Stuck in the Middle with You: A Memoir of Parenting in Three Genders

As I get older I find I like memoir more and more. Stuck in the Middle with You really engaged me as memoir but I found the inserted interviews to be much less engaging and even intrusive at times. On the other hand, without them the book would have been only 159 pages long and thus hardly

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qualifying as a book. I guess you could say I was left feeling hungry for more about Boylan's family and their unique experiences.

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Writer James Finney-Boylan had been a father for six years when he decided that he could no longer continue the charade of living as a man. She spent six years in the transition process, then underwent gender reassignment therapy and became a mother named Jennifer. She and her wife, Deirdre,

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remained married and raised their two sons as a couple. Jennifer has written her transition story elsewhere; this is the story of them as a family. Told in alternating sections by Jennifer and via interviews with other writers about family and raising children, we discover that Jennifer’s worries that her transition would damage the boys were unfounded: they are happy, well adjusted young men who do not think that their family is even slightly unusual. Amazingly, given how cruel kids (and adults) can be to anyone even slightly ‘different’, the boys were not bullied or maltreated by their schoolmates. She admits that her transition was very lucky because most of the many, many things that could have gone bad did not.

The book is an easy, interesting read. While I have read other transition stories, none have focused on the family like this one does. The interviews show that families and parenting styles come in all shapes and methods. This book adds a new facet to the huge array of parenting books. The only problem was a little bit of choppiness in the flow.

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I suppose a large issue I had with this book was the format: it's several "chunks" of Jennifer Finney Boylan's own experiences (before, during, and after transition) broken up by sections of interviews. This gave the book a somewhat disjointed feel. Additionally, the interviews, while interesting

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and (in some cases more than others-- it is interesting to note that only one of the interviews is with a transgender parent) containing insights into the role of parenting and what "mother" and "father" connote, still felt somewhat like padding-- extra material added to supplant the real heart of the memoir, Boylan's story. This having been billed as (see subtitle) "A Memoir of Parenting in Three Genders," I was really expecting more of Boylan's own, personal story about her relationship with her sons, but the book often felt curiously distanced from her everyday life (much more so than her previous memoir, She's Not There, which did not have that distance at all). I agree with Boylan's own remarks (made in the course of the narrative) that it is not necessary to retell the story told in She's Not There, and to refer to that memoir if that's what you're interested in, but I do feel like that if she had something substantial to say about parenting, she didn't quite get the job done. It's never entirely clear how her being a transgender parent has impacted her sons' lives (there's really just a "they got along okay" basic summation to every story, which isn't particularly analytical or detailed). There is an interview-- brief-- with her spouse/partner (each prefers different terminology), which is enlightening, but we do not hear from her sons in any direct way except through ancedocte. Overall, I was expecting something more in-depth and analytical, more detailed. Nonetheless, Boylan is extremely readable, with a wry humor that never fails to entertain. She is a good interviewer; though the interviews are short, they are not repetitive. I suppose I'm mainly disappointed because I expected more from her.

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I was thrilled when I discovered the existence of this book - I'd read Boylan's She's Not There in college (required reading, actually) and really loved it. Being from Maine and being an ally, I'm a big fan of Boylan and the pride and joy she takes in her life. I was very interested to read this,

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her memoir of how her role as a parent changed through her transition from male to female, and how her relationship with her partner evolved as well. Lucky me - I won an advance reader's copy of this through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program and read it as soon as I could find the time. What I liked best about this book is the dialogue that it helps create - Boylan not only discusses her own transition and what it meant for her parenting style, but she also includes interviews with a number of people (both well-known and not so much) about how they were raised, their relationship with their parents, and their own parenting styles. Immediately after finishing this, I went on to read Elsewhere by Richard Russo, one of the interviewees (and a presence throughout the memoir). It was really interesting to take these two books back-to-back, as Russo's memoir focuses on his relationship with his mother. But, back to this book - it is well-written and engaging, like everything by Boylan I've read and I really appreciated her inclusion of her partner and her children and their thoughts on their relationships. An excellent memoir - definitely recommended.

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I wasn't sure what to expect from this - perhaps some sort of post-modern, trendy parenting journal. I was pleasantly surprised by how warm and engaging Boylan was and how she told her story with candor, humor, and sincerity. Although the author is coming from a unique point of view it is not just

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a niche story - there is much that a parent in the much more traditional family can relate to. A surprisingly fascinating read.

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very easy to read. kept my interest the entire time. I am nobody's parent, but I am someone's child and the stories about the parent child dynamic is relatable to everyone.

I asked for a review copy of this book due to the trans* content, but found myself fascinated by the relationships between parents and children. The main question is "is there a real difference between a mother and a father?". The author's thoughts are illustrated as she transitions from male to

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female with a short time in between. The family lives in Maine and has a surprisingly easy time of it socially, though some family friction does exist. It's a neat window on what it means to be a family in various permutations, side lighted by conversations on parenthood with the author's friends (as well as one semi random interview with a woman who passed along a genetic quirk to her daughters). Those side conversations feature adoption, still birth, and abusive households.

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When I read the blurb from Librarything Early Reviewers, I expected a book on being a transgender parent like I am as we have our own unique challenges. I am a female to male transsexual who is a parent and it is very difficult to raise a child when one is transgender. The book has a mixture of

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Jenny's own stories as well as interviews from other parents, most of which are very out of place. Of the interviews, only one was from another transsexual! I am not sure what Jenny was thinking when she added the interviews, I think they would have been better if they were in a separate book or perhaps even, if they had to be published, published in a journal article as they really did not add to any part of the book as they feel like "fluff."

Jenny's other book "She's not there" was a much better book not only about being transgender but also being a parent.

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I enjoyed this book very much. I've been trying to learn more and think more about trans-sexuality, and this certainly did some of that. But I found myself more intrigued by the discussions about parenting. The interviews were fascinating. I probably could've read 200 more pages of them. I'm so

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glad to have discovered Boylan's writings and I look forward to going back and exploring more of her catalog!

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Stuck in the Middle With You feels less like a coherent memoir than a series of vignettes by Boylan musing on the experience of parenting as a father, mother, and through her transition, interspersed with conversations Boylan conducted with friends about their experiences as fathers, mothers, sons,

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daughters.

The stories are related with tenderness and the rawness of still-in-process thoughts and feelings. I found myself waiting for a level of big-picture reflection that never really came along. It was unclear whether Boylan's object was more narrowly her own experience as a parent (the personal essay sections felt very caught up in the particulars of the Boylan family), or broader questions about fatherhood, motherhood, and relationships between parents and children -- themes which the interview sections seem to gesture toward without ever clearly articulating.

I did appreciate the diversity of voices represented in the interviews, and actually would have enjoyed more of these, or an expanded volume perhaps more focused on these parenting stories. A warning to readers: one interview deals with the story of a stillbirth that is treated with incredible thoughtfulness, but which I found difficult to read -- even as someone who has not experienced childbirth or loss of a child. Be aware of this story (it's clear in the introductory paragraph) and skip if you don't feel able to read it.

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I found this book simultaneously fascinating and boring. As someone who is adamantly disinterested in both switching genders and in having children, it was very captivating to hear a perspective so different from my own. Although I have to admit, I was disturbed by the author's fixation on whether

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she was "feminine" enough. I thought the whole idea of being transgendered was that you felt like a woman already, and that corrective surgery was mostly about making the outside match the inside. So why go and then change the inside too?

The only issue I had with the text itself was the interview segments. Although I think they did a lot to enhance the book and make it an excellent choice for, say, a gender studies class, as a casual reader I found the constant interruptions to the story very frustrating.

That aside, I would still recommend this book to anyone interested in learning how it feels to be transgendered, or a parent, or even both.

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In her newest book, Jenny Boylan explores the relationships between children and parents, from all possible points of view. She includes her own experiences as the birth father and, well, the "Maddy" of two boys, but doesn't limit her discussion to her own family. There are many interviews with

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others, both parents and adult children, on what that whole experience is about.

As always, Jenny's terrifically intimate, realistic, and humorous personality shines through the pages. I felt as theough I knew Jenny and could call her and chat perfectly comfortably about all sorts of issues. This books seems much too short, as I could have read much more about family relationships. Not always light, but always entertaining, this is a highly recommended book.

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As a teacher of very young children, I am creating relationships with families: children, their parents and caregivers, other relatives. Because their children are still young, most of the parents are relatively new to figuring out what it means to be a parent. Many didn't know that it wouldn't

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always be easy. Reading Stuck in the Middle with You, is like sitting with Jennifer Finney Boylan, a parent, who is transgender, and talking about parenting. We recently had a parent meeting at my school, and the topic of discussion was "understanding gender roles." The context is preschool. I want to give those wonderful parents this book and tell them that the princess and superhero play that they are so worried about is okay, it's all part of figuring out who they really are. It is simple and it is complex. I loved this book. It is simple and it is complex.

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An interesting look at the relationship between parenting and gender. Jennifer Finney Boylan started out as the father of two sons, then revealed to his wife that he wanted to be a woman, then becoming Jennifer Finney Boylan, not quite a mother to her two sons, but rather a new family-coined

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parental role called "Maddy." This experience seems to be her impetus for writing a book that combines memoire-esque anecdotes with a variety of interviews regarding parenting and being parented. While the writing is interesting, the interviews entertaining and thought provoking, and the subject matter generally intriguing, Jennifer falls short of hitting the nerve of gender in parenting. Perhaps Jennifer's blessings in the ease and relative normalcy in which she has been able to continue her life after coming out as transgender have sheltered her and her family from some of the more complicated ways in which gender may effect parenting, but then why write a whole book on that premise? The interviews seem to attempt a balance with more dramatic perspectives, both from childhood perspectives and parenting perspectives, but with only a couple of exceptions, they too seem ultimately superficial. Overall, Boylan's latest memoir was enjoyable to read but not particularly enlightening. At the end of the day, it seems gender is so highly individualized that attempting to understand it as it relates to parenting is futile. We each parent differently based on so much more than our gender and were parented (or not parented) for reasons equally beyond gender. While this is easily gleaned from the accounts in the book, because Boylan did not muse on this perspective it seems assumed rather part of her point.

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This followup to Boylan's wonderful book, She's Not There, A Life in Two Genders, deals with parenting as a man and then as a woman. She was blessed with a family who were wonderfully accepting of her change in gender. Parenting seems to be a struggle and a joy, whatever gender you come at it with.

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This was an enjoyable read, but not as remarkable as her earlier memoir.

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This is a wonderful book. It's engaging and interesting and well-written. I loved the interviews that were interspersed throughout - I think they provided alternate views on parenting that made the book richer than just a simple memoir would have been. Highly recommended.

I enjoyed reading this book because of the author's engaging voice, and the interesting questions raised, though I don't always agree with her ideas. Family is an interesting construction, always changing in the face of new circumstances.

Jennifer Finney Boylan previously talked about her experiences transitioning from male to female in her book She's Not There (which I have not read). In this subsequent book she looks at fathering and mothering and how this transition affected and yet did not affect her kids and her role as a

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parent, as well as her experience of her own parents.

The author has a simple, clean style to her writing that allows her to express feelings and moments in time without judging them too overtly or trying to grasp for sympathy. She just tells how she remembers it and lets the memories stand for themselves, and I really liked that.

I also enjoyed the fact that she highlights the many kinds of parents and parenting with interviews with fathers, sons, mothers, daughters, and wayward souls. This inclusion of other voices really added to the whole experience (the story of the father who adopted an autistic son had me weeping), and made the book an exploration of what it means to be a parent and to be mothered or fathered as much as it was a look into one parent's life. A really great book.

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This book was an exploration of parenting from the perspective of a woman who used to be a man, and so had been the father, and then a female parent of, her two sons. It is interspersed with interviews with famous authors and friends of the author. I liked many of the ideas that were explored in

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the book but found it to be rather uneven. The interviews were not edited (discussions of how hot it was interrupt the conversation, etc), and it took me a while to realize that they were there because the author wanted to know how these other people had felt about parenting and being parented. In some ways the book was an attempt to ask what makes us good parents, and to explore how the parenting aspect of the author's life has gone so far, but i wish the book hadn't drifted so much. So, I would recommend it to someone who is interested in perspectives on parenting, but warn that it's not the best written.

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Who is better qualified to write a marital and parenting memoir than Jennifer Finney Boylan? She has been a father, a mother, a husband and a wife. In 2003, she wrote “She's Not There,” about her transition from male to female and what it was like to grow up transgender. “Stuck In The Middle

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With You” is the follow-up, answering the questions, “Where is she - and where is her family - now?"

I highly recommend first reading “She's Not There” for the background and also because it's as wonderfully written and insightful as "Stuck in the Middle." Both books feature take-it-deep honesty, great insight and compassion and a sense of humor that will have you laughing out loud and marking passages to remember later. Boylan's narrative never lags and her frankness is astonishing. She is an award-winning professor of English at Colby College and a prolific author. I envy her students. By the way, academia's response to her transition is fascinating. Read both books for the details.

In addition to being a satisfying follow-up, “Stuck in the Middle with You” has some interesting innovations. Each chapter about Boylan's life is followed by interviews with other literary phenoms discussing personal aspects of their childhood and parenting experiences. Expect surprising revelations from Edward Albee, Susan Minot, Ann Beattie, Augusten Burroughs and Boylan's close friend, Richard Russo, among others. They cover diverse topics including adoption, abandonment, parenting as a little person and life after miscarriage. The book's afterword is an interview with Boylan and her wife, Deedie, conducted by Anna Quindlen. (If you’re a Richard Russo fan, know that he also figures prominently in “She’s Not There.")

“Stuck in the Middle with You” is billed as a memoir of transgender parenting and marriage and, certainly, it is that. But its exploration of male and female, its themes of identity, family, love and friendship will resonate with everyone.

In one of my favorite stories from the book, Boylan writes about an awkward encounter with one of her young son’s friends who asks, “Are you Zach’s mother?” Boylan bobbles an inadequate response. Aghast and more comfortable with the reality, her son orders, “You tell him the truth!” Boylan does and adds, “I don’t know if that seems weird to you, that someone's insides and outsides wouldn’t match.” Says the friend, “That’s not weird. I feel like that all the time.”

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When I received this book, I didn't realize it was a "parenting" book and was slightly hesitant to start it, being barely 21 and not at the point in my life where I'm seriously considering children. However, this book was seriously fantastic! It was about parenting in the sense that Jennifer Finney

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Boylan was indeed a parent, but it's about so much more than that. It's about how nothing matters in the end as long as you love your family. It doesn't matter what gender you are, whether you have a partner or single, whether you have money or you don't-as long as you create a safe and loving environment then your kids will have what they need. It's also a great reminder, I think, that children are the most open and honest people and that they don't typically care about things like gender and sexual orientation because society hasn't yet taught them it's something different.
In short, this book was amazing and Boylan is a great writer and I'm so happy I received this as an early review book.

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This is an enjoyable memoir, honest, sometimes funny, sometimes sad. The writing is smooth and I quite enjoyed the little interludes created by the short interviews between each section. I also appreciated that the book focused on the relationships between Jennifer and her family and friends rather

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than on the physical or surgical details of her change.

I walked away from this book even more convinced that people are people - to me Jennifer seemed very much the same person as Jeff, just happier and more content with herself. The fact that the marriage not only survived, but thrived even without a sexual component says a lot about what real marriage is and what it takes to build a strong family, as well as the amazing benefits creating those relationships can offer.

Definitely worth reading.

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While a fascinating topic, I don't think Jennifer parents in three genders. Or even two. I think she parents as herself. Whether when she was male (and my heart breaks with her struggle) or now that she is female, she raises her children with grace and aplomb. Children are much more forgiving and

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understanding than adults. We, as adults, should be slightly ashamed of that. Her children accepted her change and called her Maddy without a second thought. How many adults would accept it that easily?

While I enjoyed the book, was not a fan of the interview chapters. Just meh...except for Augusten Burroughs. Love him!

I would also like to add...on a personal note..that while I am happy Jenny's wife accepted her change, it also makes me sad. I understand that the support and love is amazing between the two of them, but who wants a marriage that lacks physical intimacy? Honestly, made me cry for Jenny, and I don't think it's fair to either of them. But that's just my take on it.

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In return for my honest review I received this book free from Librarything Early Reviewers. This did not effect my review.

So...this was disappointing. I loved Boylan's first memoir,[book:She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders|54935] This book started out with promise, but I had a number of issues

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with it in the end. Boylan actually writes very little about parenting or family. Her kids are exquisitely well adjusted and high achieving. Neither she nor her wife are particularly troubled by the fact that they haven't had sex since the transition and will never have sex again because who needs sex when there is love. Yeah, right.

Boylan tells a few VERY select stories, and augments this very skimpy memoir with interviews with well known literary folks which are ostensibly (sometimes actually) centered on parenting and on being parented. Other than learning that Edward Albee, a playwright whose work I have loved, was an asshat, these interviews taught me nothing. The interviews did not broaden or inform my view of parenting and were, frankly, really bad. Boylan has done some reporting, so I would have expected her to be a better interviewer. I think when friends interview friends it doesn't work. Anyone who has read Interview Magazine knows this. Whatever the reason, these interviews are awful.

Focusing of the fact the interviews were not done well begs the question of whether the interviews belong in this book. I say they do not. This book holds itself out to be about parenting as a trans woman, and it is not. The only material which really covers this are a few stories about how Jenny is worried that her transition will create issues and of course it is all in her head and her children are really truly 100% unaffected by her decision to transition. That may be how she chooses to see it, but kids are judged by their peers all the time. That judgment includes how parents are viewed. I am not saying in any way that her kids are going to be screwed up by her transition, I am not even saying they might not grow to be better men because if it, I am just saying she is claiming that the transition did not effect her sons in any way, and I am not buying what she is selling. A more honest discussion would have been both more interesting and more educational and empowering for parents raising their children in non-traditional environments.

In the end this book came off as lazy and dishonest, and that is a shame since she is a great writer with life experience which could have been turned into a really good book. Oh well, 2 kids in elite colleges costs. I wish the family well, they seem like nice people.

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