Stuck in the Middle with You

Boylan, Jennifer. Stuck in the Middle with You: A Memoir of Parenting in Three Genders. Crown, 2013.

A father for ten years, a mother for eight, and for a time in between, neither, or both ("the parental version of the schnoodle, or the cockapoo"), 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. "It is my hope," she writes, "that having a father who became a woman in turn helped my sons become better men." 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 with fathers and mothers, people's memories of the children they were and the parents they became, and the many different ways a family can be.

I am not a parent, nor am I transgender, but I did find this book to be a very interesting read. For anyone who has read Happy Families, this is a nonfiction version of a similar story, interspersed with interviews. It's a very interesting read, and one I would recommend for anyone who has a transgender friend or who simply wants to understand an often misunderstood segment of humanity.

I received a complimentary copy of this book through the Goodreads First Reads program for the purposes of review.