#parenting fics

Hey Lovely!

Ahhhhh, unfortunately I'm going to be NO help here since I primarily only read BBC canon, and of the ACD and Granada fics I DO have were ones recced to me! Doing a quick perusal of the ones I do have listed, I unfortunately also do not have them paired with the "parentlock" or "parenting" tags, so I have no personal recs to give to you.

Like, I’ve talked about gender bending before, and I have a lot of really intense feelings on that trope in particular, but a trope that’s been on my mind recently is mpreg, which is... related, in that it’s a gender-related trope that’s often very transphobic and fetishizing, if in different ways.

I came into fandom relatively young, or at least on the younger side of average. I was twelve when I started reading fic, and fifteen when I started exploring things in relation to my sexuality.

This is when I first ran into mpreg. Half the time it was a kink thing, and half the time it was just a plot point. I was initially squicked, but eased myself into neutrality because that was what I did with most tropes back then; I had a squicky reaction to plenty of things, some banal and some that I could have done to avoid, in hindsight. I was initially squicked by same sex couples and while I know now that this isn’t the same thing, 15yo me was... sheltered, and confused, and 

By the time I hit late high school/early college, I was invested in the queer community, and had read enough about how mpreg fetishized trans and intersex characters to have developed an aversion to it on the basis that, well, most of it was written with such a lens.

Now... it’s case by case. A lot of it still is a gross fetish thing that’s deep in the transphobia well, but a lot of these fics are written like... okay.

I have a vague relationship with my own gender, but I’m capable of pregnancy, if I ever were to want to go through it. I definitely never plan on getting pregnant, and find the idea of doing so deeply unsettling. I also never plan on having kids, and find that idea scary as well.

But I love other people’s kids. I love seeing parents, especially pregnant people, who want to be parents, who got pregnant with a plan, because they want nothing as much as they want to have and raise a child. I love seeing small, developing children who are loved and happy and growing up in a way that makes the world a wonder to explore and just... I love the idea of the people who raise kids being genuinely excited to have and love kids. I don’t want to be pregnant or have kids but I will devour fic about people becoming parents and just loving their children more than anything else. Whether it’s biological, or adoption, or “older sibling raises younger sibling” or whatever... it’s just really, really comforting to read about someone raising a child they adore.

And fics where that’s the main idea, where the mpreg isn’t an accident so much as just a science fiction or fantasy process whereby an ostensibly cis male character goes through pregnancy because they want to, or even a character that’s “AMAB dude, but not super concerned about the body, y’know?” and so sees the possession of a uterus they didn’t have before as just a neat thing that lets them have kids...

Like, isn’t that just the penultimate expression of what I’m talking about? Someone wanting kids or being so excited about kids that their body and expression is something they’re willing to change, if only temporarily, to accommodate the desire for a family? A person whose ties to gender as a matter of the body being loose enough that they’re okay with magical or scifi changes to their reproductive organs, that’s good. I like a character with an unorthodox approach to gender. A person who, in the context of that relationship to their own gender, is then not only willing but excited to have a child?

Mama Bear McCord by BonJeanne

I Love You, You’re My Bugaboo by Ferryboatss

Swingsets and Strawberries by lilacmeramaid33

I was curious if you or your groupies know of any fic that has Sherlock NOT immediately in love with Rosie? Every parent!lock that I have read with Rosie in it seems to always have Sherlock love becoming a co-parent with John and thinking that Rosie is the smartest, most beautiful, lovable angel baby ever born. She's always portrayed as a mini Sherlock, that usually looks like John and rarely takes after Mary at all.

I had a thought that what if he's NOT absolutely enamored of having a baby, even if she is John's? What if he finds her annoying, and messy, and simply 'too much'? She takes John's attention, and time, and isn't a perfect baby/toddler; she cries all the time, or is colicky, or doesn't like Sherlock either. Or once she's older, she's more like Mary than John? Sneaky, a liar, a troublemaker? A bully, a psychopath, a sadist? How would John and him deal with her?

Nothing against Rosie personally, I generally don't mind her when I'm reading parent!lock. But it would be interesting to see a different point of view of her character, and how it affects Sherlock and John's relationship.

I've had no luck searching for something like this on AO3, maybe I'm not searching properly? "Evil Mary" or "Bad Mary" show up easily, but not so much for Rosie 😂.

Any help out there?

Hey Nonny!

Ahh, hmm, good question! Unfortunately I only have "positive" parentlock fics I can personally rec, but I am sure that there are fics out there! Never actually considered the opposite.

🌷 Hi there *^____^*! Oh no your english is perfect =). There is a pending fic-rec-quest for parenting/expecting parents. I'll get to posting an organized list soon once I have more free time ^_^

You can search my blog with the ff. keywords for older reblogs: "expecting parents au", "pregnancy". The new tags I had (newer reblogs) were tagged under: au:expecting or au:parenting