![]() ![]() JORGE MATA: Part of the decision to come to the United States and move from Juarez was that we lost a couple of friends. Mata and his wife were living and working as doctors there until something terrible happened. KHALID: Jorge Mata's (ph) story starts in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, in the 1990s. I feel like as a dad, my job is to be an example of that for them. I'm just here to provide a safe space for them to grow and flourish into amazing adults who know what healthy, genuine love feels like and acceptance so that they know to be able to project that out into the world and hopefully be some sort of shining light to others. I know - you know, I'll know how to navigate when the menstrual cycles start and the bodies start changing.ĬOLEMAN: I know how to prepare them for what society is going to be expecting of them and teach them that they have autonomy over themselves. I think that because of that upbringing for myself, I got to get the insight into how women are perceived by society. And that's just simply not true.ĬOLEMAN: Being a trans dad means I was assigned female at birth, and I was essentially raised to adhere to societal standards of what a girl is supposed to be, how a girl is supposed to act. And they're worried that our kids are going to be confused in some way, shape or form. And so people are always shocked when they hear my child calling me Daddy, my children calling me Daddy. And if we have the body parts to do so, why not? And the other thing is that a lot of people think that because we gave birth, that we suddenly become mothers. Those of us who identify more on the masculine spectrum, just because we identify as such does not take away our desire to have kids. And that's included but not limited to pregnancy. I got offered abortions an astronomical amount of times.ĬOLEMAN: One of the biggest things that people get wrong is that we hate our bodies, and thusly, anything feminine remotely is something that we will reject. I had to convince a lot of people that I was pregnant and that I wasn't just some strange man trying to infiltrate the OB-GYN's office. I still had to deal with people telling me that I didn't belong in certain spaces. With my second child, I thought that it would be different, and it really wasn't. So I had to do a lot of advocating for myself, and I experienced a lot of pushback and discrimination within the medical system based off of preconceived ideas of what a pregnant person is supposed to look like.įast-forward six years. He uses social media to talk about his life as a trans father, especially his experiences with pregnancy.ĬOLEMAN: Especially for someone like me, who is also Black, also low income, things of that nature, especially 10 years ago, people weren't interested in learning about transmasculine people navigating pregnancy. Journey is going on 3.ĬOLEMAN: But she is basically going on 30.ĬOLEMAN: The biggest thing for me with my kids was always to make sure that they were built for tough because of the world that we live in. KHALID: Coleman is one of the dads we're hearing from this week ahead of Father's Day. Have all your lovely toys, all your books. We reached him right before nap time with his daughter Journey (ph). And so we wanted to talk to fathers from different walks of life, like Kaden Coleman (ph). There are so many different ways to be a dad. I owe a lot in different ways to both of these men, my dad and my husband, two men who have shown me that there is no one universal way to be a father. Given the crazy, unpredictable life of a journalist, most days, he drops the kids off to school, and he picks them up. When they want to build some crazy Lego contraption, it's their dad. When they want to play soccer, their dad. When they cry, the first person they reach for their dad. My kids often say their dad is their best friend. My husband will be home trying to handle a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old. Yeah, I will say, didn't plan that one too well. And on this Father's Day, I'll be in the office. And I learned a lot about how to work hard from him.Īnd now I'm a mom. I mean, he had this work ethic, kind of like no one I have ever seen. Well, I should say he tried that once or twice, but it wasn't very appetizing. He did not know how to change a diaper or cook dinner. He believed his duty was to make sure his kids didn't worry about money or food, and growing up, we never did. My dad - we call him Abu (ph) - was an immigrant. ![]() ![]() This weekend, as we head into Father's Day, I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be a dad. ![]()
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