‘Boyfriend’ seems too small a word for the father of my child

In need of acknowledgment: a young dad reading with his child. Photograph: Wavebreak Media/Alamy

I ANSWERED the phone, wedging it into that underrated nook between jaw and shoulder as I simultaneously washed a baby bottle. “I’m a nurse,” said the lady’s voice. I got that sucker punch of worry in the gut.

I was about to start work, and my boyfriend had taken our baby daughter for her routine injections. “Is the baby OK?” I said. “Oh yes,” she went on. “I just wanted to check you knew she was here. We have to ask.”

I affirmed that it was fine, thought the call was slightly weird, and went back to chiselling what looked like dried Horlicks off the kitchen floor.

It turned out the nurse had seen that the baby’s parents had different surnames, asked why I hadn’t brought her in, and said that she would need to get my permission for the vaccinations because we’re not married. If it had been me who had brought her in, no phone call would have been made to anyone else.

I felt a spike of indignation on behalf of my boyfriend. In terms of childcare, we do 50/50, and he’s a brilliant father. What’s more, we probably will get married at some point. (He says he’ll ask me in the next five to seven years). And then, I thought, I suppose they do have to have some system in place. All those absent fathers rocking up in Volvos, stealing their kids and taking them for knickerbocker glories and vaccinations.

The thing is, couples like us are on the rise. Of my friendship group with babies, approximately half are married and half aren’t. When I was younger, I thought I would definitely get married before having kids, because that’s what society did then. Anyone who broke the rules was sent off to live with nuns, and it wasn’t like The Sound of Music. Yet when it came to the time we wanted a baby, it seemed logical – mentally and financially – to just go for it. I felt secure with my boyfriend – although I’d like a new word for him now we’ve got a little one.

The word “partner” has never felt right for him, although I like the “We’d look out for each other in an apocalypse and share any berries we found” connotation. To me “partner” feels like someone you meet in your 60s: one of you reads a book about bridge by the fireside while the other stresses about a stained cagoule in the kitchen before you share a simple meal of courgettes and potatoes from the garden.
Advertisement

Actually that sounds quite good. Bagsy the cagoule. The other terms are no better. “Lover” is like we’re trying and failing to be in an Italian film, “better half” is like something a councillor says at a golf club dinner. “Boyfriend” is the most honest word, but now that we’ve got a baby it seems a bit flimsy. There needs to be a new term coined, something in between boyfriend and partner. “Comrade”? Too Orwellian. “Delight”? Too puddingy. “Lifeline”? A bit needy.

I went to a friend’s wedding last weekend. I could already hear the first gauzy whispers of: “When do you think they’ll have a baby?” After that it’s: “When are you going to have grandchildren?” Then, presumably: “When are you going to die?”

“We missed out that baby question by skipping marriage!” I thought gleefully as I changed the baby’s nappy behind a hedge. “In a way it’s not like we’re quite grown up!”

And in a sense maybe that’s what is at the heart of this. We’ve done all the other adult stuff – buying a flat, dealing with a death in the family, starting one of our own – but we’re not quite grown up. As the clock strikes midnight this year, and he reduces the marriage timeline to “the next four to six years”, I might just tell my delightful comrade lifeline to leave it the way it is.