This one came through my local queer parenting group…

• Are you in a committed relationship?
• Are you planning to adopt for the first time?
• If so, we need your and your partner’s help!

The Transition to Adoptive Parenthood Project (TAPP) is aimed at exploring the transition to adoptive parenthood in same-sex parents. We are asking you to help us understand your experiences as you prepare to become, and then become, parents.

Your participation is very much needed and appreciated. Couples who participate in this project will be interviewed individually either in person or by phone during the pre-adoption period, and then again three months after adoption. As a token of appreciation, you will be paid for your participation in this project.

Please contact Dr. Abbie Goldberg for more information about the project, via phone at 508-793-7289, or by email, agoldberg@clarku.edu

Please read about this study & Dr. Goldberg’s other research on her website: http://www.clarku.edu/faculty/goldberg/index.html Call us today – your participation makes a difference!

I have been meaning to write a review of Peggy Drexler’s Raising Boys Without Men, but I never seem to have the time.  So here’s some thoughts on a somewhat tangentially related topic…  

In an ultimately futile attempt to distract myself from my most recent bout of adoption anxiety, I decided to go out and purchase the last few items we needed to bring with us on our upcoming visit trip.  My baby clothes rules are relatively simple – or so I thought.

1. Cannot cost more than the average weekly income in my son’s country of origin what I would spend on a t-shirt here. Sadly those amounts are equivalent. 
2. Cannot be emblazoned with advertising slogans – my kid is not a billboard for 0ld Navy or Baby G*p.
3. No branded characters (I’m sure I’ll flex on this one once he’s old enough to start asking for them, but for now, them’s the rules)
4. No extreme gender stereotypical imagery or language: “Future chick magnet?” “Football Star”? Monster trucks?

Ideals, which tend to be thrown out of the water by rule #1:

5. I’d like to know that a child or a grossly exploited worker didn’t make the clothes for my child.
6. It would be nice if said clothes were made from organic materials & natural fibers (ha!) & in an environmentally sensitive way.

I went to Marsha11s, 0ld Navy, T*rget, K-M*rt and the Sa1vation Army.  And it was surprisingly hard to find clothes that even satisfied the first four rules. Bright colors are nice. Why is everything blue, pink, pastel yellow, or mint green? Why must all the nice red shirts have monster trucks on them? Why is our animal vocabulary limited to puppies (marketed at boy children), dinosaurs (ditto), ducks (girl children), kittens (ditto), and giraffes (the most neutral I’ve seen)?

Higher-end baby stores seem to have less grossly gendered clothing, which makes me wonder whether there’s a relationship between social class and the desire for gender-neutral clothing.  Even so, my cousin, who works for a kid’s clothing line I can’t afford to buy from even at her wholesale discount, tells me that retailers tell her that they regularly get returns – “I’m sorry, but my husband didn’t want his son in this!”  Is there truly less demand among discount/big-box store shoppers for non-gendered clothing, or does the selection and set-up in these stores condition consumers to expect to buy gendered clothing? Is the physical layout of the store into the girl-infant section and boy-infant section consumer-driven or retailer-assumption driven?

Why is it so frightening for parents when the cashier in the supermarket can’t tell if your two month old is a boy or a girl? Is it the end of the world if someone says your son is beautiful, rather than handsome?  And yet, here’s what I wound up buying.

  Look at the cute little tiger feet!

  Make yourself at home, why doncha, kitty?

 Inoffensive stripes.

These two came as a set. I didn’t notice the writing on the second one until I got home.  It doesn’t make sense to me: leave the word “king” off and you’ve got a cute sleeper that could be worn by anyone.  Put “king” on there, and you reduce your potential market by 50%.  Or at least 25%, assuming that there are people who won’t buy blue for their girls even if it’s otherwise neutral. 

Nonetheless, my purchases are certainly dominated by the color blue, aren’t they? (Gives weak, sheepish grin.)  Believe me, though, when I say this is the best of a very sorry lot.

As part of a two-mom family, I think I’m a little less comfortable bending gender rules and dressing my son in pink than I might be if people weren’t likely to read that as using my child to push the infamous “homosexual agenda.”  I’m also more cautious for this upcoming visit trip – from what I’ve seen in pictures so far, gender-normative clothes are the rule here, and I’m less likely to push limits abroad than I am at home.   

How do you all handle the clothing conundrum?

In all my fantasies of having a child, I always imagined having a girl. A feisty, spunky, worm-loving, mud-puddle-hopping, pink-disdaining, peace-loving, punk-rock kind of girl, but still, a girl. As Galloping Cats noted in a comment oh so many moons ago… “i think it’s easier to work on bending gender stereotypes for girls than for boys. i mean, it’s one thing to dress a girl in blue and give her trucks to play with… it’s another thing to dress a boy in pink and give him dolls to play with, when you don’t even believe in girly girlyness for girls!”

While we trying to conceive, the glimpses of family life that made my heart turn alternately to sweet pudding (that’s what I want!) and then to sour milk (why everyone but us?) were always girls. A friend’s daughter boasting about her karate prowess. A little girl and her dad playing catch. My niece climbing up on my lab to read a story. It didn’t seem to matter that I have friends with loving, nurturing sons, that I am friends with loving, nurturing men – who almost as eager to be honorary uncles as we are to be moms – even that my dad is one of the gentlest, warmest people I know. I still wanted a girl.

I figured I would deal with whatever nature gave us, but nature gave us an adoption situation where we had to specify boy or girl. And of course Pili and I didn’t agree. All of a sudden, we found ourselves rolling in stereotypes; the kind of stereotypes we progressive-liberal-lesbian types are supposed to be above (ha!). Boys are more fun; more active; less complicated – Girls are more nurturing, less violent, more verbal…

I was nervous about how I’d react to the kind of physicality that I’ve observed in many of the male children of my friends and in the children I’ve taught. Every tree branch becomes a sword. Bloody noses and bruises are the norm rather than the exception. It seems out of control to me, and it makes me nervous. Some of this discomfort I trace to the fact that I don’t have siblings [niece and nephew are the children of my first cousins] and didn’t grow up with lots of roughhousing, competition, and casual violence. Pili on the other hand, grew up surrounded by male cousins and is much more comfortable with that energy.

It was only once we decided to name GB after my grandfather that boyness began to seem less intimidating to me. Grandpa was a wonderful artist and a terrible curmudgeon, who only seemed to get used to the idea of saying “I love you” a few years before he died, but never failed to squeeze my hand and slip a rolled up bill into it before we left his house. Thank you, I would say diligently, and he would wink and say “Thank you? For what you are thanking me?” as my mother rolled her eyes and hustled me into my jacket.

When the agency coordinator called and said I have a referral for you, even though I knew it would be for a boy, part of me still hoped that she would announce that it was a girl. Or twins. Boy/girl twins. And then she told me GB’s name, given to him by his firstmom, and my heart did this funny little skippy thing. His birth-name contained names from both my family and Pili’s. And all of a sudden, he seemed like my child. My son.

But that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped worrying (who me? never). Earlier this week, Pili and I were taking a walk with a good friend of ours. She was describing her daughter’s friendship with the little boy who lives across the street and I commented on how glad I was to hear that here was a little boy – unlike my nephew, which is another story into itself and is probably another big part of where my worries come from – who wasn’t into violent games. Oh no, she said, he’s teaching her to play good guys/bad guys and to shoot things. And so I worry.

One of the best things I’ve read this week comes from Shelley of But Wait There’s More, who writes:

D doesn’t have any toys whose main purpose is violence. He doesn’t own any guns. He knows that we hope that he remains a kind-hearted and good-spirited boy, and he’s known boys who seem mean-spirited. He understands that we are concerned about how he plays with toys, and that if they seem to be bringing out the worst in him, they might go away. And he spends virtually no time in retail space.

But we are conscious of the fact that he’s a boy with two moms who is going to be spending significant amounts of time over the next however many years living in Boyland. And we want him to feel like a native, not a foreigner. So he has a Starscream Transformer.

What will it take for me to become comfortable in Boyland?

Trista’s recent post about negotiating childbearing in a 2-uterus family reminded me so much of many of the conversations my wife, NSG, and I had the first few years we were together.

Like Trista and Kristin, NSG and I wanted to adopt. And like Kristin, I really wanted to get pregnant. Seems straightforward enough: 2 uteruses, 2 adults who definitely want more than one child, multiple ways to bring kids into your family. Only, not so simple.

NSG was completely uninterested in having kids biologically. One uterus down. She was also uninterested in having any children who weren’t adopted. And, while I didn’t care about having a bio connection to me kid, I just couldn’t imagine how to prepare to become a parent without someone in the family growing the first one.

Now is the point where, if you’ve been through a home study, you realize you’ve just peed yourself laughing. The homestudy was, in retrospect, a MUCH more involved way to prepare to become a parent – if not from the perspective of the body, at least from the perspective of the mind.

Now, before those of you who have been pregnant or who have supported someone through pregnancy get mad at me, I’m not trying to suggest that you weren’t intensely thoughtful about every aspect of pregnancy and parenting. But a homestudy, when it’s done the way it meant to be done, is set up so that you have no choice but to be mindful. We had conversations ad nauseam about every situation that could possibly come up with an expectant mom making an adoption plan: no pre-natal care, depression, didn’t know the father, was married to the father, was 14, was 44, was a high school dropout, had a PhD, was from any imaginable cultural or ethnic background, and on and on. If I had been pregnant I imagine we wouldn’t have thought through nearly so many things.

Before we were actually ready to have kids, we had those behind-the-hand conversations so many about-to-be-TTC lesbian couples have about our male friends and our friend’s husbands.  He’s a great guy, we would whisper to each other. And we’ve been friends with his wife for so long I bet she’d go for it.

But when it came down to it, NSG really didn’t want us to get pregnant. She made me a deal: take a serious look at adoption. If you’re happy, we’ll do it first, and if you still want to get pregnant, I’ll support you. So I did, and I was happy. And it really didn’t take long. Now here we are on the other end of it, and, well, we have Roo. How could I help but be overjoyed at this little being who I get to call my son?

NSG meant it when she made her bargain, but I know she thought after we adopted one that I wouldn’t care about getting pregnant after that. But I have to say: I’m more clear than ever that having a biological connection to my child isn’t important to me, but I’m still not clear if I’m willing to give up the experience of being pregnant. 

Charlotte’s posts this week make it abundantly clear that having more options does not equal an easier process. And, despite all the jokes about lesbians and processing, I think lesbian couples by definition have to be pretty thoughtful about how to have a baby (though if anyone has figured out a way to get fingers to produce sperm, please leave your email address in the comments: I think there’s a wealthy future in store for you).

Where am I going with all this? Nowhere directly, that’s for sure. But I wanted to add my two cents (two dollars, maybe – this is a long post) to the discussion about negotiating adding to a family when the necessary equipment is not all built-in.

Anyone else want to run with this one?

Did anyone else have days of the week underwear growing up? Every year I buy my partner-lover-sweetheart-wife dishtowels. One year I bought her days of the week dish towels. She has a thing about dish towels. I felt like the stereotypical bad husband, buying my wife dishtowels for Hanukkah Christmas Winter Holiday, except that she wanted them. I swear. And I’m nobody’s husband. This year’s dishtowels were woven by a Mayan women’s cooperative in Guatemala. But before I get to that…

(And did you think you were subversive and daring – wearing Thursday on Tuesday? – come on, fess up?)

…Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Sunday, otherwise known as Art-Sweet. And I’m honored – and a little bit intimidated – to join the fantastic ranks of the six other lesbianfamily.org bloggers. Like J., we don’t have a child yet. But we’re working on it…

Both myself and my partner – to be known as “Pili” (Partner I Love Intensely) – although she is neither the plural of a hairlike appendage found on the surface of a bacteria nor a nut native to the Phillippines, have wanted a family for a long time. I hesitate to get started on “normal,” because when it comes to relationships, there’s really no such thing. But I will say that even by the accelerated standards of stereotypical lesbian courtship, I don’t know how normal it is to talk about having children on a second date. Which is what we did.

Fast forward through way too many years of long distance relationshiping, a cross-country move together, and two years of infertility treatments, and we find ourselves waiting (probably another six months to go) for our son, a beautiful chubby cheeked wonder, to work his way out from under several tons of paperwork and come join our family through international adoption.

I intend to use my Sunday “column” here at LesbianFamily to talk about lesbian family-building in all of its various forms and flavors, my hopes and anxieties about being mommies to a son, and adopting transracially. I’m also an educator, so anticipate some book reviews and some thoughts about helping schools to welcome and support our diverse families.

And thanks, Liza – for creating this space and giving me this new soapbox opportunity to share thoughts and insights. You can also find my day-to-day thoughts, photographs, and musings on life with chronic illness at http://artsweet.wordpress.com.

P.S. Please send some love and support to Katie and Partner over at Maybe Expectant, whose son was born a month early and is currently in the NICU.

A couple of weeks ago, I got an interesting note from a Belgian blogger with a facinating statistic: More than 50% of the adoptions in Flanders (part of Belgium) were by same-sex couples!

They theorize that this number will drop off once couples with older children “catch up” on legalizing and protecting existing families, as same-sex second parent adoption has not been legal for long, but still, what an amazing number.

Elsewhere in her blog, she notes a few other reasons why one might prefer to live in Belgium than in the US.

Without denigrating the many fine reasons she has for being a Belgian patriot, she left off two of the big reasons I keep trying to convince Jill that we need to visit: Chocolate and Beer.

Trista is a hard act to follow, but I have to start somewhere.

When Liza invited me to join the team over here at lesbian family dot org, I was both flattered and panicked. What would I write about? Did I have anything new to add to the conversation about lesbian families and queer families in general? And most importantly, would the readers over here be as tolerant of my rantings and half-cooked sentences as my beloved readers over at my own blog, Round is Funny?

I guess I’ll find out.

My partner, Non-Sequitor Girl (referred to from here on out as NSG), and I adopted our son Roo in August 2006. This was an open domestic transracial adoption (try saying that three times fast), and it was a wild ride.

So many things have, of course, caught us off guard about parenting and about adopting, but the one that stuck with me from this past week was this question: who’s his real mom?

I was getting my hair cut and ended up in a conversation with several other women about my new baby and another client’s new baby, who were about the same age. One of them asked me if I stayed at home with my son, and when I explained that I was back at work full-time, she asked where he was in day care. “He’s with his mama all day,” I answered.

There was a moment of silence as the three of them processed this.

I live in a liberal little enclave where most homophobes know to keep their mouths shut, so I didn’t worry and it didn’t take them long. And then the inevitable response: Wow! But who is his real mom?

I choose to think that most people who ask this kind of question mean well, that they just haven’t come up with inoffensive language to ask what they really want to know. As someone who is very open about being part of a lesbian family, and who came to adoption as a first choice (not after a struggle with infertility), it’s relatively easy for me not to feel defensive about this.

Our answer is a little more complicated than they might expect. Do they mean the “real” mom who loved him since he was conceived and gave birth to him? The “real” mom who wears him in the Ergo all day long and multi-tasks so she can take care of her baby while also holding down a more-than-full-time job? The “real” mom who gets up with him in the middle of the night and makes him belly laugh by singing black socks and making ridiculous faces?

The way I see it, my son has four “real” parents. All four of us are parenting him in a way that’s outside the traditional realm of parenting, but that doesn’t make it any less real. When we talk to his birth family on the phone, we all talk about “our” son. All of us have pictures of him on our nightstands and have shed blood sweat and tears (some literally, some figuratively) over keeping this tiny fragile being alive and healthy.

And of course all of us love him in the core of our beings.

But this was my tangent, and five women in the haircutting place were poised waiting for my answer.

He has three moms, I said. He’s adopted. His other mom and his dad live in Crazy State (I’m on the non-identifying information track here), and we have an open adoption.

Again with the beat of silence while they digested. And then one woman said “Cool. My brother’s adopting from China.” And we were off on a new topic.

Did I accomplish anything? Did they hear what I was really saying, or was it too much in too few words? Did they move on because they didn’t want to be rude, or because they got it?

I don’t know, and I can’t know. I can only do the best I can, like we all do for our families, whatever form they take. But I felt good about what I said.

What would you have said?