Meri Perra blogs about the challenges she and her partner face in trying to raise their girls with feminist values
You can’t help but think activists like Rachel Epstein have made it that much easier for the rest of us queer parents. Mother of 19-year old Sadie, Epstein parented within a lesbian relationship years before the supports we have today were available. Partly because Epstein hadn’t created them yet.
The current coordinator of the LGBTQ Parenting Network at the Sherbourne Health Centre, Epstein edited the “Who’s Your Daddy?” anthology on queer parenting back in 2009. And that’s just the tip. In 2006, she and her family were part of a Charter challenge about the law, which wouldn’t allow women who had children within same sex relationships to list both mothers on a child’s birth registry. Winning the case meant non-biological moms with children conceived via anonymous sperm donors no longer needed to adopt their own kids in order to have legal recognition.
In 1997, Epstein founded the “Dykes planning Tykes” course with midwife Kathie Duncan. Twelve years later, the course continues, sprouting more and more queer spawn, and the subsequent groups Daddies and Pappas 2B, and Trans Fathers 2B, for queer and trans men interested in parenthood are still going strong.
