Have You Explored How Having Children Can Impact a Relationship? Part II

Guest Post: C.J. Fitzpatrick

If you read the previous article on how having children can impact a relationship, you probably have a pretty clear idea of some of the questions you should ask. This section, will address the same question, but from a perspective of the queer community.

If you’re in a same-sex relationship, the issue of having children is one that will require much more thought and preparation than it does for your friends in heterosexual relationships. It’s simply not going to ‘just happen’...

There’s likely three routes that you’re going to see your relationship take:

1. You decide children aren’t a want or need for you.

2. You know children are wanted, but you either can’t become pregnant, don’t want to be pregnant, or can’t afford the medical intervention necessary to become pregnant and therefore decide to adopt.

3. You want children and one or both of you are prepared to become pregnant.

All of these are equally valid. But let’s look more in-depth at the latter two options.

Studies have found that queer couples and heterosexual couples experience similar levels of stress when becoming parents, as many of the aspects (such as sleep deprivation and less time spent as a couple) are the same. Of course, there are added aspects that make the experience different... For example, there are matters of ‘legal invisiblity’ that result when only one parent is able to be legally considered the child’s parent. As well, there is the issue of homophobia among doctors – the 2006 study by Goldberg found that as many as twenty percent of lesbians experience homophobia when trying to conceive.

While most heterosexual couples seem to divide household labour based on ‘gender roles’, research has largely found same sex couples divide labour in a more egalitarian fashion (Farr & Patterson, 2013). Research seems to suggest that, in lesbian couples, the biological mother does more of the childcare labour (Patterson et al., 2004); on the other hand, in gay couples, the biological father is not more likely to perform these same tasks. It has been proven that sharing in household and childcare tasks provides more satisfaction in a relationship, regardless of the genders involved in said relationship.

While it’s important that couples looking towards having children ask a lot of questions, such as parenting styles and division of labour, there are a number of questions that are unique to same sex relationships.

Before even beginning on the journey, a couple should do research into the different methods of growing their family – i.e. adoption vs. insemination – and each method’s strengths and challenges. Among these concerns are cost, availability, and legal matters.

An important conversation to have is how to manage and cope with stigma and discrimination that will inevitably be faced. Regardless of how understanding a society you live in, there will always be people who disagree with your lifestyle. A 2015 study by Sabin et al. has found that heterosexual health care providers have in implicit bias that favours heterosexual individuals – this bias will effect the way in which they treat their same sex patients during their conception journey. Experiences such these have a strong impact on the mental health of prospective parents.

One of the things that counteracts such discrimination is having a strong social network (Goldberg & Smith, 2011). It’s important to build up such supports – from family, neighbours, church, etc. - before a child comes along.

Having children as a same sex couple is never going to be as simple as it is for the average heterosexual couple, but take heart! A three year follow up after assisted reproduction (Borneskog et al., 2014) found that lesbian couples reported stable relationships and a high satisfaction with their relationship. As well, in 2012, Huebner et al. found that, among gay couples, there was increased commitment to each other and their relationship following children.

As a note: an excellent resource for lesbians looking to have children is The Essential Guide to Lesbian Conception, Pregnancy, and Birth by Kim Toevs.