Gay Parenting. Cynthia Phillips
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it is to secure the approval of the future grandparents, a gay or lesbian family may want to deal with these issues before heading down the road to parenthood.
ARE YOU SURE NOW’S THE TIME?
While deciding to become a parent can be a decision that couples belabor for months or even years, the desire can also be sparked very quickly. While some gay or lesbian couples consider parenthood for an extended period, one partner may wake up one morning and feel the time is right. Especially for lesbian couples, one woman’s biological clock (or both!) may have been ticking away for years, and finally gotten to the point where the decision to parent can no longer be ignored if the person is to give birth to a child.
Marty and Chris are one such couple. When they first met, both women talked about wanting children one day, but neither felt ready to take on the responsibility at that point. As their relationship became more serious, their talks of becoming parents became more frequent, but always ended in, “We’ll do it some day.”
They’d been together for about five years when Marty decided it was time to start a family. “I was finishing up a graduate degree,” Chris comments, “when Marty said that she made an appointment with an infertility doctor. I thought, ‘WHAT? Now?’” After weeks of debate and discussion, Chris realized that the choice simply wasn’t hers to make alone. “Marty felt with every inch of her being that it was time to get pregnant. I knew there was no talking her out of it, and it wouldn’t have been fair to try.” One partner’s feeling that the time has come to bear children may make little or no sense to the other partner, but that doesn’t make the urge any less real.
The desire for a child is not always a rational decision. While some parents may want to wait until they are financially secure and have jobs that can easily accommodate being a parent, others simply cannot wait. The notion of the biological clock is the subject of some scientific debate, but it’s undeniable that hormones play a major role in the way we live our daily lives. Biological timers help our bodies adjust to daily fluctuations, such as waking up as the sun rises and getting sleepy as the sun sets. While humans certainly can (and do) override these natural preferences, there’s little doubt that the body and nature have been designed to work together in a complementary fashion. Parenthood is one of those decisions that can come on a gut, instinctual level rather than being an intellectual decision. Parenting involves many losses of control, and the decision to become a parent is often the first of those seemingly irrational decisions!
One of the first facts to become immediately obvious to a gay or lesbian couple is that their parenting experience will be a very different proposition from what is experienced by a heterosexual couple. A major difference is that, for gay and lesbian couples, parenthood is usually a conscious decision. There tend to be very few unplanned gay pregnancies or adoptions. Because of this reality, gay and lesbian couples often tend to be older than their heterosexual counterparts before parenting their first child. Gay couples will often go back and forth for years before succeeding in their dream to become parents.
DON’T WAIT FOREVER
While it’s always wise to study the available options before making an informed decision, it is important not to wait too long. Once you’ve committed yourselves to becoming a family, let the debates and indecision cease.
Remember that there’s no perfect time to become a parent. Abhi and Jose, a gay male couple from Oregon, had the “Are we ready?” discussion for several years before deciding that they simply wanted to be parents. Abhi recalls, “You can always have more money or a better job. You can always live in a better house. So at some point, you just have to stop worrying and do it.”
Money and material possessions won’t make you a better parent and it is important eventually to come to terms with the idea that you cannot prepare yourselves for parenthood one hundred percent. Jose and Abhi knew that the right time to have a child was when they both decided that they were ready. “Eventually, we knew that all these external factors just didn’t matter that much,” Abhi says. “We both had well-paying jobs, and we figured that that was enough.”
There are several actual reasons not to put off the parenting decision indefinitely. Raising young children is exhausting, and people in their twenties and thirties have more energy (and usually better health) than those in their forties or fifties.
In addition, waiting too long could actually make it much more difficult to become parents. Women’s fertility begins to decline dramatically after age thirty-five so lesbian couples, like all women, have a built-in timeline for achieving pregnancy. For men considering using a surrogate, the age of the surrogate (or egg donor) is more of an issue than the age of the sperm source, though sperm count and motility do start to decline later in life. Also, most international adoption agencies require younger parents to adopt babies and toddlers. People in their fifties will only be allowed to adopt older children. If you and your partner are on the outer limits of the optimal age period set by agencies, don’t wait another five years! There is also a lower age limit to be considered: many countries will not allow people under thirty to adopt.
Of course, older parenthood comes with its own set of perks – older parents are often more mature, more settled in their jobs and careers, more financially secure and more knowledgeable in general. The tradeoffs are important to consider when thinking about starting a family – one interesting data point is to think about how old you will be when your youngest child graduates from high school or college. For parents of a newborn who are in their forties, college expenses can be formidable at a time when they may be living on a retirement budget. Of course, this situation can be surmounted with a bit of planning, but it’s certainly worth taking into account.
WE THINK WE’RE READY… ARE WE?
While there is never any perfect time to become a parent, some times are better than others. Harbor no misconceptions that having a child is inexpensive or fast. If you and your partner are currently buried under a mountain of debt, you may want to at least try to get your finances in order before taking on the responsibility of raising a child. Also, bear in mind that the cost of acquiring a child varies drastically. The bare minimum costs may be incurred by a lesbian couple attempting to get pregnant using fresh sperm from a known donor; if everyone is healthy and fertile, this process may cost as little as the price of the syringes. At the other end of the spectrum, international adoption or in vitro fertilization can easily rack up tens of thousands of dollars of bills. Be realistic about both what your family can afford, and what kind of debt you’re willing to take on in order to have a family.
Also, the expense of a child certainly does not end with the acquisition of said child. Jose was shocked at how much it cost to raise a child. “The adoption itself wasn’t too bad, but my lord! The diapers, the formula, the bottles, the baby food, clothes… And he’s only two years old!” The expenses grow with your children; eventually they’ll want bikes, the latest electronic gear and summer camps. And this doesn’t even take college into account! While it’s possible to raise a child as extravagantly (or not) as possible, a newborn will sleep as soundly in a basic bassinette as she will in a top-of-the-line crib.
Unfortunately, not all expenses can be foreseen or avoided. Consider that your child might have a major medical problem that isn’t covered by insurance; the bill will eventually fall to the parents. Also consider that you might have a teenager who needs major orthodontia, most of which likely won’t be covered by dental insurance. It is always best to have some savings as a buffer against these sorts of unforeseen expenditures.
In the case of Marty and Chris, both women were young and for them, starting early ended up working to their benefit. “We’d always talked about having a big family… I wanted two kids, she wanted three,” says Chris. “Even though we debated a bit before getting started, it ended up being a good thing that we started young.”
WHERE DO BABIES COME FROM?
Most gay or lesbian couples have to come terms with the fact that, while cutting-edge reproductive technologies are becoming more prevalent, it is next to impossible for a gay or lesbian couple to be the sole genetic contributors to a child. While heterosexual couples can certainly have serious problems with infertility, most couples composed of a male and a