Mutchnick's brand of gay parenting: good people, trying hard.  But you know what?  Stop patting yourselves on the back, do a little self-assessment, and stop asking for everyone's approval and admiration.  Honestly.

Yes, of course it is uncomfortable to think or talk about the fact that a women you don't know carried your beautiful, adored children, and even stranger that the egg with half of their DNA came out of an online shopping experience.  These things are uncomfortable to think about because we were raised with a story about how we would create children that doesn't match up with the choices we ended up having.  Yes, yes it is awkward, uncomfortable, and hard.  So... you call her an oven?!?!   Good move.  It makes total sense.  I mean, who wouldn't, in the face of confronting the frontier of non-traditional family creation (that you chose, mind you), choose to use derogatory and mocking language to describe it, right?  And then, after you take a lot of heat for it, go back online and write a piece defending your diction as "distance regulating" - an adaptive way of managing the uncomfortable intimacy and weight of this woman's role in your life.  Oh man... this one makes my blood boil - this is a privilege shit show that you are actually proud to star in because you think you have a defense for everything.  So the bottom line is this - she has a place in your life that you can't really handle, ok, get some help with that.  But - she has a role in your daughters' life too, a big, scary anonymous one.  They have to figure out how to make meaning and get comfortable with her as an unknown, and so... you do too.

Let's look at some other uncomfortable things out there:  A woman sold her eggs online, knowing she created wanted  children, but never knowing if they were born healthy, or to whom, or anything about their future lives.  What do you think she refers to you as, Mr. Mutchnick?  I'm guessing it's far less offensive than your term for the surrogate, and just, per chance, that it acknowledges  all the hard, weird, honest things about this, and that probably, she just calls you the parent.  Imagine that.   No "distance regulation" - just real wrestling with it for what it is.  Then we have the surrogate, a woman who gave over her body, energy, emotions, and wellness to give you the children she'd never see grow up - on purpose.  We're not talking about Juno here, this is someone who chose to offer this; pure intentional selflessness, not coincidental symbiosis.  Do we think she didn't fall asleep talking to her belly during her pregnancy, telling the babies that they would be loved and cared for, often heartbroken in confronting that it would not be her to provide that?  When you have two babies growing inside you for 9 months, "distance regulation" is a bit of a hard thing to achieve.  No, instead of avoiding and distancing yourself from the hard reality of these family making ways, you go toward it, sit with it, swallow it, and move through it.  It becomes a part of your story and of who you are and your job is to find a way to make that a part of you that you are proud of.  This is the necessary work  of family making.

Most importantly: your daughters.  Two women came together, literally, in the most intimate, generous ways, to create these girls, and these women are absent, unknown, and mysterious.  Someday these girls will grow up and may chose to become parents, and they'll confront things not even the most loving fathers could fathom.  They'll come to love the babies that grow in their bellies and wonder what it was like for their surrogate to go through the pregnancy knowing they weren't her babies.  They'll give birth and imagine that at the moment their babies are placed in their arms, they were being taken to a new family.  Distance regulation won't be an option.  They'll have empathy for the women who helped bring them into the world, and so, shouldn't you?  They'll grow up looking in the mirror wondering who's nose they have, where they got their long eyelashes, etc, they have a long, constant, uncomfortable relationships with these unknown women, because they are part of them.  If their dads can model handling that relationship that nobody knows how to have, it just might be less scary for them. 

So, congratulations on your beautiful daughters, Mr. Mutchnick.  I hope they feel as blessed to have gay dads as I do.  I hope mostly though, that your journey into and through parenting is a more humble one.  Where you realize that your daughters' journeys may dictate where you must go, that evasion may no longer work, and that doing hard work for them will make you all better people and a better family.  Thanks for being visible as a gay dad, but don't feel the need to say you know how to do this, that you aren't making mistakes, and that you won't.  You really fucked up calling someone an oven.  Big time.  Don't use a fancy term to justify it.  When your presence as a gay parent is one who can't be flawed as every straight parent out there, you make it hard for our families.  All families are flawed and none earn the right to parent based on merit.  So get over it, and get over yourself.   See, its not about you, it's about your daughters.  You may need, and have the privilege, to create distance.  However, distance is not something your daughters have the privilege of creating, this is in their blood.  They deserve fathers who can recognize that this is a complex, intimate, impossible relationship to navigate, and navigating it is the only choice.  That sometimes you'll make immature jokes as a coping mechanism, and that you need to take responsibility when you do, unpack where that is coming from, go towards it, don't cover it up with witty banter, own it.