How To Talk To Your Son About Men’s Sports

My wife and I have known since the moment our beautiful baby boy Jude came into this world that, as the child of a lesbian couple, there was a lot about his life that was going to be different from other kids’ lives. For example, one of his parents (me) is insane. Furthermore, his parents are both ostensibly women, whereas most kids have one woman and one man as parents. There’s so much to explain to him as he grows older and a lot of complicated conversations to have.

One thing we think about a lot is how we’re going to explain to him that men play sports too, as it’s unlikely he’ll become aware of this without being told directly. As far as we know, he’s never met a male athlete, and might not meet one for some time.

Although we’ve avoided screen time since he developed the ability to see and hear and pay attention to the television, he spent many of his early months absorbing women’s basketball via osmosis. As he gets older and increasingly unable to accept brief periods of inactivity, we will be taking him to the park on Sundays to enjoy the local ritual of lesbian kickball. Also, despite our best intentions for his intellectual development, I imagine it’s possible we might, despite his growing consciousness, watch a little WNBA on mute this summer, maybe, sometimes, as a treat. In other words: women’s sports are all around him. Women’s sports are the world he knows and understands. Women’s sports are celebrated in our favored house of worship and amongst our local community.

Starting a conversation with your kids about men’s sports doesn’t have to be one big TALK. In fact, I’ve learned that it’s better for kids and for parents to start talking to them about men’s sports gradually all throughout their childhood, into adolescence and even into early adulthood.

Luckily, we have plenty of time to figure out the first conversation because thus far he’s mostly uninterested in mastering spoken language, preferring instead to communicate through screaming, laughing, crying, blank stares, throwing things on the ground, and repeating the same syllable over and over again (da, ma, do) for days at a time. On the upside, he does know the ASL sign for “milk” and employs it with abandon.

However (and this is true) there is one word he has, in fact, entirely mastered: “ball.” Which brings me to my first point.

Let Him Play Sports
The best way to tell your little guy that men can play sports is to let the only man in your life (him), play sports himself. We’ve installed multiple basketball hoops in the home — in the bathtub interior, at the end of the driveway, and on his backyard play structure. This has made him aware that at least one man plays sports — him! It’s an easy way to expose your son to men playing sports without exposing your son to more men than entirely necessary.

Learn Your History
The first thing you should do — and it’s something we’re planning on doing ourselves — is getting educated. For example, did you know that the men’s basketball association has been around since 1949, 47 years longer than the Women’s Basketball Association? That’s such a long time! You should watch Winning Time, it was such a good show on HBO and I was very upset to hear it was cancelled. Such a good show! I feel like people don’t talk about that show enough.

Separate Adult Interests From Child Interests
Personally, I find sports approximately 700x more interesting when the players are sleeping with each other and I can keep track of all the gay players in my little database. But remember — your kid is just a kid! He doesn’t even reliably recall the sound a cat makes, he’s not wondering about how weird it’ll be if NaLyssa Smith and Jackie Young stay on the Aces even though they are allegedly dating each other’s exes. He’s just here to play ball. By the time he’s old enough to watch Heated Rivalry and subsequently learn about its lack of realism, he will be experiencing the heat death of the universe and have bigger problems to tackle. To him, men’s sports will seem entirely valid despite lacking that extra “It” factor of behind-the-scenes romantic drama. He doesn’t need to know who is gay — for all he knows, everyone is!

Save Some Conversations For Later In Life
Now, you don’t have to tell him everything right away! You don’t have to tell him about concussions or sports gambling or Julie Taylor right now. Wait until he understands what it means to be donor conceived to tell him that the donor was 6’7″ and you installed all those basketball hoops around the home to get him ready for a basketball scholarship.

But you should tell him sooner rather than later how long and hard the women athletes had to fight to get paid a living wage, let alone a salary in the same general solar system as men playing the same sport! Even for female soccer players, even though women’s soccer is more popular in the U.S than men’s soccer! That stuff is important! He should know ASAP so that he can use his privilege to fight for less wealth inequality in general and also specifically in the case of sports.

It’s Okay To Never Talk About It
But ultimately, it’s always okay to just avoid things and wait until something dramatic happens, like he goes to a mixed-gender sports bar and sees men throwing balls on the television and then asks you what’s going on, or you drive by a golf course. Sometimes it’s just better that they don’t know, you know?