I’m a non-binary parent but have had to accept being called ‘Daddy’

‘Daddy’s right here for you, okay?,’ said the neonatal medic to my newborn identical twins as they wheeled them to the special care unit.

This was the first time someone had referred to me by this name, but as well as finding it sweet and overwhelming in a good way, I also found it quite jarring. 

As an assigned male at birth (AMAB) non-binary person, being referred to as ‘the dad’ or ‘daddy’ – which are clearly masculine-gendered terms – didn’t fit with my gender identity. 

But as the options for gender-neutral titles aren’t great – and deviating from the traditional binary gendered parent names is fraught with risks like people not being able to work out what my relationship is with my children – I’ve had to learn to make peace with being misgendered in this way ever since. 

I wish that we as a society had already established gender-neutral parent words which everyone is aware of, to allow me to be recognised as my full self, but the poor state of LGBTQIA+ education means this feels like a distant possibility.  

I realised I was non-binary and came out in early 2017, at the start of a wave of lots of other people realising the same thing. I was 25 and had a brief period of unemployment, living back at home with my parents, which gave me time to be introspective and figure out who I was.  

For me, being non-binary is something I’ve always felt – that I’m not a man or a woman, and that the narrow ideas we are fed about binary genders don’t sit well with me. I don’t identify with any gender, which makes me agender – one of the many identities under the trans and non-binary umbrella.  

The way I think about myself and my relationships, and the wider world, all changed for me, though, when I learned I was to become a parent. 

It took a while for me to realise I would need to have a parent name – what would my children call me? And my friends also started asking me what name I wanted to go for. So I started thinking about what my parent name could be. 

When I went to look for inspiration for names for non-binary parents, however, none quite fit the bill for me. 

Articles that I found online tended to focus on communities in continental Europe or the US with terms like ‘ren’ – a shortened version of parent, or kin, like next of kin.  

I didn’t feel like these fit easily into mainstream vocabulary – not to mention that, any use of these would require a level of explaining to people, and I just didn’t want that hassle. 

I then turned to a Facebook group dedicated to LGBT parents of twins asking for inspiration. 

Someone there suggested ‘Baba’ – an existing term in Asian and Middle Eastern languages which means father or gender-neutral elder – which I liked, but I ultimately ruled it out as it would have felt like cultural appropriation.   

It was a hard line to walk and so, naturally, I went back and forth between wanting to protect my own self-actualisation as a non-binary person and making things as easy as possible for my children (and for me as their parent) numerous times throughout the pregnancy. 

All the while, of course, I was already facing binary gendered terms at mainstream institutions like hospitals, local councils and GP surgeries – despite some progress, I think many of these places still assume they will be dealing with a woman as the mother and a man as the father, with no room for grey areas. 

The one exemption in terms of inclusivity towards me at that time was the local antenatal group I joined. 

The trainer there referred to the couples as ‘families’ rather than couples or parents, and referred to everyone as birth parents and birth partners rather than mothers and fathers.  

This made me feel very welcome and I appreciated the silent, unacknowledged nod to people like me who would otherwise have faced alienation if the trainer had just referred to mothers and fathers.  

By the time my partner’s waters broke on that Saturday night in April 2025 I was still no closer to choosing my parent name. And when she was rushed to hospital to deliver the twins three days later it almost completely slipped my mind. 

Admittedly, when we arrived at the delivery suite on Tuesday night I did tell the lead midwife that my pronouns are they/them, and she responded as I hoped – positively and respectfully – but at that moment I was (rightly) not the priority. 

Any discussion around correctly gendered parent names could wait until my babies had been safely delivered and my partner was okay. 

So, despite the inevitability, when the neonatal medic called me ‘daddy’ for the first time, it took me by surprise. 

Part of me wanted to correct her, but I was far too sleep deprived and my focus was on stepping into my role as parent and looking after my babies.  

Plus, as the twins spent the next two weeks in special care at two different hospitals – which meant I met multiple different medics day and night – it soon became clear that defaulting to binary parental names was going to make gaining access to these spaces and administrative systems a lot easier.   

Introducing myself through the intercom to an over-stretched neonatal nurse as anything other than ‘father’ or ‘daddy’ would have been impractical and wasted a lot of time and energy for all of us. So, I tabled my own feelings, and focused on doing what I could for my partner and twins. 

Don’t get me wrong – it wasn’t always easy. When it came to registering their birth, for example, I was frustrated to see that the form only had three options: one for opposite sex couples and two for same sex couples covering ‘males’ and ‘females’.  

It felt like a literal example of the ‘othering’ of non-binary people.

In the end I ticked the ‘father/parent’ box. It doesn’t fully acknowledge who I am, but because I was exhausted, I chose it as the easier option.       

In every setting where my status as a parent is relevant – such as the GP surgery or hospital – I have been continuously calling myself ‘daddy’ or ‘father’ simply because I need to pick my battles and this is not a high priority in my family life at the moment.  

I just wish that society could be more inclusive towards trans and non-binary folks in parenthood.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. 

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