Yesterday, I had an appointment at the Reproductive Endocrinologist’s office, to see how my progesterone level is here in my “two week wait.” (Answer: Fair, here are some pills.)

The receptionist/billing specialist is a charming 50-something, and we generally get chatty while I’m checking in or out.

This morning, our chatting came around to why we stay here, instead of moving to Wisconsin to be closer to my family.

“Here, we’ve been able to have my partner legally adopt our son as his second parent. There, we wouldn’t be able to — there’s a bad state Supreme Court decision.”

As universally happens, she expressed surprise that the legal environment was better here.

“Here, the law is silent on the subject. So some judges, in the two main metro area counties, will do it. Others won’t.”

Our chat continued as she expressed surprise about the law being so unclear, and I found myself telling her the whole nightmarish saga of our petition having been assigned to the 1 judge in our county (out of 10) who won’t grant them, and how we had to move to the adjacent county. And how that meant spending down all of our non-retirement savings, but thank God we had that option.

Of course I also added that we better hope I was pregnant, because if we have to move on to IVF, we won’t be able to afford to do another whole move like that if we hit the rotten judge lottery again. She laughed and agreed and insisted that I’m already pregnant.

My point is that this kind of conversation makes a difference, even when we’re having it with someone who is already an ally.

She probably went home and chatted with her husband about the conversation we had, and the next time someone in her life voices an ignorant opinion about same sex marriage, she doesn’t just have a philosophical disagreement. She has a concrete, real-life example of discrimination, and a human story that she can share.

I think those human stories make enormously more difference than any abstract opinion, however well reasoned, can make.

Remember back when Babytalk ran a survey on “Married vs Single Moms?” I got a little cranky about it, to put it mildly. And while Babytalk didn’t call me, they heard from enough lesbian moms that we’re certainly included in the article.

And apparently, there are a lot of us! Of their 14,000 “nationally representative” respondents, 8%, or approximately 1100 of us, answered YES to the question, “Do you have a same-sex partner who co-parents with you?”

Interestingly, “more than two-thirds” of us strongly agreed that we feel discrimination because we’re not married. I had a hard time with the wording of the question, and think I might have been in the other ~30%, although obviously I think lesbian moms face discrimination.

The surprising statistic for me was that only 57% of us agreed, “I wish I were married.” I wonder how many of you in the 43% answered the question are in a semi-legally-recognized marriage or otherwise got caught up in the wording of the question. And I’m also curious about how many of you are more old-school, anti-patriarchial-institution radical feminist moms.

Coolest bit? The sidebar titled “Hollywood wives…and moms” listed some famous celeb moms who are either divorced with children, unmarried with children, single adopters, or have same-sex partners. It isn’t in the online version, so you’ll have to pick up a copy to see the cute picture of Cynthia Nixon and her daughter.

Way to go, BabyTalk! Thanks for including lesbian moms in your article.

Reader, thinker, and real life friend Clare sent me (Liza) this message below, and I thought it would be a fabulous guest post here. In the interests of full disclosure, I have been close friends with Clare’s (straight) older sister since I was about 18 and full of radical organizing and world-changing ideas and Clare was about 7 and full of cuteness and love/admiration for her big sister.

From time to time there is a discussion that the blog sphere has created a good space for lesbian families, and queer people and allies in general, to connect to one another. Obviously, Lesbian Family, was born out of these connections. And, for those on the inside, this connection and safety of community is an end of itself.

However, I would like to talk about something else that Lesbian Family provides: role models. Some of you are probably not going to like to think about it this way, but role modeling and having queer role models is something I have thought a lot about lately. It is also something I was blessed to grow up with.

Growing up, even if in Wisconsin, I babysat in the early 90s for a lesbian family, my parents had partnered gay friends who they brought home, one of my sister’s best friends went on to start Lesbian Family, etc. Looking back, all of these experiences, especially the ones at an early age, shaped my view of being queer, of being out, of belonging. Over and over, however, I see that my experience may not have been the status quo—especially for bi/lesbian women of color or from other countries.

A couple years ago, I met an Asian woman who had been studying and living in middle America for 5 years. Although she was attracted to women, she told me that she never would consider a relationship because she couldn’t stand the thought of growing up and not having children. The idea that lesbian families around the world are having and raising children had never occurred to her, as she had never heard of it or seen it. After seeing Lesbian Family, and reading up a bit, her ideas changed.

Another friend from the southern hemisphere tells me that although she is queer and dates women, she can’t imagine seeing it back home. She can only imagine lesbian families in the middle/ upper class America or other western nation sense (she also admits that the image she still holds in her head is that of white America). Although she knows there must be queer people in her home country, she has never seen them nor can she imagine that they have a space in her society.

Back in America, a friend just last week told me two things that shocked me: 1) that she had never met a well adjusted, settled down, lesbian couple and 2) that there was no place in corporate America for out lesbians.

Over and over my mind returns to the idea of role models. If a person hasn’t seen it, how hard is it to imagine? If a person sees a solid lesbian couple with kids, how easy is it to see that path as viable? How important is it that these role models, these lesbian/queer/trans couples, look like us (economically, physically, racially, religiously, etc.)? And, how have role models or lack thereof influenced your struggles in creating a family?

One of my favorite bloggers outside of the Lesbian Family blogosphere is Isabel, of Hola, Isabel. By simple description, we might be utterly different — she’s a churchgoing west-coaster whose husband is building their second house from scratch! I only recently became a regular churchgoer, live in the south, and between Jill and me, we can pretty much build Ikea furniture. I started reading Isabel’s blog when we were both pregnant, and stayed for the good storytelling. Plus we just like each other, you know?

This week, Isabel wrote a series of posts on her experience and feelings about having a gay brother who (finally) came out to his family in his late 20s.

These posts were so interesting to me, because they tell the story of an emotionally difficult and draining coming out, from the perspective of a family that had long known that the brother in question was gay, and who weren’t particularly uncomfortable with the idea. Yet the gay son is still alienated from his family of origin. And they are alienated from him.

What I walk away from Isabel’s story with is how much homophobia hurts families.

It doesn’t just hurt the gay members of those families, and it doesn’t just hurt if the straight family members are homophobic. Fear of homophobia, expectation of homophobia, perception of homophobia even when there might be another explanation — all of those things are part of the air we breathe when we are living our lives, especially when we try to live them as out GLBT people.

What I imagine, reading between the lines of Isabel’s story, is a brother who spent a long time afraid of being rejected by his family. I imagine that he heard the relative non-reaction of his family as something like silent judgment, and I imagine that he pulled away from his family defensively, because that was the reaction he was listening for. I don’t KNOW any of that — her brother might just be a straight-up jerk, who happens to also be gay, and he might have skipped out on family weddings even if he were a zero on the Kinsey scale.

And of course, he might be a gay jerk who WAS interpreting his family’s “reaction” (or lack of same) in the most negative and homophobic possible light, regardless of their intent.

Our straight friends and families don’t magically know how to reassure us that their feelings towards us haven’t changed. They probably have no idea that we’d like that reassurance.

They also want to know that the core of who we are hasn’t changed — we’re still the human being we always were. How to share both the changes in our lives and the consistency is hard.

A lot of us go through a sort of second adolescence shortly after coming out, and much like actual teenagers, we may think that we’re Finally Being Who We Really Are, that may not be entirely true. That’s something else I imagine from Isabel’s story.

Fortunately, most of us calm down again after the novelty of feeling free to tell the truth about our romantic & sexual lives settles into the normalcy of dating and living life.

The question is, how do we keep the lines of communication open with our families during all that tumult? And how do we give them the benefit of the doubt and keep them “in the loop” without oversharing. Or how do we rebuild those relationships after our irrational exuberance calms down? How do we share our lives in all their complexity with our families, in spite of our fears?

I don’t think there’s “an answer” to that, but I think communication, in spite of fear and resistance, is at the core of whatever the answers are. At least if we want to continue those relationships.

A few of you left comments asking to be included in additional categories, and special thanks to Sarah & BB for pointing out 3 bloggers who I’d left out of the Global Families category!

Additionally, please welcome a few new blog, Jim, of Disciples from the Left (a sister blog to Straight , not Narrow), in Friends of the Family.

Does anyone know if the Quixotic Mamas have had their baby yet??? No posting since Sunday, which was 9 days past the due date.

Finally, LesbianFamily.org got an email from Emma & Jean:

My partner and I are ready to start a family and are looking for advice, resources and direction from other lesbian mothers/families. We are really at the beginning pros/cons of sperm donation vs. the trusted friend etc. Hoping you can help.

Friends? What’s your advice?

This site doesn’t have forums (yet?) but hopefully this post will spur some discussion that helps.

Also, I would spend some time clicking around the blogs in the “Trying” category. Those are the folks who are dealing with some of the same questions you’re asking. (Folks in other categories may have also been down this path, but those are the folks there now.)

One other place I’d look is Estelle’s blog — she’s generated a lot of interesting and maybe helpful discussion in thinking about whether or not to use the same unknown donor to try to conceive a second child. (There are more posts on the topic, but that one is a good place to start.)