r/QueerParenting

This might be incredibly premature as I am only in the first trimester of my first pregnancy, but I’ve been looking for children’s books to add to a wishlist for our future baby. I’ve already got “Our Story” from the Donor Conception Network, “Heather has Two Mommies,” and “Mommy, Mama, and Me” on the list but I wanted to see if anyone knows of any other good books with diverse families. We’re obviously a two mom family and so looking for books that mirror that, but open to other suggestions as well. One current pattern I’m running into is that these books typically feature white appearing mothers; I would be especially excited to see one with at least one Asian mother to better represent our family though I’m aware that the perfect book for our specific situation may not exist. Thank you!

Could be something funny, something hard, something you absolutely love, or even one of those little moments where you suddenly thought, ohhh… straight parents probably don’t have to think about this 😂Curious what everyone’s experience has been!

Hello all! My wife and I are currently using Just a Baby app to find a sperm donor.

Our current requirements are healthy and handsome sperm donors. We are coming across a lot of very handsome men of color. However we are weary on the ethics of being a white couple purposely having a child of color. I suppose we kind of feel like we would be “stealing” a child from a community we do not belong to.

We desperately want to be parents but we also want to make sure we are doing everything right. We are mostly only interested in the opinions of POC folks. We are also open to hearing from white/mixed race couples and their experiences with having a child that is POC.

We like to think of ourselves as solid accomplices/allies to all POC communities and we would be heartbroken to ever over step those boundaries as it relates to race.

Thank you in advance. We hope everyone is having an excellent summer.

Edit to Add: we also posted in another subreddit and were validated in our concerns. We appreciate anyone who had input, we take it all to heart. We do get POC sperm donors who swipe right on us but we will be making and informed decision to graciously turn them down.

My partner “Sarah” and I are two moms and recently had our first baby, “Noah,” who is 2 months old, through reciprocal IVF. Sarah is his biological/genetic mom, and I am the gestational mom who carried and gave birth to him. We are not married. We had Noah James Miller picked out long before he was born. James is Sarah’s dad’s name, and Miller is Sarah’s family name. My current last name is from a previous marriage, but I’m changing it back to my maiden/family name, “Parker.” Since having Noah, I’ve realized I deeply regret not including Parker in his name too. I’d like to change it to Noah James Parker Miller, with Parker as a second middle name and Miller remaining his surname. Sarah is currently saying no to adding it. I know we had his name picked out for a year and I agreed to it, but I genuinely didn’t realize until becoming a mom how differently I would feel about my family name and how important it would become for my son to have that connection too.

There is some complicated family history behind why Sarah is saying no. My dad has struggled with accepting that some of his daughters are gay. He comes from a conservative cultural/religious background and did not attend one of my sister’s weddings to another woman. My sisters still have a relationship with him and things have improved, but Sarah understandably has strong feelings about what happened. She associates Parker with my dad and has told me she would only reconsider adding it if my dad apologizes to my sisters. I would love for him to apologize, but I don’t feel like my son having my family name should be conditional on something another adult chooses to do. My dad also loves our son (his first grandchild) and Sarah is very encouraging of his relationship with our son. Plus, Parker doesn’t represent just my dad to me. I actually didn’t like my maiden name much before, which Sarah has pointed out, but now I think of my mom, sisters, other people I love, my family history, and myself. There are also deeper feelings underneath this. Sarah struggled significantly with alcohol throughout my pregnancy and continues to struggle postpartum, so I have unresolved resentment from feeling like I carried much of the pregnancy and postpartum responsibility without the support I needed. That’s a whole separate issue, but I know it contributes to how emotional this feels. I also sometimes feel overlooked by her family because there’s so much emphasis on how much Noah resembles Sarah and their family. I understand their excitement about the genetic connection, but sometimes it leaves me feeling like my role and connection to him aren’t recognized in the same way.

When I look at his name now, James honors Sarah’s dad, Miller represents Sarah’s family, and he also has a biological connection to her family. I don’t want to take away any of those things. I love that those connections are part of who he is. I just wish I had realized before he was born how important it would be for my family to be represented too, especially now that I’m taking Parker back as my own name. I don’t want this to become a competition over who is “more” of his mom because we’re both his moms. I just want there to be room in his full name for both of our families. Am I being unreasonable for wanting to add Parker as a second middle name now? Is it fair for Sarah to say no unless my dad apologizes? And if you were in either of our positions, how would you handle this?

i’m a nonbinary person who uses he/she pronouns. until my unborn daughter can choose what she wants to call me, i’ve decided to go by dad!

the issue is, i’m the one carrying her. my husband is a cis man and i present a little femininely (longer hair, more alt/goth style) so often people refer to me using feminine terms, such as mother or mama.

if the person doesn’t know i’m nb, i usually just take it and smile. but if they DO know, i’m not sure how to say that i’d prefer to be dad than mom without being awkward. i’ve thought about going back to a more masculine style, but i don’t want to give up who i am simply to make others feel more comfortable referring to me as my daughter’s dad.

i’m really stuck on how to go about it. anyone deal with anything similar?

My wife and I are sending our almost one year old to daycare for the first time sometime in the next month! We’re excited.

We live in a small liberal town in a blue state. We know some of the daycare staff who are our age (mid -late 30s), and they are awesome! When I got the registration packet I was surprised to see spaces to fill in mother and father (instead of something more neutral like parent 1 /parent 2). I mentioned it to the director of the center and she agreed that was a good idea.

Since we’re probably the first queer parents at this day care ever, I’d love to share some resources with them on creating a welcoming environment for queer families. There’s a dead link page on HRCs website, and I’ve generally been striking out on other sites.

Has anybody seen training materials for some thing like this?

Thanks in advance!

i’m just curious bc i’m a queer kid with homophobic parents and idk if it’s safe to come out to them