Bring us your issues yearning to breathe free...
Rebecca's response to my last post made M. and me think.
We want your issues.
M. is honing her post partum doula practice and (sadly) hasn't actually worked with a queer parenting couple yet. She wants to know...what are queer parenting issues.
This is outside the normal issues adding a child into your family brings. You know, the sleepless nights, the lack of coping skills, who will take out the trash, who makes dinner, WHY DOESN'T MY HOUSE WORK AS SMOOTHLY AS BEFORE????? The constant struggle to make the workload equal. Those issues everyone has.
The boob was (is) our issue. Straight couples have a clearly defined boob. Unless one's hubby is deeply devoted to male lactation (I believe it has been done, or it's some sort of wild internet rumor) it's quite clear who will be feeding the baby. It's different when one person has working boobs and the other one has a non-working set.
So bring it on...give us your issues...tell us what has made your experience as a queer parent different.
posted by Sacha @ 10:40 AM
15 comments
15 Comments:
Ok, skip this if you want b/c I'm not a queer parent, I'm just your ol' run of the mill heteromama, but I have lesbian friends, yada yada, and I've done a lot of listening and reading and thinking about this issue.
One couple that I've seen, the "femme" had the baby and the "butch" has difficulty fitting into the new family. Society sees a lot of dads who don't initially know their place, but they have a whole wide open IN with having the benefit of a genetic link to the child. In my friends, I get the sense that the non-bio mom kind of resents the new infraction in her life. It was the bio mom who wanted the baby and it's the bio mom who was better struck with the oxytocin highs and most compelled to care for the wee bebby. And she has more patience.
My heart feels for Megan. I have a 12 month old breastfed son, and I would tear up a green streak of jealousy were I to see him hungrily lurch for the bosom of another. Granted, I'm not a lesbian (even though I do love your blog...mostly because I just can't stand mainstream moms) so I've never walked the shoes of a gay-couple's dynamics, but it would be very hard for me. That, and the whole bond of pregnancy, etc. There are couples out there when one of the mamas has no interest in pregnancy----but I've always wanted to be pregnant and would have a hard time if my GF/wife was the pregnant one...I guess I'm just a jealous person.
I saw on a board once this scenario: two moms, their goal was to have one mom be pregnant with the other mom's egg, and then do it the other way around for the second child. I thought that was brilliant, if not a little costly. I must say, if I were a queer mama, I think that's how I'd want to do it.
Very simple for me...people always referring to the donor as "Daddy". :)
"two moms, their goal was to have one mom be pregnant with the other mom's egg, and then do it the other way around for the second child."
I'm neither queer nor a momma but that is on of the coolest things I have ever heard of.
perhaps to keep in mind how difficult it may have been to actually get pregnant. For most of it us it takes a lot of time, money and medical intervention--the process get medicalized much faster than it should. So maybe taking into account that history that comes with the actual delivery and birth.
Also family tensions about how to treat the partner. Not a "father" but not the biological mother either.
Also breast issues here. Compounded by the fact that we never have gotten her to *really* take a bottle (she's almost 8 months, she'll take a few ounces from the bottle if desperate, and will now drink from cups, but still not as much as she eats from the source). Also compounded by "nurse to sleep" as the only way to sleep. So, basically, a huge inequity in that I am the only one who can *really* feed or put the kid to sleep. There's tension sometimes. On both sides. I'm not sure if the tension is different than it would be if she was a man, but I thin it is.
Will definitely be introducing the bottle at 3 weeks if there is a Number Two!!! I know it won't solve the more basic issue that you guys are dealing with, but I want to try to avoid this situation again. Also my partner may try to induce lactation next time. She wasn't interested this time, but I think she's decided it might be cool.
As a non-bio mama, I felt that I could do nothing for our soon for the first few months. I couldn't soothe him through nursing, which was about all he wanted to do. I could change his diapers, get the nursery ready at night, and make sure my wife was comfortable, but it just wasn't fulfilling and made me feel like an odd woman out. It's not that I wanted the limelight, but I felt like I was in a dark alley. I don't know exactly how or why things changed, but they got better. I guess that doesn't help (not knowing the reason), but I think it's a valid non-bio mom issue.
Oh, just saw Kathleen's comment. I agree that if couples are open to bottle feeding, it will make things more equal. Our son had a hard time latching on to the breast, so we didn't want to mess that up by introducing a bottle. Now we wish we had tried bottles earlier. He finally got the hang of bottles at daycare, and is now taking them no problem, but it would have been easier had we introduced them sooner. With #2 we plan to introduce bottles early.
I just wanted to add that the breast issue is not just a two mom issue. My husband has a really hard time with not being able to feed our son (who won't take the bottle either). And all the things that everyone is saying about feeling useless and what not, he felt the EXACT same way.
Kathleen, my son wouldn't take a bottle, so we intruduced a sippy cup. I would give it to him with just water in it when he started solids. I would just give it to him after supper and let him play with it, it took about 2 weeks and he figured out on his own how to drink from it, and now he LOVES it (still loves the boob too). So we just skipped the bottle all together and went straight from boob to sippy cup.
Our biggest issue has been acceptance of Kelly as Bailey's mother. Not her "other" mother. Not her adoptive mother. But her mother. Pure and simple. I get so frustrated when people feel the need to add on a descriptive adjective to the term.
As far as we are concerned, there are two mothers. Kelly may not have carried our daughter, but I surely couldn't not have done it without her. She carried me. And for that, she birthed herself as a mother.
Any other term is just insulting. I think, anyway.
We do not have any lesbian friends with children so one of our issues is how the non-bio mum fits in with families with mums and dads. She feels she doesn't really fit with either the 'mummies' or the 'daddies' but is kind of in the middle!! Our friends are all very aware of this and try to include her but it is not always easy.
Nic
We do not have any lesbian friends with children so one of our issues is how the non-bio mum fits in with families with mums and dads. She feels she doesn't really fit with either the 'mummies' or the 'daddies' but is kind of in the middle!! Our friends are all very aware of this and try to include her but it is not always easy.
Nic
As the bio-mom I'm jealous of my partner's relationship with the kids because she isn't "the boob." They like her for her, not because she is/was the food source. Breastfeeding only lasts for a few years and then things balance out.
As a non bio mom of a now 12 year old (!), the one thing that became an issue for our family was what to call me. You may think that this would be easy, but people referred to the bio mom as Mom, as in "Go ask Mom for a drink." but referred to me as Mary as in "Go ask Mary if you can have a cookie." This led our son to recognize us differently and often he would call me by my first name, which I understood. But others, especially strangers who did not know our family, thought this to be disrespectful.
This is not a big issue for us but one I would have a conversation with new parents about so that moms could be intentional about names not just within the family, but outside also.
There is a cute, funny side to this also. As a toddler, my son would refer to me as "My Mary." My son's friends would often say, "I wish I had a Mom and a Mary too!"
Hi there. Mama Mikki (who is our friends IRL) hit the nail on the head in her comment. My wife Su and I are both mothers to our son Danny. But as the mom who didn't give birth to him, I find that I'm almost percieved to be somehow "untruthful" if I say "I'm Danny's mom". Because society expects one mom, it seems like some might see it as more honest for me to to say "I'm one of Danny's moms". I admit that sometimes I find myself trying to explain things in more detail, but more and more I'm find I'm not willing to do that any more.
The word invalid means "not valid". I want the world to see me not as an "un valid" parent, simply as Danny's mom. But I can't really make the world see anything other than what I try and model.
Just a few thoughts that came to me as I read your post and comment. -Monica
P.S. Don't get me started on society's understanding of my using the word "wife" when I myself am a woman. I'll admit I often bail on that one and call her my partner if I don't feel like explaining more.
I realize that this post was a couple of months ago, but I'm still going to ask. The nursing bond, the oxytocin connection, social acceptance of the "second" mom, obvious evidence of a genetic relationship as the kid ages . . .
How have queer mom couples been able to address these imbalances as they've come up??
My partner and I are starting to plan our family and I am totally paralyzed by fears of being left out. Egg-swapping or early adoption would be ideal, but there's no way we can afford either one. What strategies actually WORK to make both parents get to feel like "real" parents? And am I neurotic to be worried about this?
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