Comments on: Don’t know nothin’ ’bout biology

By: Polly

Polly — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 19:57:50 +0000

Yeah, I have gotten that, too — the friendly, good-natured, “But she does have your nose” or some such. Interestingly there’s very little about my partner that’s evident in our daughter right now; just a bit more in our son. With exceptions for hair and eye color, she’s a carbon copy of our donor chum, her Special Uncle. But the older kids get, the deeper the influence of nurture on them (as v. nature). That’s where we all shine, whether the kids issued from us or not.

By: Map-maker, map-maker, make me a map at LesbianDad

Map-maker, map-maker, make me a map at LesbianDad — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 08:47:46 +0000

[...] To this end, Trista posted a pithy piece, Advice for Bio Moms, on An Accident of Hope. I thought it so valuable a catalyst that I couldn’t help but point at it from my Friday berth at LesbianFamily.org (childbirths and dogpassings notwithstanding, on Fridays I assay a little chit-chat over there). Then Trista (a fellow contributor to LesbianFamily.org), followed with this post rounding up more related conversational themes in blogs that list on LesbianFamily. If you’re a parent like me, reading these stories is just necessary. Like looking up and checking road signs as you drive. You do it all the time, so often you don’t even notice when you do. [...]

By: dlvc

dlvc — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 18:32:18 +0000

Trista’s post was great. Thanks for pointing to it.

Humans love to find connections. It’s something I love about people…we can find patterns and links anywhere, even if we do over-attribute them to biology.

We purposely chose a “generic” donor, i.e. one that did not have either of our features, because we intend to try to use the same donor for two kids (one out of each uterus, hopefully). My wife bore our daughter, now 10 months, and she, as expected, looks absolutely nothing like me. This doesn’t stop people from finding the connections between us, which doesn’t bother me one bit. A couple months ago in a private meeting with our rabbi she referred to our daughter being my bio-kid. When I corrected her, she stopped for a second and seemed confused, and then insisted that she must have gotten confused because of our daughter’s red hair…but her hair is very very brown. I insisted that she doesn’t have red hair but the rabbi was having none of it. She really wouldn’t believe me. I totally ate it up.

During the pregnancy, I braced myself for the litany of “she looks so much like…” It came as a happy surprise that occassionally such sentences are about me.

By: cathy

cathy — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 02:21:04 +0000

You know, Hannah is SOOOOO like Beth that it’s not hard to do. She is the spitting image of me when I was her age (I swear I didn’t clone her) but she has mannerisms and little things she does that are 100% Beth. It bothers me more than Beth when people go on and on about how she looks like me – they can’t see past it and have no idea where the other half of the genes came from.

Good stuff… and such a reminder about how even parenting is socially constructed. People assume a biological connection as important and so “notice” it even when not there.

By: shelli

shelli — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 00:33:52 +0000

Well, Malka is adopted. she is black. I am white. my partner is black.

VERY often we get: “Wow, she looks JUST like you.” to my partner. It’s infuriating, because, in a way, it’s almost racist in tone, because, they’re simply commenting on skin color, not look at all. When we point out that she’s adopted, they ALWAYS backpedal.

But the weird thing? Malka TOTALLY, 100% looks like her namesake, my partner’s mom at times. We call it: “Getting her Velma on.”

Maybe it’s easier, because Malka came from a ‘3rd uterus,” her “tummy mommy,” we are her “heart mommies.” But we don’t have any internal jealousies in our family dynamic – and I’m wondering of we may have, had Malka come from my partner’s uterus instead. Knowing myself, i would have been envious.

So our frustrations come with the general public, not within our own family unit. THAT, at the very least, is solid.

By: Trista

Trista — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 20:24:32 +0000

wow, I’m speechless here. Thanks! And I, too, am so very grateful that Kristin is cut from the came cloth that your partner is. I can only hope that if I ever get pregnant myself I can manage to take my own advice (and follow her example).