Queer as Moms
Meri Perra blogs about the challenges she and her partner face in trying to raise their girls with feminist values
When I interviewed queer parenting expert Rachel Epstein, the coordinator of the LGBTQ Parenting Network at the Sherbourne Health Centre last summer, she told me what I had always suspected. “We don’t usually hear about problems at daycare,” Epstein said.
It’s good news, and despite us being the only queer family at our day care centre, it’s been our experience as well. Back in the summer, I didn’t know we were about to lose the kindergarten wait-list gamble we choose for our four-year old. I couldn’t imagine, that after we lost, I would feel part guilt (for depriving Rosa of a JK experience) and part relief (thank you God, public school is delayed another year!) Read more...
Queer as Moms
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. Read more...
