It took a long time after Willow was born for me to start to feel like a “parent”. Society links “parenthood” to if you provided the genetics, and people feel they are owed an explanation on who her dad is and what we know about him. I’ve had people immediately gloss over me and ask for details on her donor as though he was the most important part of all this, like it didn’t matter that I was the one up at 2am for a feed and a poonami every night. Being a parent is so much more than genetics.
As any LGBTQ+ person will tell you, you don’t come out once. You come out every day, to everyone. When you add in a child, inevitably people need to know just how you two came upon a baby. Two sisters ditching “Dad” is where everyone goes. “So, are you two sisters then?” is probably the most heard sentence that every femme-presenting same sex couple will have heard. We get it all the time.
My wife, Becky and I were asked this on a 10-hour flight from the person sat next to us. Turns out, the lady did not like sitting next to two members of the LBGTQ community. As soon as the seatbelt sign went off, she got her well tabbed and highlighted Bible from the overhead locker. Later in the flight, we overheard her telling the flight assistants that she needed to be moved away from us “because my son paid a lot of money for that seat”.
She later leaned over me to tell Becky “you can tell you’re the real mother because of how loving you are with her”. In one sentence she alleged that I’m not a mother or loving with my child. When Becky and Willow went on a walk, I was then given the advice that “you should pray to St Cecilia, because she will give the baby the voice of an angel, as she currently sounds like a cat!”.
There are barriers to accessing fertility care in the UK as a same sex couple. The first hurdle is you must try for a baby for two years without success. The same sex version is pay privately for six rounds of IUI, so already members of the LGBTQ community are directly discriminated against. This has been tested by a lesbian couple (@whatwegandidnext) who launched a judicial review and the government agreed to revise policies to make access equal. Nothing has been done since so it’s still a postcode lottery as to what you get and how much it costs.
As we’d be spending money anyway, we decided our best shot was IVF. At the time, it would have been about £6,000 a pop. We calculated going to Norway, including flights and hotels was about £2,500-£3,000 so we were getting more chances for our money.
Once we were pregnant, we were then back in the hands of the NHS. The NHS is ill-equipped to deal with anything that isn’t cis-gendered heterosexual care. I guarantee any queer woman will have been repeatedly questioned at some point on just how she is so very sure she isn’t pregnant!
At the registration of Willow’s birth, the registrar needed us to explain the law that I had parental responsibility by virtue of being married to her mother at time of birth. It’s accepted for a woman registering that she’s being honest about the father, but we had to prove our marriage to them. Then, they didn’t know what to put on the birth certificate as I wasn’t “father”, so she had to find someone else who knew what to do. Turns out, for the non-carrying parent, you just delete “father” and put “parent” but don’t change any other boxes so Willow’s birth certificate has more information about me than it does about her mum.
We took the decision to send Willow to private school as the local schools are faith schools and we didn’t want to worry about what would be said to her, given they reflect the church’s teachings. We also needed to be reassured that on Father’s Day the school would be equipped and sensitive to making cards for grandads and uncles instead. She isn’t the only child of a same sex couple in her school and it’s important to us that she is able to socialise daily with other children who have the same family make up as her.
We did investigate a christening as our families are Catholic. Once our “situation” was checked by a priest, we were told that she can be christened, and God will accept her as the child of an unmarried mother born out of wedlock. They don’t recognise our marriage, so as far as they are concerned, she is an illegitimate child. I can still join in though, as my own child’s godparent!
Even now Willow is older, you still get looks from other people. If we hold hands around her you are conscious that people look at you holding hands, then look at her. People not part of the LGBTQ community don’t get how exhausting it can be. Something as simple as going to work leads to questions no straight person has ever considered like:
- “are my team safe to come out to?”
- “is the person making decisions on my career homophobic and if they are, do I choose to come out or live a lie to progress?”
- “did this supervisor change how they treat me just because I’ve come out to them?”
- “will this client sack us if they find out I’m queer?”
Everyone a queer person has ever met has been “assessed” by them for safety to come out to. If someone has revealed their true self to you, congratulations, you passed! This means every time we network, we aren’t just meeting new people and hopefully business contacts, we’re actively trying to small talk in gender neutral language until you pass the test and suddenly you will hear “wife” or “husband” from us.
The best advice I can give is to make sure you find a firm that means what it says on EDI. If there are people visibly out at the firm and that isn’t just on socials once a year for the obligatory Pride post, then you are on to a winner. Even better if those out people are senior leaders.
For managers, please consider what your staff may be going through in the background. Make pronouns on email signatures the default across the business. Never presume you know someone’s sexuality or gender identity just because they look female or date a member of the same sex and give people all the time they need to be themselves at work.
Jacqui Bourke is a managing associate at TLT.
