Part 1 of 3 of How motherhood brought out the queerness in me
Understanding my queerness has never felt more important than when I had a baby. I remember feeling a mix of excitement and anxiety when I learned I was having a baby. While I was overjoyed, a quiet sense of unease crept in—one that I couldn’t quite place at first. Finding out the sex of my baby made me go through an internal dilemma about how I was going to navigate the whole ‘gender’ aspect of bringing up a child. I was in the UK at the time, so during my second trimester I was able to find out that I was having a boy—don’t worry, I didn’t find out through illegal means in India (yikes!). This dilemma obviously stemmed from my heteronormative upbringing, and how that has hindered—or rather, slowed down—my own journey.
Once the news was out, I quickly noticed how everyone around me immediately jumped on the “Oh, it’s a boy, so OBVIOUSLY he will love cars, be a mama’s boy and behave a certain way” bandwagon. Gosh, thinking back to then, I remember how much intense, heart-racing, jittery anxiety that would cause me, and I didn’t know what to make of it! Another time, an aunt—or maybe a friend—casually said, “Oh, your boy will be wild and tough! You’ll never get him to sit still for cuddles like a little girl would.” That comment lingered for days, making me question why these expectations felt so suffocating. Amidst all this, the moment arrived. My precious baby boy came into this world, turning my world upside down in the best way possible! Putting all my anxieties to ease because babies are so pure and unassuming, I knew I just had to do my best to be a safe space for him and I was sure everything else would fall into place!
We are at the toddler phase now, and he is growing up to be an extremely high-spirited, opinionated, ridiculously smart, intuitively sensitive, and super happy ball of energy! And I am drinking up every second of it!
So, all’s well right? Not really… So what was the uncomfortable part? The clear boxes that friends, family, and even strangers put him in before his personality is even fully formed. “Oh, he’s a boy, so he won’t care about more than primary colours” (because, apparently, men know only two colours while women obsess over multiple shades of the same colour—like, whaaat?). “He’s a boy, so he won’t listen to you, but girls would.” And then there’s the whole thing on social media about being a #BoyMom vs #GirlMom.
Sure, biological and hormonal differences shape certain traits, but boxing kids in—or rather, locking them in a castle with a moat full of blue or pink-coloured crocodiles ready for the attack if they sneak a toe out of the box, ultimately making them think they can’t escape—is just absurd. It signals to them that this is all there is to being themselves.
This made me realise just how uncomfortable the whole boy vs girl binary complex makes me feel. I began exploring why I felt this way. Even a simple “Boy or girl?” from a salesperson at a baby shop sent a ripple of unease through me! I started questioning why I had so much anxiety around this. The striking thing was how my 2-year-old, who is still learning to be a fully formed person, is already subjected to binary gender stereotypes—and by extension, so was I. It reminded me of the boxes I have been put in all my life!
But in reflecting on my emotional reactions to these baffling binary perspectives, I knew—and still know—that I’m on the brink of something significant; something that feels like peeling away layers of expectations to uncover my truest self. It’s a journey toward shedding the roles I was boxed into and finally embracing the fluidity, freedom, and joy that come with living authentically. I know I’m on my way to stepping into an even queerer, truer version of myself, and this journey makes me so happy and hopeful because on the other side of it is the most authentic version of ME, and I’m all for it!
