Roberto Beth accumulates 145,000 followers on social networks and shares a little of her daily life with her son Noah, of one year. He is a transgender man and defines himself as a parturient father, which means that he fathered the little one during the nine months of gestation.
In an interview with a journalist Marina Dayrelof BuzzfeedRoberto said that he had always dreamed of becoming a father, but he had never thought of having his own child until he met Erika Fernandeshis ex-wife and Noah’s mother.
Erika is a transgender woman and, like him, she had been undergoing treatment with hormones for years and, in order to try to get pregnant, it is necessary to stop. So Erika stopped the progesterone and the testosterone blocker to start producing sperm again and Roberto stopped the testosterone to start ovulating again.
After a year and a half, the couple managed to get pregnant and Erika had the opportunity to breastfeed Noah after undergoing a hormone treatment that allowed her to breastfeed.
“I wanted to be a father my whole life, for several reasons. Mainly because my father separated from my mother when I was nine years old and, with that, he was very absent. The lack of a father figure awakened in me this desire to want to be father too and being very good, you know? I wanted to make up for this lack of paternal representation, giving this to my son”, he said.
“I’m Taurus too, so I’m very rooted, very traditional. I like having the family at home on Sunday, making food for everyone. I like a full house, family, children running around the house. And I’ve always had this I really want to be a father, to be a grandfather, to be a great-grandfather, and so on”, continued.
About the decision to carry Noah, Roberto said: “The issue of having my own child was already different, right? It was a deconstruction that took a long time. It started with my transcentered relationship, that is, a relationship between two trans people, regardless of gender”.
“It was from then on that I started to build this idea that I have a uterus and that I could generate my son and that wouldn’t change who I am, it wouldn’t change my gender, it wouldn’t change my masculinity”, added.
“This was recent, in 2020, when I met Erika. And then it was a process of understanding my body, accepting my body. It was after this relationship that I also started to like my body, because before that I didn’t I accepted it, I had a lot of dysphoria (dissatisfaction and anguish with my own body) and then I thought I had been born in the wrong body”, he said.
“And then after that relationship, I started to understand that no, that my body is a trans body and that’s okay”, scored.
“Before, I had relationships with cisgender women (people who identify with the gender assigned to them at birth). And then the idea of being a father was that my partner would generate him, right? Before that, I had never been through my head that I would generate my son”, continued.
Roberto also talked about trying to be an active and present father: “Active fatherhood basically means having an active father at home, who participates in all activities with the child. All of them, from the operational part, which is in daily care, to the affective part, creating loving bonds and affective memories, and giving emotional support”
“Not only the financial side, because we were raised in this social construction that the man is the one who provides, who goes to the street to earn money and support the family”, stated.
“But we identify that, throughout life, not having this active, effective and affective fatherhood is a very problematic thing. So, we are trying to deconstruct it and transform it into an affective emotional bond”, explained.
“Today, I take care of Noah with shared custody with his mother, so he stays a week with me and a week with her. This was a way that we found to be always present in his life. We live close, so, even when it’s her week, I pick him up if she needs to, I go see him, she also comes here during my week, we do programs together, even after the separation”, continued.
“Because we know how important the presence of the two of them is in his early childhood, in this construction of his personality, of him as a person”, he spoke.
The content creator commented on how he sets boundaries between fatherhood and being Roberto: “Until recently it was very difficult to make this separation, because since I got pregnant and he was born, I’ve only lived with fatherhood, so being Roberto wasn’t an important thing for me.”
“Living fatherhood was being the most important thing. And then I began to realize that I was leaving myself a little aside and living only fatherhood, since I am also Roberto, right?”commented.
“That’s when this little key turned and I understood that, okay, I’m Noah’s father, I’ll continue to be, but I also need to live my individuality, I need to have my vanity again, to have my moment, to reconnect with myself . So, today, I usually do this when he’s at his mother’s house and I’m alone here. It’s still difficult because we keep judging each other, thinking ‘oh my God, I’m here at the club, I’m at the bar'” , he spoke.
“It’s an exercise I’ve been doing to be able to see pleasure in other things when I’m not with him, because he and I have become such a thing together that it’s hard to see pleasure in things outside of Noah’s context, you know? So, I come practicing, but sometimes I get lost, yesterday I left him with his mother and I was sitting here, looking out the window, not knowing what to do”, scored.
Source: Maxima
I am an experienced author and journalist with a passion for lifestyle journalism. I currently work for Buna Times, one of the leading news websites in the world. I specialize in writing stories about health, wellness, fashion, beauty, interior design, and more. My articles have been featured on major publications such as The Guardian and The Huffington Post.