As a queer parent with a donor-conceived child, the market of books with families that look like mine is awfully small. When I found a copy of Horton Hatches the Egg at the library with my daughter, I remembered it vaguely as a cute story from my childhood about a bird and an elephant. I […]
I’m proud of the decision I made. One weekend, about five years ago, I went to visit a dear friend from law school. “I’m thinking about having a baby on my own,” I told her somewhat sheepishly. It was an idea I’d been tossing around as I started approaching 40 and there was no life partner in sight. I was still […]
Did you know that the baby you gave to my family would be born into the greatest love? For a long time, I believed this wasn’t my story. I started this letter to you a year ago, quietly and in my private journal. After all, I have two healthy sons with my husband through traditional […]
Yes, every child needs a family, but the composition of the family is not what’s relevant. As co-mamas to a 7-year-old boy named Bobby, my partner Valerie and I are subject to a lot of negative judgments about our parenting. People who will never meet us declare us to be unfit parents simply because she […]
The people arguing that children deserve better than being raised by my partner and me are the same people arguing that families on welfare are lazy and selfish. It’s not about children deserving the best in life. It’s about children being a commodity of which people like us are unworthy. For months after my partner […]
The journey to parenthood doesn’t always follow the path you thought it would. I write narratives in my head a lot about myself. I figure out what I want and I go for it. I live by these narratives, following the paths I’ve laid out in them. I like them to be set. I think […]
I am so grateful for your help in creating my son, but ejaculating into a cup doesn’t make you his father. To the sperm donor who supplied half my son’s DNA: Father’s Day is approaching and I always like to send a little burst of positive energy your way this time of year. I am […]
