Happy Nonbinary Parents’ Day! Like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, it’s a day to celebrate parents and all that they do for their kids, whether that means spending some quality time with those kids, a table in a fully-booked restaurant, getting thoughtful gifts, or just getting a little bit of a break and maybe a cup of coffee in bed.

But, unlike Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, Nonbinary Parents’ Day is also a quiet reminder of how much nonbinary people still aren’t accepted or understood in society. A series of small nagging inequities plagues the day, and understanding those tiny challenges can illustrate why trans people as a whole struggle so much with simply living our true selves.

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What do kids call their nonbinary parents? The possibilities are endless.

None of the challenges that come with Nonbinary Parents’ Day are earth-shattering on their surface. There are just so many little difficulties that come with the fact that nonbinary parents aren’t really known about or acknowledged in the same way as binary mothers and fathers.

Options for non-gendered parents’ day cards in shops and online are so close to non-existent as to be pointless. So, families have to craft their own or write messages on generic cards. That can be sweet, an art project for the kids, but it’s a tiny, jabbing reminder that we’re not catered to.

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Nobody knows how to celebrate Nonbinary Parents’ Day. There aren’t any daycare or school activities based around it, there are no marketing emails, and no special offers. Even close friends and family might not know that it’s a thing unless they keep abreast of such topics. It’s all too easy to feel like the day barely exists at all, and that feeling can build to a point where it feels like we aren’t worth celebrating.

Those issues themselves are a microcosm of the larger challenges faced by nonbinary parents in this society. On a larger scale, society’s struggle with basic tenets of nonbinary identities can make it hard to even feel visible in your identity as a nonbinary parent. Forms and birth certificates too often want gendered terms, and the anonymous nature of “Parent 1” and “Parent 2” is akin to forms that only include gendered terms alongside “Prefer not to say” (actually, I would prefer to say, I’d like people to know who I am, but you’re simply not giving me that choice).

There is no good, universally accepted term for a nonbinary parent (as evidenced by the fact that “Nonbinary Parents’ Day” is such a mouthful). Some abbreviate “parent” to “ren” or “renny,” which is a viable option. But a lot of other suggestions tend to be gendered terms borrowed from other languages that only become genderless through their lack of context, or portmanteaus of gendered terms.

Creating a term yourself falls short because while your child and immediate family might use it, it means explaining the term to everyone your child comes into contact with, and coming out a million times a week. So many nonbinary parents (myself included) end up using gendered terms and explaining that they’re still nonbinary around that.

There’s a reason that we like labels to identify our genders, our sexual orientations, and our “neurospicy” ways—they define things in a way that’s more easily understood, and nonbinary parents still don’t have a good solution for that. It’s all part of that pile of straws on the camel’s back that reminds us our existence is erased in small ways every day. Nonbinary Parents’ Day can be a sad reminder of that purely because it brings us attention as a class that is lacking so much at other times.

Again, all of these are small annoyances, and while they can pile up to be overwhelming at times, they are only the smallest fraction of the stress and struggle that trans and nonbinary people go through to be able to exist in our society. But understanding how everything from the basic definitions to the small luxuries of our existence can be denied to us purely out of ignorance or apathy can help people understand some of the larger, less-relatable-to-the-general-population struggles that trans people face when they exist in this society.

The anti-trans movement likes to show staged concern about detransitioners as an argument against supporting trans people or transition. What they tend not to mention is the studies that have repeatedly shown that often people don’t transition, halt their transition, or “detransition” not because of something about themselves, but because of the difficulties faced with being trans in society, including facing rejection from their community.

The little microaggressions that become more visible around Nonbinary Parents’ Day can be hard to explain to people in a meaningful way, or they simply seem like no big deal. But every one of those is a needle that scratches every day. 

The struggles that trans and nonbinary people face in society aren’t always slurs and the fear of being attacked in bathrooms. Sometimes it’s as simple, and as earth-shattering, as not knowing what to have your kid call you.

But, on the bright side, at least it’s easier to get a table at a restaurant for Nonbinary Parents’ Day.

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