Daddy Mommy

In our brave new world men no longer have to strap on an empathy belly and [temporarily] experience their own pregnancy. They can now go whole hog [sort of] and experience it all.

Almost.

Thomas Beatie, smalltown Oregon's married and pregnant father, does offer in his personal narrative the small detail that he happens to be a not quite fully transgendered female. But as a preggers papa, he feels, "Incredible. Despite the fact that my belly is growing with a new life inside me, I am stable and confident being the man that I am. In a technical sense I see myself as my own surrogate, though my gender identity as male is constant. To [wife] Nancy, I am her husband carrying our child. I will be my daughter’s father, and Nancy will be her mother. We will be a family.”

At first it seemed this seemed a terrific solution to the drama of the absentee father. But then two thoughts. The first is that the presidential campaigners in the fall could owe their paths to absentee fathers — so maybe, and depending on the father and child, it is not always a bad thing — the second, the more obvious, having a baby doesn't keep moms from running away and leaving the child with the husband, or in this case Beatie's wife (the not mother).

** If dads startd giving birth, how long before humanity would naturally evolve to a one-sex species? **