It’s happened a few times lately, that upon finding out that I’m one of two moms in our family, I’m asked by another parent how to explain two-mom families to their kids (lately this has been in adult contexts, not with my kids in tow). Most recently, a dad I was talking to mentioned that he knows a two-mom family in his neighborhood, and that his own kids are asking how that family had their kids. He doesn’t know how to answer, and in fact doesn’t even know the basic facts needed to really answer the questions (i.e. were the kids adopted? or did one (or both) of the mom’s give birth? He met the family well after the kids were tiny, so he has no idea).
I encouraged him to talk to the parents, and find out how they are explaining things to their kid’s friends, but he felt like he didn’t know the parents well enough for that. We really wouldn’t mind such a question, and would be glad to help other parents have such conversations with their kids** (the more other people’s kids understand our families, the easier life is for my kids), but I get that it isn’t necessarily all that comfortable. I also know many queer parents object strongly to any “nosy” questions along these lines, so perhaps his concern isn’t misplaced. That said, I think by the time kids are school age (which these kids were), most of us are used to it, find the questions much less challenging, and have our answers down.
The conversation moved on, but I wish I’d given him a bit more information, some language to explain to his kids that some two-mom families adopt children, and some have kids with the help of a man called a sperm donor (or just “donor” if “sperm” was too much), and that both moms are “real moms” no matter how they had their kids. It might be nice to throw in a line about two-dad families and single parents, though it was clear that this dad’s kids really wanted to know HOW the moms in this particular family had their kids, not the list of family-constellations we tend to throw out to younger kids. That’s a way more toned down version than our kids get, but might have been enough to satisfy his kids, and certainly would be better than nothing.
I’m sure that whoever these kids of two-moms are in some distant neighborhood, they are perfectly skilled at handling the questions that come their way, but I feel like I missed an opportunity to help this dad and his kids be a bit more informed and when/if they asked, and maybe a chance to help this dad feel a little more comfortable with his neighbors.
So what do you think? What do you wish straight parents explained to their kids about queer families? Do you have any good ways for them to do the explaining? (Remember though, they aren’t used to this. The questions surprise them even more than they surprise us.)
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**NOTE to any of our real life friend who happen to be reading: Please do say if you need help figuring out how to talk to your kids about our family.
[Comments were accidentally turned off on this post for a while, but they are up now, please discuss!]
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We’re still so far away from the actual mechanics of how babies come into existence that it’s hard for me to even think about how I would answer those kinds of questions, regardless of whether it’s a two-mom, two-dad, or mom-dad family!
I do think it’s easier to envision how I will have the conversations because my kids are so used to two-mom and two-dad families. If I didn’t have any queer families in my life, I think it would be much more challenging.
Great post, as always! I think that, unfortunately, it’s not just kids who don’t understand how queer families get made. I have heard confused questions from adults as well.
Part of the problem is that the explanation that adults need to give to kids now is different from the explanation that we got when we were younger. So when adults use the same explanation for how babies are made that they learned themselves, they end up giving incomplete or inadequate answers.
I think it’s important to include queer families (and single-parent families, etc.) in initial conversations with children about how babies get made or how families are formed. When your original conversation about having babies is inclusive of non-heterosexual families, it gives the message to kids that families are created in lots of ways and no way is the “right” way.
Cindy Blank-Edelman recently posted..Healing From Trauma
I think the simplest and best in that case is something like, “We don’t know exactly how that baby came into the family, and it’s not important to know — what’s important is that it’s a family, like our family, that happens to have two moms rather than a mom and a dad.”
Really critical is the point you mention that both moms are “real moms” (or both dads are “real dads”). My wife and I CONSTANTLY get the question, “Who’s the mom?” from straight people — and even when we respond, “We’re both the moms,” they push back with, “You know what I mean, who’s the baby’s mother?” We have the luxury of not answering directly, because we both look like we could be our son’s bio-mom. But that’s a really important point. Actually it reminds me of the old “Who’s the man?” question.
People have to let go of their assumptions that there’s an [X] and a [Y] and there can’t be two real [X]s.
I couldn’t agree more with this post! Especially “…it’s not important to know — what’s important is that it’s a family, like our family…”!
Momma recently posted..Objectively…sort of
First of all, I’m glad you posted because I’ve been missing your posts!! Second of all, everything you wrote, as well as the comments people have left, is so resonant with me, especially this week when for some reason I feel like we’ve been fielding a lot of questions.
What I love about the questions kids often ask about queer families- or about any other families besides their own- is they are much less likely than adult questions to be couched in 80 million layers of bias and baggage. In general my tendency when kids ask any questions is to start by finding out what they already think the answer is, and next try to find out their motivation for asking. These pieces of information are so helpful in figuring out the right way to answer. I think in considering how I wish straight parents would talk to their kids about my own family, I’d like best if they started exactly there. I don’t see there being a “right” answer, necessarily, but I would really appreciate it if parents would try to get at it from the kids’ perspective, which I think is a way to answer the question without imposing our own biases.
Our daughter’s donor recently told me that various children-of-straight-people in his life ask him a lot of questions about the child he helped to make. (Donee? We need that word, too.) Adults ask, too. When adults ask, he feels wary that they always secretly want to know “wait, so did you have sex with a girl?” When kids ask, he feels like what they’re really asking is, “Wait, is it possible for someone to really LOVE and CARE about ME and still live far away and not see me every day?”
I don’t know that it would occur to most kids to feel like one of someone’s moms is not their real mom. Maybe later in life? But I kind of don’t want that idea explicitly taught. Kind of reminds me of your earlier post on why we’re teaching kids that having a younger sibling sucks. So much projection of adult angst.
Long-winded. Thanks for the food for thought.
interesting post and comments so far, im looking forward to hearing what others say…
i think it really depends on the age of the child and how much they understand about biological reproduction. i’ve had conversations with 5- and 6-year olds that are simply “(our kids) have two moms. some families have a mom and a dad; some have two moms,” etc. and that seemed to answer their question/curiosity at the time.
i suppose as they get older…10, 11, 12 and start to understand the mechanics of needing a sperm & an egg, the conversation would have to change. i think in those cases, i would just try to frame the donor conversation in terms of a man donating his sperm cell as a generous act, much like a blood donor and talk about having a doctor involved to help.
we’ve recently started talking to our 2 year old about her arrival. hopefully by the time she’s old enough to understand, words like “donor” will be familiar. but, as for other families’ kids (like you asked!), i guess all you can do is be open (to the extent you are comfortable) with the kids’ parents and give them the language and tools to have a simple, honest conversation with their kids.
My wife and I are a straight couple that had our 5-yr.-old son with the help of a sperm donor because I am infertile due to childhood cancer. We live near NYC and my son has been in daycare since he was less than a year old, so we have always known families of all varieties: we know adopted children, donor children, SMCs, two-moms, interfaith and interracial families, divorced parents, and even one of my son’s genetic half-siblings (we haven’t met a two-dads yet, though). Also, my parents are divorced (my dad, who is “Grandpa” to my son, is gay and has been with “GrandBob” since I was a teenager; and he is still friends with my mom, “Grandma,” who has been dating “GrandJack” since before my son was born). Because my son has been around such a variety of families in a demographic area where that is not unusual, we’ve always discussed that variety in a very matter-of-fact way just like we’ve always discussed his own story. Maybe the main thing to keep in mind is to make sure that your own child feels secure with the stability of his or her own position in his or her own family. From that position of strength, it is not that hard to explain that other families are built in ways that work for them just like ours works for us. Anyway, that’s how we handle it, but it may be easier for us because we have the donor issue and thus these discussions have been a continuing process for us. If you come from a more traditional family, you may find it difficult or awkward because you were sort of able to avoid the issue for a long time until the question is directed to you by your child, and thus you haven’t had much practice talking about it with them like those of us who have been discussing things since before our kids talked. But don’t worry — it gets better. ;o)
When Elly was little one of her favorite books was called Elsa-Marie and Her Seven Little Daddies. It was written somewhere in Scandinavia and never made it big in the states, so we were lucky to have come across it. After reading that, she never really had any questions about 2-mom or 2-dad families (we know both) and she’s been supportive of her friends who get teased because of having two moms or two dads. She was curious how same-sex couples went about having babies, but we just matter-of-factly explained the possibilities. We had a great book about how babies are made that we read to her when she was about 5. And she learned age appropriate details as she got older. Anyway, I recommend getting Elsa-Marie for any young child- it will keep their minds open about what a family is like. There’s a great part where her daddies have to pick her up after school instead of her mommy who usually does and she worries what the other kids will think of her seven daddies and if maybe they will try to play with them like dolls because they are so little or maybe they just won’t be accepting and she worries so much all day that she has to lay down in the nurse’s office for awhile. But then her daddies come and everyone likes them and they help the kids build birdhouses. The can make sure there are no nails sticking out inside the houses because they are small enough to walk inside the birdhouses. In the end she has a great afternoon sharing her daddies with her classmates.
In my haste to agree with June, I guess I didn’t consider the reality that past a certain age, most children will inquire further beyond the response that it’s not important where/how the children came about. I know that if a parent approached me with the inquiry of how to explain my family to his/her own children, I would be open to discussion. It is frustrating to get questions like “who’s the real mom” or “how does that work” from total strangers with no intent other than to be nosey, or worse, from those who are being judgemental. In this case though, as in the cases of people who are looking to expand their own families, we are more than willing to discuss the process we went through.
I would hope that most queer families would be open to this kind of discussion. After all, having other children understand our families only serves to make things easier on our own children.
Momma recently posted..Objectively…sort of
Thanks all for the smart conversation as usual. And as usual, it’s interesting to see the contrasting threads come out, even here.
As I thought through what I wished I had said, I actually debated exactly the contrasting points that Clio and June point out. On the one hand, is the most important thing to emphasize that both moms are true parents (June)? Or is that overkill when the kid may well have no reason to doubt that is the case and to say so is to introduce defensiveness and difficulty where none actually exists (Clio)?
One of the reasons I included that comment is that we once had a conversation with two kids (ages about 7 and about 13) who really wanted to figure out who THE mom was. Our first response was “we both are” but they were very insistent that there could be only one, so we talked about what moms do, and that we both do those things. They eventually (sort of) made sense of the situation by deciding that we “TOOK TURNS being THE mom.” I.e. there was still only ONE mom at a time. It was actually a very sweet conversation. You could see the wheels turning as they tried to make sense of us, but it also very much proved to me that even pretty young kids may have trouble wrapping their head around the idea of two moms, and not just accept it as a matter of course.
Ultimately, I think this gets to Clio’s point, that it’s important to understand exactly what the kid is asking, why, and what they think they already know. The kids we were talking to definitely thought that they already knew there could only possibly be one mom. The daughters of the dad I was talking to may well not have had that same assumption.
I also don’t want to be too quick to dismiss other kids inquiries on the actual logistics of how our kids come to us. These are questions our kids will be answering every single day for years, especially once they start school. They are also important parts of who our kids are, so I don’t want to be sending messages that how they came into being “doesn’t matter.” As we turn the corner into having a school age kid, I also see that kids can be pretty relentless in getting the info they need in order to understand something a bit out of the ordinary (or at least mine can). I think they can tell when they are being put off due to adult discomfort, and this is stuff even pretty young kids are perfectly capable of understanding.
I do think it’s easier to envision how I will have the conversations because my kids are so used to two-mom and two-dad families. If I didn’t have any queer families in my life, I think it would be much more challenging.
Jason David recently posted..Forex
I don’t know if its such a problem. With so many straight people getting divorced many kids already have 2 moms and/or 2 dads in their lives. As for queer parents they will understand when they become of age to deal with it. Loving parents are loving parents no matter who they are.