“What’s new isn’t the existence of queer families; it’s our visibility”
BY KIRSTY LOEHR, IMAGE BY DIVERSIFY LENS VIA CANVA
Queer people have been forging families for centuries. We’ve always been here, raising children (often under the guise of heterosexuality), loving one another, surviving in whatever ways were possible. Our families existed, and they were legitimate. They still are!
History books often erase us, but scratch beneath the surface and we’re everywhere. Sappho was said to have had a daughter, possibly making her the first recorded lesbian parent. Oscar Wilde was married and had two sons. Across cultures, queerness and family have never been strangers. In ancient Rome, same-sex partnerships sometimes included adopted children. In 17th-century China, women of the Jinglanhui (the Golden Orchid Society) could marry one another and even adopt daughters together.
We’ve always found ways to build families with whatever means were available. Sometimes that’s meant children from previous heterosexual relationships, or co-parenting arrangements, or adoption and fostering. Sometimes it’s donor conception or beautifully blended households that stretch and reimagine the traditional family template. Today, science has become a vital part of our story, but still chosen family, friends, exes, and community members who step in to create networks of care are still so important.
And we’re good parents. Every major study shows that queer parents are just as capable, just as nurturing, and just as rubbish as the next parent. We’re not running around in rainbow capes shouting about smashing the patriarchy while changing nappies (although, to be fair, some of us are excellent multitaskers). Mostly, we’re just trying to raise our kids in a world that still makes things unnecessarily complicated for us.
As for me, I can recite almost every single episode of Bluey. I’ve sucked snot out of my son’s nose with my mouth, and I’ve had his poo in my hair, behind my ear, and somehow in my belly button (though that one might have been mine). I’m as much a parent as anyone else; my queerness doesn’t change that fact (although it might make me better).
I’d always wanted children, but for a long time I convinced myself it wasn’t possible. I assumed it simply wasn’t an option for someone like me. So, like many queer people, I came out and locked the door on that other potential life, the one where queerness and parenthood could coexist. It wasn’t until I hit thirty that I thought, hang on, maybe I can have that after all. Maybe it’s not too late to want both. And, thankfully, it wasn’t.
So, when people talk about “modern” LGBTQIA+ families as if they’re some kind of radical new experiment, that’s simply not true. What’s new isn’t the existence of queer families; it’s our visibility. We’re thriving now, more than ever, and we’re not going anywhere, no matter how many people wish we would, or what they do to try to stop us.
A Short History Of Queer Parenting by Kirsty Loehr is out now, published by Oneworld.
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