How do you honestly feel about a baby having two mums?

[Corneliusthecamel]

Hi,

Recently, a close friendship has come to an end and it’s been difficult to process. Long story short - I am a woman married to another woman and I gave birth to a baby last year who was conceived via sperm donor/fertility treatment through the NHS. We are all really happy and she is beautiful.

A good, long term friend of mine has become increasingly distant over the past couple of years. I confronted her about this recently and she admitted that she struggles with my life choices and doesn’t feel it’s right that I have chosen to bring a baby up with another woman. She feels very strongly that a baby should have a traditional mum and dad unit where possible and feels that I am wrong for choosing this path.

Anyway, the friendship is over, and I think that’s the right thing for both of us - it’s not really possible to carry on when we both have such different views and experiences of the world.

But it has made me want to ask - what are your honest opinions of two women choosing to pursue fertility treatment and having a baby? Obviously it’s my life and I’m happy so in one way, who cares. But I truly didn’t think my friend held those types of views and often, people won’t speak their true thoughts in real life, so I am curious what people truly think about it

None of this sounds like a ‘dream’ for these boys as was suggested in the original post.

I met a friend of a friend who’s been a surrogate for a male gay couple twice. Using donor eggs and sperm from each of the fathers so a child each. She says it the most rewarding experience she’s ever had. That giving them a longer for family was an amazing feeling. Biologically the babies aren’t hers therefore she is not their mother. They paid her expenses for taking time off work. This for her was a fulfilling and wonderful experience. I understand that this is not the case for some surrogates. But surely if a woman is happy to do it it’s up to them?

@paulhollywoodshairgel and how do you think those DC will feel. Being part of a commercial process, and not knowing their birth mother or their genetic mother

Well said 👏

What obligations do you think the BM and GM have to the children? I agree that they should be able to know who they are and their medical history. But I'm not sure they are obliged to "mother" the child or play a close role in their lives.

All you are doing is projecting how you think YOU would feel if you were that child. You are not presenting any evidence of how children of two fathers by surrogacy feel. You don’t know how they feel and you don’t even know how you would feel if you were brought up in that family dynamic. You are just assuming based on society’s entrenched assumption that a child must have a close relationship with their mother.

I'm going to add my tuppence, because I can.

I have a daughter whom my ex-partner (female) conceived and gave birth to. We've always talked to DD about her sperm donor (whom we never met, but he wrote a nice message to potential parents, which we've shown her). She knows I'm not her biological mother. I think she is a happy, well-adjusted little girl who is very, very loved. I did a lot of the care of her when she was a baby (for various reasons) and do not feel like dad.

I also, recently, did a round of IVF with a gay male friend, with the intention of co-parenting with him and his partner. I was pleasantly surprised how easy egg collection was (I had previously had very serious reservations about egg donation, and while I still have qualms, it made me question those a bit). Now, the tricky bit ... I am sure there are many lovely men out there in the world, gay and straight. But men as a group do not get how physical the processes of TTC and IVF and pregnancy, and the postpartum period, are.

Yes, sure, there are men who (like me) have watched their wives give birth and have been shocked and horrified and have come to some realisation that it is bloody hard. But I also know men who somehow seem to shrug this off - men whose wives went through emergency sections and who were then utterly bemused 'why can't she do all the night wake-ups, I need my eight hours undisturbed!'

And in my case, I was really shocked and angry to see how easy it was for these two men to completely ignore the idea that I might be doing anything physical or difficult ... simply because they didn't want to see it. The clinic told them; I told them, but they were just pretty sure that nothing about IVF or pregnancy or having a newborn would be tricky, because why should it?

I don't think we need to outlaw gay dads or anything like that - but I do think we need to educate men. We let them get away with being really unaware of women's bodies, and it's no good.

I think they will be 2 happy kids brought up in a loving, supportive environment. They will be told that their ‘mother’ was someone very special that helped their dads create a family.

many people here are conflating two different things and it’s making this more complicated than it needs to be. How capable people are of parenting is not the same question as how do children come to be created. It’s different.

I would hope (though now am seriously doubting) that most people could agree that people of any gender and any sexuality can be wonderful parents. Many children have happy homes with one father, two fathers, one mother or two mothers (or, less commonly more than two parents but let’s leave that conversation aside!). So the answer to the OP is ‘of course. You love your child. Your wife loves your child. Wonderful’

The next issue is of where these children come from. I would also hope that most people would agree that foster care is terrible, there are millions of unwanted children in the world and any who are rescued from that situation and placed in a safe home with any number of any gendered parents are better off. So adoption (mostly) is a good thing and these children are (often) in a much better situation.

the third issue is of creating children on purpose. This is exactly the same situation for gay or straight couples who cannot conceive or carry children themselves. I am very uncomfortable telling grown humans what they can do with their own bodies. Agree that surrogacy as a business is gross - also think prostitution is gross for the same reasons. Bodies shouldn’t be purchased. But there are a multitude of other options that people volunteer for and I would be very uncomfortable legislating against bodily autonomy.

I know of several gay and straight couples who used donations of eggs, sperm or surrogacy from relatives and friends. Complicated I’m sure but this is their choice. When I was struggling with infertility my best friend offered to carry for me. That was her right to do.

i also know someone who had a hysterectomy at 12 after cancer. They froze her eggs and 15 years later her mother carried twins for her. I would never feel comfortable telling this mother she wasn’t allowed to do this. It was her choice and her gift. Had nothing to do with anyone’s sexuality but medical advances in fertility really shouldn’t - it’s a separate issue altogether as both gay and straight people benefit from all these advances.

Can you provide the evidence for this. Find this to be mainly homophobic nonsense as the bulk of current evidence shows that children of same sex couples do as well, if not better, than children of heterosexual parents (emotionally, socially, academically etc).

I think your baby is very lucky. Who honestly cares what the parent combo is as long as they are loved and cared for? Do I think it’s a good idea to have a male role model play a part in their lives? Yes. Do I think this has to come from a dad? No.

Completely fine with it 😊 congratulations on your little one ❤️

They know they have two parents that love them 😊

Two loving parents are not enough. We need to start seeing this from the child’s perspective.
Lacking one or both biological parents can be really difficult for children. Yes, unfortunately sometimes it’s unavoidable (eg death, divorce etc), but we shouldn’t create such scenarios in the first place imo.

No. We need to stop accepting this as truth. This may be enough when they are children but is it enough when they are adults and struggle to make sense of their place in the world. Its like blended families, we are really only getting the first generation of adults where this is common place and we dont know qhat the impact is. All the talk is of the adults and needs of adults, and too little about children.

I think all children should have a good male role model in their lives but who says this needs to be a father? Two mums having a baby is completely unremarkable in my book. I'd not really even think about it unless someone asked my opinion.

It’s so naive of people to say “As long as they are loved…”

There are far more important issues facing children who don’t have both biological parents in their lives. The emotional and psychological impact affecting their sense of identity rarely gets mentioned. It’s all about what the parents want and how THEY long for a baby.

You have no idea what that word means.

society’s entrenched assumption that a child must have a close relationship with their mother.

I don't even* *know where to begin with this one.

Have those studies taken into account the financial backgrounds of the parents?

How many poor same-sex couples are having unplanned babies in comparison to heterosexual couples?

Exactly. I can’t see how children of homosexual couples would do better than those of heterosexual couples, all else being equal? I’d be interested if there is actually evidence for this!!

We are hardly in a world where it's "the first generation of blended families".
That's happened for 100s of years.
Widows and Widowers marrying each other - often for financial/domestic support.
Have you never read any fairy tales. They're all about stepmothers 😂

Why?

It may be more complex, for one thing : the baby could have grown from one woman's egg but been carried and birthed by the other.

But all sorts of things 'can be' really difficult for children.

And the vast majority of those things occur to children born to two biological parents.

Children who are abused by a parent.
Children, one of whose parents is violent to the other.
Children, one of whose parents ceases to play a role in their life, for no particular reason.

We do not currently tell straight women it's a bad idea to procreate with men, but clearly, it is more damaging to children than being raised by lesbians (there are very long-running studies on this one, FWIW).

Don't get me wrong - I don't think we should be banning straight parents. But it is sheer hypocrisy to say that parents who use fertility treatments are somehow more harmful - or harmful in a way that should be banned - compared with straight couples who just get pregnant.