Give audiobooks, support local bookstores! Start gifting
The Natural Mother of the Child by Krys Malcolm Belc
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account
Illustration of person sitting

Shop small, give big!

With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

The Natural Mother of the Child

A Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood

$26.24

Get for $14.99 with membership
Narrator Krys Malcolm Belc

This audiobook uses AI narration.

We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.

Learn more
Length 4 hours 21 minutes
Language English
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account

Krys Malcolm Belc has thought a lot about the interplay between parenthood and gender. As a nonbinary, transmasculine parent, giving birth to his son Samson clarified his gender identity. And yet, when his partner Anna adopted Samson, the legal documents listed Belc as the natural mother of the child. By considering how the experiences contained under the umbrella of motherhood don't fully align with Belc's own experience, The Natural Mother of the Child journeys both toward and through common perceptions of what it means to have a body and how that body can influence the perception of a family. With this memoir-in-essays, Belc has created a new kind of life record, one that engages directly with the documentation often thought to constitute a record of one's life—childhood photos, birth certificates—and addresses his deep ambivalence about the before and after so prevalent in trans stories, which feels apart from his own experience. The Natural Mother of the Child is the story of a person moving past societal expectations to take control of his own narrative, with prose that delights in the intimate dailiness of family life and explores how much we can ever really know when we enter into parenting. A supplemental PDF featuring photographs and official documents is included with this audiobook.

Krys Malcolm Belc's work has appeared in Granta, Black Warrior Review, Tin House Online, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. He lives with his partner and their three young children in Kensington, Philadelphia.

Krys Malcolm Belc's work has appeared in Granta, Black Warrior Review, Tin House Online, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. He lives with his partner and their three young children in Kensington, Philadelphia.

Illustration of person sitting

Shop small, give big!

With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today
Give audiobooks, support local bookstores! Start gifting