Trying to make a decision if we should have children

[LauraRA88]

Hi lovely people, I have joined as I need to pick your brains a bit.

I am 37yo. My partner is 44. We have been together for over 2 years, bought a place together and are thinking of getting engaged soon.

I have had long term relationships before, but they were never safe. So the concept of parenting did never become a possibility, because I always knew I did not want to see myself and my family to be tied to someone who would not have been a safe person to have a child with.

For the first time, this has become something that I am open to. We are both LBGT: I am bisexual, my partner is a trans man. He is the sweetest, kindest person I have ever known. He looks after me, we have healthy communication, we are a team. I feel very safe with my feelings, financially, and overall everything is really positive.

I am worried about becoming parents being an LGBT couple. Particularly because he is trans. We live in the UK, and things are looking complex for trans folks around here. I am worried about the difficulties and repercussions that could have on our kids.

If there are any LGBT mums out there, can you please give me some insights on how this has been for you?

Thank you so much, and please be kind.

If your desire for a child doesn't feel like an overwhelming hunger for a child please don't have a child. You should only have children if you want them 100%.

You can have children in you life in other ways. Volunteer with the maritime cadets, the scouts, or in the local primary school.

Some of my friends, a lovely older couple, were kind of aunt and uncle for a trans boy who lived with a foster family. Just so that the child had someone besides the foster parents who cared about what happened.

They went on outings or sometimes they just had a meal together. I can't remember through which organization they did it.

It's none of it straightforward. You are at the older end of the scale, with a lower chance of pregnancy from anything other than IVF. You would need to access a sperm donor. You would potentially need to fund IVF or spend time having several cycles of likely to fail insemination prior to any NHS funded IVF (which in most regions you are now too old for I believe). If you did succeed in a live birth, you would then be parents. This is utterly life changing in absolutely every sphere and completely changes your relationship with your partner and everyone else pretty much forever. At least one of you will have a massive loss in earnings and a substantial step off the gas in any career.
The LGBT aspect is the least of it really, you kind of have to want to be parents to an irrational degree to struggle through IVF and lots of the 'fact' part of the effect on your lives of being a parent.
there are a couple of trans parents in our local lgbt parenting groups i think. If you are confident in yourselves, your relationship etc I don't think it's a massive extra issue but it could be I suppose if your partner's masculinity is in someway dependent on traditional roles - to manage parenting in 2025 you need a 2025 dad, not a 1975 one.

Hi OP, I am lesbian and have two children who are young adults now. I recognise the uncertainty you describe, and am fairly certain that had I been straight I would have just resolved that by accidentally-on-purpose forgetting contraception. But that's not an option for you, and having to be really sure is hard when you don't know what the future will bring.

Cracking on with planning how you will get pg may help you decide whether you want to proceed at all. It takes some organisation. I chose DIY DI for my first child and adoption for my second; it took 11 years to complete my family, and I wasn't young when I started.

Don't be too focused on the LGBT angle. The big things to consider are money, impact on careers, impact on relationship, never having a minute to yourself for the next decade, whether you and dp are in sync over what co-parenting means for you. Everything changes when you have a child, and you have to really want it to make it bearable!

Best of luck.

I think it's absolutely ridiculous to say you shouldn't be a parent unless you're 100% sure. The only people who are 100% sure are people who don't think very hard about life decisions (which is perfectly valid; we are who we are).

FWIW I am a lesbian non-bio mum to an 8 year old; I adore her; I could not possibly imagine loving anyone more. She is the best thing in my life. And even so, no, I wasn't sure. I was worried about whether or not I'd be a good enough mum; I was worried about discrimination. (And we do get the odd bit.)

I will say, IVF is expensive and hard work, but it's doable. Finding a sperm donor is easy - the clinic will hook you up with a sperm bank and you just pick one. The rest is not so easy, and at 37 you need to crack on. The legal bit is easy though - if you're treated through a clinic you'll just do all the paperwork there and it'll be fine.

FWIW a lovely friend of mine is a trans man and a parent; we chat about it a bit and his daughter is a very lucky, happy little girl.