Lesbian mums - do you find people say 'it doesn't matter' about who gave birth?

[SarahAndQuack]

I'm just curious - if you've got a situation where one of you is a biological parent and the other isn't, do people say this to you? I've noticed it seems to be the standard response if the subject of who DD's biological mum is comes up. I know people say it to be reassuring but it always slightly irritates me and I wondered if anyone else had similar experiences?

[quote Elsiebear90]@SarahAndQuack thank you! People know we want biological kids so we’ve had a lot of questions about how we are going to get pregnant, they’re well meaning if not slightly nosey at times, but it does get very annoying after a while, so I feel your pain. I get fed up having to answer questions and talk to people I don’t know very well like colleagues or friends of friends about something that’s very personal, but then I feel like the only way we will normalise non traditional families is if we are willing to talk about it? So it’s a bit of a double edged sword.

I actually dread all the questions and ignorant comments we will get when one of us is (hopefully) pregnant, it’s something I’m really concerned about, as I know how heteronormative all things pregnancy and baby related are.[/quote]
YY, that's exactly it - I agree we need to be able to talk about it, but sometimes it's slightly weird/annoying.

I hope there won't be too much questions/comments for you. MN came up with some brilliant piss-take replies to use for silly questions when DP was pregnant, I remember. That was helpful.

@Soontobe60

If I didn’t already know, I’d never dream of asking a lesbian couple which on gave birth! It would be incredibly rude.

Is it, though?

I guess this is kind of what bothers me. It's a fairly big event in my life and DP's life - it's not some taboo secret. Responses like 'it's rude to ask' or 'it doesn't matter' seem to me quite similar in how they treat the subject.

@User280905, see, I don't know if I think it is rude to ask. I go back and forth on this. In a way, I think the culture of silence can be more damaging - people often seem to think silence is the only polite response and that's odd too

I'm a lesbian but not a mother. Most of the lesbians I know who've had children I've known for years: don't think I've actually commented on whether it matters or not which one gave birth because I've known.

Please tell me what I should say should I ever need to say anything. Clearly from what you said above, silence isn't a good response. I imagine that, encountering a hitherto unknown lesbian couple with a baby, I would say nothing about in order to avoid making any kind of assumption. Some of my friends have adopted, for example, and have found the 'which one of you gave birth' question offensive.

The extreme sensitivity to others required of women, in particular, sometimes begins to feel very wearing.

I think it’s just a clumsy way of trying to acknowledge that both of you are mothers to the child when in fact that clearly isn’t the case 😬

If you’re offended/upset by that then maybe toughen up.

Oh, sorry, @pluvia, I don't mean you should never be silent! Obviously if you just meet someone casually it'd be weird to ask, just as you probably don't chat to every hetero woman about her kids.

I'm certainly not 'requiring' anything - I'm just curious about whether other people in the same situation tend to get this question (and interested that some don't), and curious how they feel about it.

I think you have to be open about it because you need to communicate to the kids in a matter-of-fact way. My son often tells old ladies on the bus that he used to live inside my tummy but his sibling didn’t.
But you can be completely open about something and still be uncomfortable with the form and motivation of some questions.

That's true, @MadameDragon. I guess that's also partly why the 'it doesn't matter' response slightly bothers me - it's something my DD thinks is perfectly normal; like other children her age she can witter on about being in mummy's tummy and what have you. And I do worry a little bit that at some point someone will shut her down with an 'it doesn't matter', and that will give her the idea it's somehow different and not ok for her to talk about.

As a heterosexual mother, I would find it rude to ask of a lesbian couple which carried the baby, in the same way that I'd find it rude to ask an infertile couple how they chose their surrogate and whether donor eggs/sperm were used, or adoptive parents how they chose their adopted child, or if someone were to ask me about my fertility path. These questions go to private, intimate, non-scientific matters, the responses to which are disproportionately revealing about the internal workings of a given family and personal values. They also are not helpful to the person being asked, they only solve to satisfy the questioner's curiousity. There's no need for anyone to know this information, unless the information-holder wants to share it.

Once the child is there, of course, you just STFU. Adults talk, children talk, and the child in question needs to hear whatever it is from their parents and their parents alone. If the child or parents in question want to share, that's fine. But really, it's nobody else's business and once there's an aware child involved, you really have to be sensitive.

No one has ever asked me or (to my knowledge) DW which one of us carried our baby and I'd find it a bit odd if anyone did, unless the context of the conversation made it relevant in some way.

I carried our baby, but we used DW's egg. Because of DW's genetic heritage, anyone who didn't know would naturally assume that she had carried DD. I don't think it "matters" at all which one of us carried her though.

Thanks @1Wanda1. I am talking about people asking when the context makes it relevant (mostly).

I think possibly if DP had had a really easy pregnancy, or it'd been a situation where neither of us had much emotional investment in getting pregnant, it might genuinely not matter. I think I would still feel a little bit weird about it being treated as totally irrelevant though - it's DD's history.

We have genuinely never been asked who gave birth to our daughter other than by healthcare professionals on a need to know basis. I wouldn’t care if we were asked, but it’s never come up. We do get asked if we are both “mum” etc quite a lot (or what names we are going to use) but clearly out of curiosity and nothing more. I have no issue with that at all.

Unless you think people are doing it out of malice OP, I would try and have kind eyes. They are saying it doesn’t matter to show they accept your family set up and your role as your child’s mother, not to diminish the pregnancy. I say this as somebody who has had four miscarriages and would have loved to have given birth myself. I’d be far more upset if somebody responded to say it DID matter that I didn’t give birth to her myself than that it doesn’t, and my wife knows the incredible thing she has done, she doesn’t need that acknowledging by people she hardly knows!

@HereBdragons would you also think that a man who’s child was born via sperm donor due to infertility would make more sense to be called “uncle”?

@MadameDragon

The reason you will get questions on work distribution from straight women like me is that our male Dp's never pull their weight . And however modern you think you are, you slip into gender stereotypes so often. Ok there will be a handful of men that don't do this but most men still pick and choose the aspects of parenting that suit them

I would consider a father in a couple who used a sperm donor to be similar to a step-father. If I was in part of a heterosexual couple where the man was infertile and we needed to use consider using a sperm donor it would have a massive impact on how I saw the relationship between a potential baby and his social father. It might be that the relationship would break down at that point because I wouldn’t be able to promise to see my partner as an equal parent if he was not the biological father of the baby. Again, I am very aware that not everyone feels like I do about this and that my feelings about genetics and pregnancy and parenting would be considered pretty offensive to lots of people. So I would never dream of trying to apply my feelings to other people’s situations. I would always follow the lead of the family with names and I would never voice my views on what it means to me to be a mother in the same conversation where we were discussing anyone else’s family set up.
Conversely I would never say to a lesbian couple that ´it doesn’t matter’ who carried the baby. In that situation it would matter enormously to me, so I can well imagine it could matter to them too.

So by that reasoning people who adopt aren’t parents @HereBdragons?

Nope, by my reasoning adoptive parents are adoptive parents. But adopted children have biological parents and adoptive parents. At different points in time the importance of those roles of parenting and everyone involved’s feelings about the relative importance of those roles are likely to fluctuate, and people are all different and react differently to situations and information. So two full biological siblings adopted by the same adoptive parents might have different feelings about their bio parents and their adoptive parents.

@Shamoo

We have genuinely never been asked who gave birth to our daughter other than by healthcare professionals on a need to know basis. I wouldn’t care if we were asked, but it’s never come up. We do get asked if we are both “mum” etc quite a lot (or what names we are going to use) but clearly out of curiosity and nothing more. I have no issue with that at all.

Unless you think people are doing it out of malice OP, I would try and have kind eyes. They are saying it doesn’t matter to show they accept your family set up and your role as your child’s mother, not to diminish the pregnancy. I say this as somebody who has had four miscarriages and would have loved to have given birth myself. I’d be far more upset if somebody responded to say it DID matter that I didn’t give birth to her myself than that it doesn’t, and my wife knows the incredible thing she has done, she doesn’t need that acknowledging by people she hardly knows!

No, I explained in my OP I don't think it's out of malice and I don't think I need to have 'kind eyes' about it - I totally get where it's coming from.

But that doesn't mean I'm not interested and curious about the whole subject and how other people see it.

I think I missed @HereBdragons' first post but I think that is interesting too, isn't it? She's being clear she'd be completely polite to people she meets and would be very careful not to offend them, but for her it is important that she's her child's bio mother. I think we ought to be able to talk about stuff like this. Maybe if we did more talking, and less saying 'it doesn't matter,' people would have happier outcomes from things like fertility treatment? It's surely better to know if you're one of those people for who the biology is really significant, than not to know?

I think this might be one of the situations where by trying to keep everyone happy you actually end up offending everyone.
I do think it's just a poorly thought out social trope and not meant to cause any harm, but it does seem dismissive of both women's roles and experiences.

I think suggesting that somebody who is the legal and active father to a child, who is there from the date of conception, at the birth, and parents as a father, who couldn’t be the biological father due to infertility, is akin to a step father and not a father is far far far more offensive than saying that it doesn’t matter who gave birth to a child to avoid hurting somebody’s feelings.

Like suggesting that although I was at the conception of my daughter, I was at every scan, at her birth, on her birth certificate, do all of her night feeds, and have been with her every day since her birth it would be more suitable that I am called “auntie” than “mummy” is also incredibly offensive.

The privilege of being straight and fertile in those sorts of statements is outrageous. I don’t think we should really give space to those sorts of conversations. It would be far more damaging for my daughter to be told that one of the people she calls mum and who has raised her since she was born is not an equal parent than it would be to suggest that how we parent our child isn’t impacted by which of us gave birth to her.

God knows how you’d explain my friends daughter who is genetically the child of one of her mums but was grown and given birth to by her other mother - presumably she has no mum and two aunties.

And yes, we will be totally honest with our daughter about her biological parentage, and who her dad is.

Yes as I said I’m aware that my feeling on genetics and pregnancy and parenting would be considered offensive to many people. That’s why this conversation is happening on an anonymous forum. I wouldn’t dream of discussing this with you in real life because my opinions on what genetics and pregnancy and parenting mean are not relevant to your family. And I wouldn’t expect you or anyone else to share my opinions and I don’t think I am right and you are wrong. I am only saying it really matters to me. It affects my personal decisions in regard to how I choose to construct my family. You are right that I am privileged because I am in a heterosexual couple and we have not experienced fertility issues. If I was in a lesbian relationship I think the only way I could create a family dynamic that would not be unbalanced would be if I carried my partner’s genetic child and she carried mine. Then I think I would feel equally motherlike towards both children and would see my partner as an equal mother to both too. If I carried my genetic child and she carried hers then I think I would see it as more like a blended family. But this is hypothetical because that’s not my situation.
I would also never adopt a child while my own biological children were young. I don’t think I’d be able to see all the children as equally mine so it would not be a good set up for anyone. But I think I would possibly make an ace foster parent once my own children were grown up and living independently. I think I could provide love and stability and understanding for a child while respecting their relationship (or desire for a relationship) with their biological family.

Sorry OP I don’t want to hijack your thread. I’ll stop replying if it’s bothering you.

[Note: off topic]

I apologize to @HereBdragons and @Shamoo for wading into the discussion between them. But there's a really important point here, unrelated to the OP's post.

HereB has stated her thoughts on the question of biological versus social parentage, and said she wouldn't dream of imposing them on others, and would keep her thoughts to herself.

Shamoo has said that those thoughts are so offensive to her that they should be shut down and shouldn't really be given space.

Perhaps not so tangentially, after all, OP has questioned whether the matters in this thread should be talked about more openly generally, so as to demystify or normalize such things.

@Shamoo: do you think shutting down somebody's right to express their feelings or thoughts will stop them having those thoughts and feelings? Or, do you think that to express them might encourage others to adopt them? Isn't the better answer to hear what's being said, express your opposition with informed reasons for rejecting them and hope to convince (which, of course, you may never do)?

It's basically cancel culture: hoping to eradicate someone (or their speech) for having feelings or thoughts offensive to you. Life doesn't work that way, though. You're kidding yourself by thinking that if you shut down the expression of an idea, the idea itself goes away. And that will ultimately undermine what you're seeking to achieve, wouldn't it?

It’s a bit like all the white posters on the black mumsnetters’ board, isn’t it? OP couldn’t have made it clearer that she was looking for two-mother families. I imagine that is exactly what drew the bigoted PP to come and parade her opinions, so I would suggest just ignoring her, but I can understand why Shamoo posted as she did.

It's not bothering me @HereBdragons, please carry on.

I get that you are saying these are your feelings, not a view you'd impose on anyone else or even express to someone else.

I really think it's important to be able to talk about this stuff.

I definitely worried when DP and I were thinking about TTC, whether I would feel like the baby's mum or whether I would feel like some kind of aunt. Is that an offensive thing to feel? If so, it's quite common - I know lots of friends who admitted after the fact that they'd also had these worries. I know one women from my NCT class who talked to me a little about what it was like for her being the mother to a child conceived using a donor egg, and I think she also had some of these questions about how she would feel.

I think it would be good if we all understood these things better, which in my view will happen with talking, rather than by pretending no-one ever has complicated emotions around motherhood.

(FWIW, @HereBdragons, I remember DP and I very briefly discussed seeing if we could carry each other's child, and for me, it helped me realise that the genetic link is really neither here nor there for me. To me it feels like a child is such a blank canvas, it doesn't matter. Whereas pregnancy and birth are such hugely physical experiences, they are going to be significant whether you want to be pregnant or whether you hate the idea! But we were also warned by the clinic that it could be heartbreaking if one of us miscarried and one didn't, which I think would be a difficult thing.)

do you think shutting down somebody's right to express their feelings or thoughts will stop them having those thoughts and feelings? Or, do you think that to express them might encourage others to adopt them? Isn't the better answer to hear what's being said, express your opposition with informed reasons for rejecting them and hope to convince (which, of course, you may never do)?

I don’t think shutting out those views is necessarily helpful - as an adoptive parent it’s good to know that some people feel my DCs birth mother is more of a parent than I am. The fact that their birth mother caused them irreparable harm is neither here nor there, me spending all my time trying to mitigate the impact of that harm is neither here nor there. That’s useful to know, mainly so I know who to avoid virtually or otherwise.