My Life, Series 11: When Mum Becomes Dad: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000pz3c via @bbciplayer
I’ve just watched it. First thoughts are what a lovely, bright child the daughter is. Her little brother is sweet too but is very quiet and my heart was breaking when he was talking about a story in school about a child losing their Mum. The mother that is now Dad Jack, was doing all the standard legwork stereotypically done by a ‘Mum’ - ferrying the kids about, organising play dates and birthday parties, helping with piano lessons. The Dad that fathered them featured only when he came to ‘help support’ at his own daughter’s birthday party.
Dad ‘Jack’ (formerly the person the kids knew as their mother) was dressed how I dress but had a deeper voice and facial hair so was obviously taking Testosterone. They were not interviewed as the whole programme was ‘led’ by Tilly (except we know how TV programmes are made and we know it will have been guided and ultimately steered by Dad Jack and the programme ‘consultants’).
It was a classic scripted/constructed ‘documentary’ masquerading as a fly-on-the-wall. Therefore there was lots of ‘oh let’s go and talk to this other person with a transgender dad that I’ve never met before’, or ‘oh look at these photos of my Dad when he was a child that I’ve never seen before’, ‘oh let’s get the boy with the transgender Dad who I just met in Brighton come and help me talk to my little brother’s class of 9 year olds about having a Transgender Dad’.
I felt uncomfortable at the scene where the first child they met who had a Transgender Dad was talking about having to have counselling to deal with it all - it was actually referred to as bereavement counselling. I also felt sorry for the little brother being probed about the upsetting incident in school where someone likened his situation to his Mum having ‘gone away’.I thought it was intrusive and I’m not sure the poor lad was entirely happy being jollied along in the making of this ‘documentary’ by his big sister and Dad Jack.
I couldn’t help but wonder at the ultimate selfishness of Dad Jack and the other Transgender Dads. Dad Jack used some abstract musical metaphor about how living as a woman felt like playing a wrong note on the piano. And there was this infuriatingly unexplained concept of ‘living as a man’ and ‘living as a woman’ What does it mean??!
I felt sorry for the children having to accept this concept that they no longer had a mother. It seems an awful lot to ask of children and, personally, I thought that some of them looked like they were carrying a weight. The class of seemingly well-coached 9 year olds, looked slightly baffled but that might just have been because there was a film crew in their classroom! And the children reinforced the mantra of ‘being kind’ and accepting everything to make other people happy.
I hope I’m allowed to discuss this programme on here. It’s on CBBC so I feel it valid for me to critique it honestly as both a parent and an interested viewer. I see that Freddy McConnell (the Transgender man who is campaigning to be called the father on their child’s birth certificate) was a consultant on the programme and Fox Fisher also helped with the ‘casting’.
Be interested to know what others think. It’s been on Iplayer since 30 November so very recent.