Queer parenting
Hello everyone. It was great having a couple of weeks off with an out of office message and just time with my family. We went to Family Week in Provincetown, run by Family Equality and COLAGE (Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere). It was a wonderful week of family activities, but also exhausting, especially for my three year old. Here is a picture of myself and Nathaniel with one of our shirts that we wore. I am Abba to my son, which is just Hebrew for Dad.
Because of Family Week, I wanted to spend this time to talk about Queer families. Families, of course, come in all shapes and sizes. What is wonderful about Family Week is that we are not the only gay people, my son is around lots of other kids similar to him, and we just don’t get a lot of the same questions we usually get. I will probably spend a lot of time talking about queer families in this blog, and this week I wanted to talk about queer parenting. Over the next couple of weeks, I will be talking about adoption and surrogacy and how you can support families going through those processes. First, I want to talk about a new article in the Journal of the American Medical Association Open Access about LGBTQ+ health.
LGBTQ Health: A new study in JAMA explored the health care of over 300,000 LGBTQIA+ individuals in the United States. In this study, they found a higher level of anxiety, depression, HIV diagnosis, and tobacco use among LGBTQIA+ individuals. This is not new; there have been many studies showing higher levels of anxiety and depression, leading to higher levels of suicidal ideations in the LGBTQIA+ community. Eventually, I will talk about Minority Stress Theory, but the stress of being LGBTQIA+ in a world that actively attacks the community takes a mental health toll. This is why I created this newsletter; the important thing that you as a nonprofit employee can do is create a welcoming and safe environment for LGBTQIA+ people so they feel safe, especially when they may not feel safe in their community and their family.
Queer Parenting: Previously, I had discussed different types of relationships. Not every queer couple decide to have kids, but approximately 114,000 same-sex couples are raising children; 24% of female same-sex couples and 8% of male same-sex couples are raising children. Same-sex couples are significantly more likely than opposite-sex couples to be raising foster children. This data, from the Williams Institute’s analysis of ACS dataset, is incomplete and does not take into account transgender and nonbinary individuals raising families.
A Note on Terminology: Along with using queer, I will also be using the terms male presenting same-sex (MPSS) couple and female presenting same-sex (FPSS) couple. The reason is you do not know people’s sexual orientation or gender identities. People who are in a same-sex couple may be gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, pansexual, etc. Furthermore, while people may present as male or female, they may identify as nonbinary, genderqueer, or some other gender identification. When working with parents, it is usually not necessary to know their sexual orientation or gender identity/expression, though you might be asking this on intake paperwork for demographic information.
Supporting Queer parents: For this section, I will be using academic articles as well as my own personal experience as a MPSS. There are many ways that people can have kids, obviously (Nathaniel and I adopted Simon). Every parent, whether they are part of the LGBTQIA+ community or not, has a story on how they became parents. But with LGBTQIA+ families, the stories are sometimes more complicated. Furthermore, as LGBTQIA+ families tend to be minorities, many nonprofits working with children or families may not be familiar with how to support the parents and/or children of LGBTQIA+ parents. A few things to keep in mind:
Representation matters! LGBTQIA+ families often do not see themselves in media, or only see limited representations. There is diversity within queer families and what they look like, and we want to show as many families as possible. Depending on where you are, books with LGBTQIA+ families may be controversial, but it is important for all children to see themselves in their community. Family Equity has a great list of books to consider. Ourshelves is a bookstore that also has a lot of great books with LGBTQIA+ parents and characters. Here are a couple of books that Sy (who is three) likes/has liked:
Talk to the parents about their cultures and traditions. At Sy’s daycare, they asked us what we want to do about Mothers and Fathers day. Every family is different; for example, in our family, my husband has Mothers day and I take Father’s day. For friends of ours who are a MPSS, they just do Mothers day as a celebration of the Mothers in their lives. Asking the parents about their traditions and decisions can help you support the family.
Allow paperwork that recognizes many different types of families. For example, there are different types of families than just two parents, including throuples. Furthermore, paperwork which just says “Mother and Father” or “Male/Female” can be isolating for MPSS, FPSS, and nonbinary parents. I often talk about the importance of queer-inclusive paperwork, as this is one of the first things that people experience at your agency and can help people feel included from the first interaction.
Don’t ask questions which you don’t need to know about. I get asked a lot about our family story and how we became a family and, to be honest, talking about my story all the time gets exhausting. Unless you need to know, I don’t recommend asking. Some people are happy to talk about their story while others prefer not to.
This was just a small list of things that your organization can do to make yourselves more welcoming. The next two weeks, we will be talking about adoption and surrogacy, what the process can look like, and how we can support families going through the process of making a family. I will be away next week as we will be visiting family but we will start up again in two weeks!