Who's Your Papa?

For many years we were trying to figure out how to become parents. Shall we use surrogacy? Partner up with lesbians? Adopt? We never actually thought past that point.

After we learnt we were pregnant and expecting out first child, that is when other questions popped out of nowhere.

One that I found particularly intriguing was: what should our children call us?

To our dogs we were both daddy. If either of us asks the dogs "where's daddy?" they'll excitedly run to the other daddy. Jokingly we'll each refer to each other as "evil daddy". That's not an issue, since the dogs can't talk and won't be calling us daddy.

But what about a child? For a child mommy and daddy are the names of his parents. When a kid calls for his mommy he means only one person. How can we both be daddy?

We can't.

So I came up with a very original solution. Since I grew up with parents who were russian immigrants in Israel I called my father both papa (russian) and later aba (hebrew). I decided to go with papa, as that sounds more universal (pronounced like Tapas without the S). So we'll be daddy and papa. Out of curiousity I did some research and found out that most gay couples have used that "very original" solution!

Other solutions include calling each parent daddy with their name afterwards (for example daddy Jack and daddy Mark). It's OK, but doesn't work for me.

To make things more complicated, I then realized that being papa puts me in a great disadvantage. Most children books, tv shows, movies and so on always refer to mommy and daddy. Papa is never mentioned! There are many cute baby clothes that refer to "daddy's little mate" or "%50 Mommy %50 Daddy". No papa...

So the solution for now is to buy some french baby clothes in Montreal that refer to papa. As for the depiction of papa in children's fiction? Well, if it doesn't exist I'll have to create it, but more on that later.

So there you go. One of the many unique little "problems" we keep encountering on this wonderful journey.

--Mickey