Adults ruin everything.

There’s an argument that says kids need a father if they’re going to grow up to be well-adjusted adults (a quick aside - have a look at politics, popular journalism (for want of a better phrase) and our celebrity culture. How many well-adjusted adults do you see?). And I know it is, in some way, true-ish (although not really). Kids tend to go through a phase when they’re trying to understand this weird world they find themselves in where they have a very basic and strongly defined understanding of male (short hair, deep voice, willy) and female (long hair, higher voice, boobs), and having this understanding backed up by real-life examples helps them in this. I remember Emily going through this and being terribly confused that the shop assistant in Sainsbury’s had short hair, yet was female. This was embarrassing for the young woman serving us and awkward for us, but Emily wasn’t doing anything deliberately wrong, she was only trying to get to grips with the world.

But I don’t think this means this is the only proper way to bring up children; two parents, one a manly man, the other a womanly woman. Like learning anything from scratch, you start with the basics and build colour and complexity on from there. So, slowly, Emily learned that men can have long hair, and that women can have short hair. Now she and Katie know that same-sex relationships aren’t unusual, and that having two mums or two dads isn’t really that different from having a mum and a dad (because it isn’t).

The idea that anything other than exposure to entirely straight relationships will somehow mess kids up is bonkers – if you present to children that being straight, gay or trans is still being a person and one is no less natural a state of being than the other, then that is the message they will take on board. The ingrained gender stereotyping that causes people not only to judge others, but also to unconsciously pass that reaction on to children is what causes them to adopt the same attitude. In some cases it’s rather more conscious, but it’s arguably the ones that declare they’re not judgmental on the surface and show by their actions that they are lying that are the biggest part of the problem. While blatant on-the-surface discrimination has reduced over the years (perhaps not including the past 18 months or so, but like the evidence of climate change, it’s the longer-term data you need to look at), I still observe a lot of just-under-the-surface judgement in many places, by many people who would be outraged if you even suggested such a thing went on. It’s that more secret, less honest prejudice that causes this to be perpetuated over generations.

In my (admittedly limited) experience, kids grow up feeling happy and secure with people who love them and provide a safe environment, and if that person happens to have stubble and wear a dress, it makes no difference to the kid until they pick up the behaviours and prejudices of adults.