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New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Finney Boylan returns with a remarkable memoir about gender and parenting that discusses how families are shaped and the difficulties and wonders of being human.
A father for six years, a mother for ten, and for a time in between, neither, or both, Jennifer Finney Boylan has seen parenthood from both sides of the gender divide. When her two children were young, Boylan came out as transgender, and as Jenny transitioned from a man to a woman and from a father to a mother, her family faced unique challenges and questions. In this thoughtful, tear-jerking, hilarious memoir, Jenny asks what it means to be a father, or a mother, and to what extent gender shades our experiences as parents.
Through both her own story and incredibly insightful interviews with others, including Richard Russo, Edward Albee, Ann Beattie, Augusten Burroughs, Susan Minot, Trey Ellis, Timothy Kreider, and more, Jenny examines relationships between fathers, mothers, and children; people's memories of the children they were and the parents they became; and the many different ways a family can be. With an Afterword by Anna Quindlen, Stuck in the Middle with You is a brilliant meditation on raising—and on being—a child.
Now with Extra Libris material, including a reader’s guide and bonus content
- Sales Rank: #473480 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-04-30
- Released on: 2013-04-30
- Format: Kindle eBook
Amazon.com Review
Stuck in the Middle with You: A Memoir of Parenting in Three Genders Reader’s Guide Questions
1. On page 7, author Jennifer Finney Boylan compares her own marriage to Deirdre with that of Grenadine Phelps, whom she meets at a fencing match. “By almost anyone’s measure,” she writes, “Deedie and I are the dangerous outliers, and Grenadine and her husband Mr. and Mrs. Normal.” Do you think of Jennifer and Deirdre as “outliers”? What makes a family “normal”?
2. Boylan writes, “It is my hope that having a father who became a woman has made my two remarkable boys, in turn, into better men.” Do you believe this is true? How do you think having a parent who is “atypical” affects children? Does it strengthen a family, or place it at risk?
3. Throughout Stuck in the Middle with You, we observe Boylan worrying that her sons will suffer by not having a father, that it will be harder for them to learn what they need in order to become men. And yet, her sons appear to flourish and thrive, and she notes that she has taught them some “masculine” things, like splitting wood, regardless of her gender. How important is having both a mother and a father for raising well-rounded children? Is it possible that the sex of the parents is less important than the values they teach or model?
4. Deirdre Boylan says that “marrying Jenny was the luckiest thing that ever happened to me.” Do you think this is true? If you were married to a spouse who emerged as transgender, would you be able to stay married to him or her? How important is gender to a relationship? Do you believe that we fall in love with a person, with a body, or both?
5. Boylan writes that “womanhood—like manhood—is a strangely flexible term.” She even notes that there are “genetic” women who have a Y chromosome. Is there a single thing that you believe defines someone as a man or a woman? Is, as Boylan suggests, our gender identity more “strangely flexible” than we first suspect?
6. “One of the things about manhood I learned from my father,” Boylan writes, “is that it’s a solitary experience, a land of silences and understatements, a place where a lot of important things have to be learned alone. Whereas womanhood, a lot of the time, is a thing you get to share.” Later, she suggests that fathers are more playful than mothers, and that mothers worry more about their sons and daughters. How do you think mothers and fathers are different in the way they interact with their children?
7. Richard Russo, in describing his largely absent father, says, “[I] can either take what he’s offering . . . enjoy it and let the rest go, or . . . be bitter and resentful. For me [it was] just an easy choice. . . . Just to have fun with him.” Are you surprised about Russo’s remarkably forgiving approach to his father’s many shortcomings? Have you ever been able, in your own life, to choose to “take what someone’s offering” and “just have fun,” instead of giving in to the very human instinct to feel resentment or anger?
8. Boylan’s children, at a remarkably young age, seem to adjust to the change in their parent, and go so far as to come up with a new name for her—“Maddy,” their combination of Mommy and Daddy. Are you surprised by the way the boys so lovingly accept something that many adults might have struggled with? Do you think the boys might have struggled more if Boylan’s transition occurred when they were older?
9. Edward Albee asks, in his interview with Boylan, whether parenthood “mean[s] making or is it the being?” He says, Boylan “never birthed [her two sons]. Isn’t that a different quality of parenthood?” What do you think? Are parents who are not biologically related to their children different from parents who are? Does the experience of actually going through labor and giving birth change the relationship between parent and child?
10. Dr. Christine McGinn notes in her interview that the definition of motherhood and fatherhood are changing. She tells the story of being transgender, (from male to female), saving sperm, and later using that sperm so that she and her female partner could have children. Both mothers breast-feed, and both mothers are the biological parents of their children. Do you view this, as Boylan seems to, as primarily a story about love, and adaptability? What does it mean to be a mother or a father in the twenty-first century, when the definitions are changing so rapidly? Will all this change have a positive effect on children, making them, possibly, more accepting of the diversity of human experience?
11. Cartoonist Tim Kreider discusses his affection for the biological mother and half sisters he first meets in his forties. What do you think accounts for the connection that biological siblings can feel? Later, he suggests that while he’s glad to have found his biological mother, he is unlikely to undergo a similar search for his biological father. Why would an adopted child be more curious about his or her biological mother than his or her father?
12. Boylan’s mother, Hildegarde, seems to accept Jennifer as her daughter, even after raising her as her son, in spite of the fact that she is a conservative person, both spiritually and politically. What do you think explains Boylan’s mothers’ ability to put aside her confusion and simply believe that “love will prevail”? If your child came out to you as transgender, would you be able to accept him or her with the same love that we see from Hildegarde? Is there anything that could happen that would make you turn your back on your child? Or should the love between parents and their children be a love without conditions?
From Booklist
Boylan, a best-selling novelist for youth and adult readers and a nonfiction writer, picks up the thread of her She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders (2003) in this combination of memoir and interviews. Born male, Boylan became a woman after marrying and fathering two children. Here she recounts 6 years of life as a cross-dressing father and 10 years as a mother and chronicles the demanding transition between those two roles. She writes of her yearning for normalcy and shares her mother’s loving and affecting response to the announced change, “I would never desert my child. . . . There will be a scandal, for a while. . . . But—I will adjust.” As striking as Boylan’s transgender experiences are, she also offers reverberating counterpoint in universally relevant observations about parenting and time’s passing. By including candid and revealing conversations on gender and families with such writers as Richard Russo, Edward Albee, Susan Minot, and Anna Quindlen, Boylan illuminates diverse family relationships and the many ways families operate fluidly on a seemingly never-ending spectrum. This unique and giving book has tremendous resonance. --Whitney Scott
Review
“[A] warm, engaging memoir...This informal investigation and her touchingly funny and always candid story work together to reveal the book’s ultimate truth: that ‘to accept the wondrous scope of gender is to affirm the vast potential of life in all its messy, unfathomable beauty’...Genuinely insightful through and through.” —Kirkus
“Boylan illuminates diverse family relationships and the many ways families operate fluidly on a seemingly never-ending spectrum. This unique and giving book has tremendous resonance.” —Booklist
“Stuck in the Middle also comes with vivid observations....Boylan remains a role model for her brisk prose and her high spirits as well as for her public advocacy and attention to her wife and their sons.” —Los Angeles Times
“Boylan enlists different perspectives by writers and others to explore in depth how parenting involves much more than birthing...Boylan records in engaging short narratives her complicated process of evolving as a parent, from being a father (“Jim”) for six years, a mother for 10, and throughout embracing a ‘flexible’ and ‘openhearted’ approach that has proven remarkably successful and long-lasting. Boylan writes honestly about the enormous toll her transitioning took on the family, the sense of ‘loss’ they all suffered when she became a woman in 2000, the anxieties she and Deedee felt over the children’s reaction to public censure, dread that the kids harbored their own dark secrets, and annoyance at other people’s inability to use the right pronoun.” —Publishers Weekly
“No other memoirist I’ve read so perfectly blends intimacy and witty remove, soul-searching and slapstick, joy and pain. As a child—or as a reader—one could not ask for a wiser, warmer, more engaging companion than Jennifer Finny Boylan.” —Mary Roach, author of Stiff and Packing for Mars
“Parents will recognize the basics here: The days go on forever; the years fly by; the heart is gripped by an aching, terrified love. The fact that Boylan changes her gender along the way—father of babies becomes mother of teenagers—does not make this memoir a cabinet of curiosities. It’s a family love story, bighearted and fearlessly funny. ‘To accept the wondrous scope of gender,’ Boylan writes, ‘is to affirm the vast potential of life, in all its messy, unfathomable beauty.’ And her story, interspersed with celebrity interviews on parenting, is messy and beautiful indeed. In the end...as Boylan’s mother puts it, ‘love will prevail.’”
—More Magazine
Most helpful customer reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful.
A great parenting book
By Dave Parker
The subtitle "Parenting in Three Genders" refers to Jennifer Boylan's parenting experience before, during, and after her transition male to female. It is really much more than that. It includes the important actual events along the way while raising important philosophical questions about parenting.
What is a parent? Once procreation and delivery occur, how much does effective parenting depend on gender? What are the similarities and parenting differences between a loving father and a loving mother?
In search of the answers, Ms. Boylan includes not only her own experiences, but interviews other parents of both genders who were in families with "different" parents, siblings, or children. She raises questions about what attributes characterize good parenting. She asks herself and others how a parent's gender may affect the child's outcome - or not.
At first glance, it seems this book is all about non-traditional families - whatever that means. As Ms. Boylan points out, the 2011 census found that only about 7% of US families reflect the common concept of a traditional family - one with a husband (father) employed outside the home, while the wife (mother) stays home and takes care of the kids.
My take on this book is that parenting is all about raising healthy, happy children with love and understanding while accepting responsibility for guiding them safely to adulthood. Good parenting is independent of gender.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
sentimental, and not what I expected
By S.E. Poza
Based on the title and blurbs, I expected this book to provide insights into how parenting is different for someone who is dealing with transgender issues. What it ended up being was sweet, sentimental, lightweight, and inconsistent. Boylan absolutely has a humanistic and gentle outlook on life which is reflected in how she frames her experiences. This is not a person given to harshness or anger, or at least not inclined to share that aspect of her personality much.
There are actually two parts to the book, though they are interspersed such that they aren't really presented as separate entities. There are Boylan's reminiscences, about both the distant and recent past, and then there are interviews with other successful and accomplished people who share their memories of their fathers and how those experiences shaped their personalities and parenting choices. The interviews could be added dimension to the book, but they end up feeling like padding. Perhaps if she had looked outside of her circle of friends and acquaintances to locate people who had bigger hardship and challenges, the interviews may have kept my interest. As it was, I gave up on them pretty fast.
Part of the problem is that the interviews appear to largely be transcribed close to verbatim rather than their content being gleaned and possibly analyzed for meaning and focus. They feel like languid trips down each subject's memory lane. Most of these trips are neither remarkable nor especially enlightening. I'm not sure what the point of them is, but I wanted to skip them after reading the first one. I just didn't care about stories about the average parents of successful people.
As for Boylan's story, as another reviewer has pointed out, her situation appears to be pretty much ideal for a person who has had sexual reassignment surgery. It's as if her goal is not to help readers understand what it is like to wrestle with the difficulties of parenting as a transgendered person, but rather to normalize the experience as being essentially as healthy and stable as any other. If that is the case, then it could have been summed up in a paragraph or two. She is either the luckiest transgender person alive with a wife who was absolutely at peace with the idea of losing a husband and gaining a wife (note: I did not read Boylen's other book so I don't know what it may have revealed) and with children who suffered no ill consequences or psychological issues as a result of seeing their daddy transform into another mommy, or there are parts that she chose not to share in order to say, 'hey, my family is not only just as good as traditional ones, but actually better!'
Indeed, Boylen's family may actually be comprised of more loving, more emotionally stable, and kind people than other traditional families. Her family may be remarkable in this way, but that only seems to bring to mind the fact that there is really nothing she has to share of value aside from "nice people have nice lives and can raise children with hearts of gold". I'm pretty sure we already knew this. If that is so, then the world around Boylen apparently has become so tolerant and accepting of "alternative lifestyles" that books like this have very little to share and seem less than necessary.
28 of 35 people found the following review helpful.
The New Normal
By Antigone Walsh
Frankly I was put off by the opening encounter between the author and an unhappy woman improbably named "Grenadine". Both were attending their children's fencing match when Grendadin complained that her husband, a soldier, again deployed in Iraq, had changed and was no longer the man she married. I must say I was not surprised, thinking PTSD. How could someone not be changed after being placed in a hostile Middle Eastern country where the inflexible populace not only approve of violence and hatred, they embrace it? How could you not change when every moment of your existence you are wondering whether it would be the last? I was expecting the author, a transexual who certainly knows alot about extreme change, to offer words of wisdom, encouragement and hope. Instead she gloated about how her unconventional household with two brillant boys and an understanding wife fared in comparison to a "normal" family. Of course Grenadine's brutish son was besting a smaller, more delicate child. So it seems that while the author demands understanding, acceptance and admiration, the great unwashed are undeserving of the same consideration.
The book has a breezy tone and deals with the author's life, pre and post transition. According to her, the reception of her change was nothing less than idyllic. The kids were unaffected and not bullied or badgered in school. The only issues the kids had were unrelated to the unconventional family unit: the younger child hated his math teacher and the older one was unfairly punished for an innocent but misguided joke. The friends and family members that disapproved eventually rejoined the fold and her spouse, employer, colleagues and community were all supportive. The author seems self centered and a bit selfish. It is all about her. I don't dispute that it must have been torture to be forced to live a life that crushes who you know you are but still she was educated and sophisticated. She dated, married and made a life with an apparently unsuspecting woman. She followed her path, it is true that something can be said for that. But she expected everyone to fall in step with her and apparently they did.
The book raises some important questions about gender, sex and the family. It is easy to read and certainly thought provoking. The book is interrupted by time outs which include interviews with celebrities and people who have faced challenges, parent of a dwarf, autistic child, a transexual who shared breast feeding duties with the girlfriend inseminated with the sperm saved from when she was still a man. I am not partial to question and answer interviews. They seem designed to demonstrate the cleverness of the questioner more than anything else. They were also jarring and interrupted the story. The book itself was a bit jerky, moving from one episode to another in a rather haphazard manner. There are times when the narrative stops and the question remains unanswered. For instance, we never know whether Jenny's son bested Grenadine's at the fencing match. The relationship between Jenny and Deedie, her wife, is skimmed over. I understand the author has written about her experiences in an earlier book but Deedie played a small part in this book. I wondered whether Jenny, when contemplating a one night stand with a ventriloquist, ever gave a thought to whether that constituted a betrayal of Deedie.
Still the book has humor and is easy to read. I did think the message that love does in fact conquer all a positive one. But I hope that members of the new normal understand that eventually they will be just like the old normal where no plaudits are given for raising happy, adjusted kids and living life as a responsible member of society.
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