What is it like working at a sperm bank?
When my partner and I think about starting a family down the road, we know that as two women we will most likely choose to work with a sperm bank. I am positive that route makes the most sense for us and our future family, but I still can’t quite wrap my mind around the idea of a sperm bank. They seem so sci-fi!
Two moms, a midwife, and a birth center delivery
The morning my wife went into labor, she came to me and shared that she was experiencing period-like cramping. It was still two weeks before our official due date, and this was her first pregnancy, so we reminded ourselves this could go on for weeks and I left for work. I was only at work for around an hour before I got a text from my wife telling me she thought her water had broken. She told me she wasn’t sure and would keep me posted, but there was no way I was going to try and stay at work.
My son might be gay and we live in a conservative town: where can I find resources for him?
Since he could ask for it, my son has asked to dress up in girl’s clothing — pink and frilly, pretty and shiny. It’s the only kind of clothing he gets excited about besides snazzy boy’s dress shirt. To him, all other clothing serves only to keep him from being totally naked. This is ok with me, aside from fighting my own society embedded fears that make my first instinct to keep it in the house only (which has been going well).
My husband is transitioning to female and we want to have kids: how can we make this work?
My husband and I have always been happy to blur the gender lines, but he (current preferred pronoun!) recently told me that he identifies as transgender and wants to transition to presenting as female.
How do you decide which beliefs to pass on to your child?
While discussing all things family related with my fiancee, we were debating whether or not we should raise the kids vegan (I’m vegan, she’s not) or according to my religious beliefs (she’s agnostic and doesn’t follow anything specifically). For us, as a queer couple, this opens some interesting dialogue because if we end up adopting and those kids are older, we don’t necessarily feel right imposing beliefs on someone who is of an age where they can make their own decisions.
Why it’s awesome to raise a city child
My family was never really suburban in the traditional sense of the word. We went downtown often, attended lots of theatre and ate in interesting restaurants. But it was always a long schlep to get anywhere. We needed to leave the house an hour before any dinner reservation. And I always had to make sure to catch the last TTC ride home, curbing late-night teenage adventures. I hated walking across the deserted parking lot of Finch subway station to retrieve the family car and drive the rest of the way home. It was too quiet. I always preferred the noise and bustle of downtown to the eery silence of deserted suburbia.
Labels vs. Constellations: sexuality for the next generation
A chosen or assigned label like “male,” “female,” “straight,” or “gay” will still never do justice to the wholeness of any human being, so why boil people down to those categories? It’s not about political correctness; it’s about a bigger-picture awareness of the fact that humans are fascinating multi-faceted beings.
My partner and I speak and sign five languages and are trying to raise multilingual children
As a child of immigrants I ended up bilingual pretty much by default. My parents are from Taiwan and China, so I grew up speaking Mandarin Chinese with them and speaking English with my older sister and at school. Although I dreaded going to Chinese School on Sundays as a child, by the time I left for college I recognized the benefits of being bilingual and I knew even then that I would want my future children to be the same.