The Queer Parent: Everything You Need to Know From Gay to Ze

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The Queer Parent | Book by Lotte Jeffs, Stu Oakley | Official The Queer Parent | Book by Lotte Jeffs, Stu Oakley | Official

I have worked in the childcare industry for 20+ years and was a finalist in the UK Nanny of The Year Awards 2019. I was also a nominee for the same award in 2020 and 2021 but decided to step down for personal reasons. LGBTQ parents have long come together to support each other, as well as to contribute to the broader LGBTQ rights movement. In 1956, the pioneering San Francisco lesbian organization Daughters of Bilitis held the first known discussion groups on lesbian motherhood. The first lesbian mothers’ activist group, the Lesbian Mothers Union, formed in the same area 15 years later. Dana Rudolph is the founder and publisher of Mombian ( mombian.com), a GLAAD Media Award-winning blog and resource directory for LGBTQ parents. I wish this book had been available when my kids were young. It would have made me feel less alone.' Mary Portas.Also launched in the same era (1979) was the Gay Fathers Coalition, which ultimately became Family Equality Council, the national organization for LGBTQ parents. Out of this, too, came a program by and for children of LGBTQ parents, which in 1999 spun off to become COLAGE. We first hear of out LGBTQ parents around the time of World War II, mostly in the context of cases that denied them child custody after divorce from different-sex, cisgender spouses. Starting in the 1970s, however, a few state courts upheld custody rights for transgender, gay, and lesbian parents, though some still required that they not live with a partner or engage in “homosexual activities.” We recognise the need for additional services targeted at not only LGBTQ+ families but also at other families perceived to be minorities. That being said, everyone is welcome at The Queer Parenting Partnership. In the 1960s and 70s, as the nascent LGBTQ rights movement buoyed the community, out LGBTQ people also began starting families. Bill Jones, a gay man, in 1968 became the first single father to adopt a child in California and one of the first nationally—although, as he told NPRin 2015, he was obliquely advised by a social worker not to mention that he was gay. A decade later, New York became the first state not to reject adoption applicants solely because of “homosexuality.” A gay couple in California in 1979 became the first in the country to jointly adopt a child. It has been decades since gay women have been able to start families with the help of fertility treatment, and even longer since they have been doing so without. With some unfair barriers to IVF for lesbian couples having been recently removed, their numbers are only likely to increase. Yet so many of society’s ideas about parenthood remain rooted in traditional gender roles. Lynch’s use of the plural “motherhoods” stands in proud contrast to that, a quiet but firm assertion that the idea of a single “mother figure” needn’t be fixed; that it can be up to us how we interpret the role.

The Queer Parent | Lotte Jeffs; Stuart Oakley - NetGalley The Queer Parent | Lotte Jeffs; Stuart Oakley - NetGalley

By March 1990, lesbian and gay parents had become visible enough for Newsweekto coin a term, reporting that “a new generation of gay parents has produced the first-ever ‘gayby boom.’” Seeing Ourselves, Teaching Others In 1985, some same-sex couples first obtained what became known as “second-parent adoptions” to secure a child’s legal connection to a nonbiological parent. A decade later, the Wisconsin Supreme Court was the first state high court to say a nonbiological mother may seek visitation after separation. Strength in Community I agree. I think in heterosexual relationships, no matter how egalitarian you try to be, societal gender roles intervene. When there are two mothers, perhaps there is more freedom to design your own roles. That’s not to say that there aren’t still differences between the birthing parent and the non-birthing parent, which can make the shift challenging in all sorts of ways, but, as Stevens says: “it has freed us up to parent more authentically, I think, rather than going ‘I’m the dad, therefore I do this’.” In 1974, several lesbian mothers and friends in Seattle formed the Lesbian Mothers National Defense Fund to help those in custody disputes. Similar groups for lesbian mothers and gay fathers formed in other cities. In 1977, lawyers Donna Hitchens and Roberta Achtenberg in San Francisco began the Lesbian Rights Project, which helped both lesbian moms and gay dads. It evolved into the National Center for Lesbian Rights, still helping LGBTQ parents and others across the spectrum today. I am a qualified midwife with a postgraduate qualification in reproductive biology. I have worked in a range of settings including community, home birthing, on a range of hospital wards and have also taught hypnobirthing and parent education.In 1999, Matt Rice became possibly the first transgender man to give birth in the U.S., although it is hard to tell how the few people in the 19th century who gave birth but lived as men would have identified. (They are our queer parental forebears, regardless.) The same year, a British gay couple had children through surrogacy in California, where a court for the first time allowed two gay dads to be on their children’s birth certificate. It wasn’t until 1997, however, that New Jersey became the first state to allow same-sex couples to adopt jointly statewide, and not until 2010 did the last state, Florida, overturn a ban on adoption by gay men and lesbians. Several other states continued to ban unmarried couples, though, effectively stopping same-sex couples from adopting until marriage equality became federal law in 2015.

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In recent decades, marriage equality opponents argued that children needed both a mother and a father. Marriage equality, they claimed, would also require that “homosexuality” be taught in schools. That fear played a large part in the passage of Proposition 8, California’s 2008 marriage equality ban. LGBTQ advocates flipped this around, however, through visibility, legitimate social science research, and court briefs that quoted young people raised by same-sex couples. The U.S. Supreme Court then cited children’s well-being as a key argument in favor of marriage equality in its 2013 and 2015 rulings. It took another Supreme Court case, however ( Pavan v. Smith), to affirm in June 2017 that marriage equality means both parents in a married, same-sex couple have the right to be on their children’s birth certificates and be legally recognized as parents.I am so glad this book is here, and only sorry it didn't arrive sooner.' - Sandi ToksvigThis informative, funny and empowering book from the hosts of the award-winning podcast Some Families is the must-have parenting toolkit for the LGTBQ+ community, their friends, family and allies. 'Answers every question you could have about LGBTQ+ families.