Intersectional Parental Identity

Sor Juana was a woman, a mestiza, illegitimate, poor-born, and intellectual in a colonial Catholic hierarchy—no single identity defined her, yet all intersected to shape her possibilities and constraints. Modern parents inhabit similarly complex identities. A racialized parent navigates not only the universal losses of becoming-a-parent but also the specific erasures of their cultural identity by dominant parenting models. A queer parent loses and reclaims identity differently than a heterosexual one. A working-class parent's experience of parental identity differs radically from a wealthy one's. Sor Juana's refusal to be flattened into one role models an intersectional approach to parental becoming: honoring the full complexity of who you are, not collapsing into parenthood alone. This concept asks parents to examine how their multiple identities intersect with parental identity, where they are honored or erased, and how reclaiming all dimensions of self strengthens rather than weakens their capacity to parent with integrity and presence.