Yes, the genderwoo, the naivety about what parenting actually entails and the self importance of thinking you’ve invented something that your predecessors have been doing for donkeys years make for a very annoying article.
if the writer and her partner weren’t in denial about being in a Lesbian relationship they could’ve tapped into a ready made (albeit currently somewhat underground!) community of lesbian elders for some solid, practical advice on what this sort of arrangement is really like.
Instead they have rebranded theyselves as Queer/Trans/plus etc and thus cut themselves off from the wisdom of those older women (who might also have been able to introduce them to new friendship circles where potential male co parents exist).
Putting the irritation aside the most interesting thing about this article is the revelation (or perhaps just confirmation?) that fertility tech has created a split between men in same sex relationships and women in same sex relationships that didn’t exist previously - once upon a time co parenting, whether full shared custody or more part time involvement was an arrangement that suited the G as well as the L.
Now that the G can cut the L out of the picture (as long as they have the dosh) they are (mostly) doing just that.
Interesting that a larger proportion of women (or ‘AFAB Queers’ in their parlance) still see some sort of benefit in having a male parent involved, even if in the author’s case that involvement seems to be a naive belief that the male person will do both free sperm and free babysitting?
Absolutely no reason to change the law though, as what already exists can work perfectly adequately (on the birth certificate the woman who gave birth is mother and the sperm provider is father, their same sex spouses/civil partners can have additional parental responsibility via step parent agreement, which both bio parents have to agree to).
No need to pretend a baby has four biological parents for 2 same sex couples to make a legal commitment to one child.
Once upon a time we routinely lived near our parents and siblings and benefitted from the extended family (grandparents, aunties/uncles and cousins etc). Capitalism, housing costs, cheap international travel, falling in love on the internet and having babies later on in life means that vast swathes of us no longer have the sort of extended family support that our mothers and grandmothers had.
Perhaps co parenting as two couples puts back some of that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ stuff that modern life is often missing?
Seems less messy/easier to organise than blending second marriage families (if both parents remarry and the new step parents have children too, and the exes of the step parents remarry, well… it can be very difficult to work out who is where at Xmas!)