Continuing the highlights from Blogging for LGBT Families Day, here are some posts about being a non-bio mom. (Other non-bio moms contributed posts, but didn’t write about being a non-bio mom this time, so I’m including them elsewhere.) I urge you to read the full posts of which these extracts offer a mere taste.
Temmerling at An Accident of Hope finds an eloquent analogy:
I’m going to propose that what makes a parent, what makes a mother, is the kind of primal love that would have you leaping between your child and a rampaging semi-truck and getting up at night, for the umpteenth time on the umpteenth night in a row, to provide some need to that self-same child, and spending hours just talking, playing, reading with the child.
This kind of love isn’t earned like a badge. This kind of love doesn’t necessarily come from a pregnancy or birth. This kind of love comes from a choice to open oneself up to it. This kind of love just is and it must be there before that combination of above- mentioned stuff will happen. And that love, that choice of openness, is what makes both women (or both men) equally a parent when the child makes its entrance into the world (whether that’s through birth, or adoption, or fostering). Like an atom looking for an extra electron, with the child providing that extra electron, fusion occurs and a molecule is formed. That’s the image of family-building that I’d like to see taken up and spread. H2O. My family is water, and water is one of the greatest forces for restructuring this world has known.
It’s a radical notion, I know, that no other qualification makes a parent but love. But then, radical notions and children go hand in hand. After all, someone wiser . . . than I once said that parenting is a radical act of faith in the future. It’s a radical act of faith and love in the making.
Diane at In this Moment writes about the interaction of parenting and politics:
Loving a child isn’t playing.
Cleaning him up when he’s been sick in the middle of the night, sitting with him when he’s terrified, holding him when he’s in despair, disciplining him when he’s making mistakes, guiding him when he needs a push in the right direction, paying for his bills, celebrating his joys and going to his baseball games, football games and band concerts… none of these things has anything to do with “playing house.”
Most people understand this. I certainly know this as a lesbian and a parent.
Unfortunately, Stephen Bennett, a spokesperson for Concerned Women of America, thinks that who loves a child is more important than how well they love and how well they parent.
In his tirade against Mary Cheney and Heather Poe and the simple fact that they are parents, Bennnett misses the point that anyone who has ever raised a child should know: It’s not who you are, but what you do that makes a difference in a child’s life.
Children are too important for anything else to be true. Children are too important to be turned into political props. Children are too important and good, sane parents who can help children grow up strong and well loved are too rare for any qualified, willing parents to be turned away.
I find myself, once again, in the odd position of praising Dick and Lynne Cheney. While I do not agree with any of the vice president’s politics, I cannot do anything but praise him for understanding that all of his grandchildren deserve to be accepted and loved. I would have been delighted to see Mary and Heather in the photo with the vice president and his wife, but the fact that the photo and its cutline are on the White House site says a lot about the truth of families.
[See Think Progress for the vile quote from Bennett.]
Party B at Insane Animals also takes a political angle, this time reminding us how non-biological motherhood played a role in legalizing same-sex marriage in Massachusetts:
Why does it matter if same-sex couples marry? One reason the Goodridge case emphasized is that we are out here having children. The law and society may or may not care about same-sex couples as equals but the state has an interest in the welfare of children, all children. And so, despite the Commonwealth’s argument that the state should recognize only “ideal” family configuartions the highest court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. Massachussetts has not in recent years made any distinction between children born in and out of wedlock, same-sex couples are foster parents and adopt children through state agencies. Half of the plaintiffs already had children. Families were a major focus of the case.
I remember reading about the lead plaintiffs at the birth of their daughter. At the time, of course, marriage was not legal and so they were legal strangers to one another and the non-bio mom a legal stranger to their newborn. There were complications and the family was split up in the moments following the birth of their daughter. When trying to return to her partner the non-bio mom was not allowed back in to see the bio-mom. It was only at the shift change that she got in by saying she was her sister. I was touched by their story because it prompted them to action and eventually to the suit that changed marriage.
Shannon at Other-Motherhood speaks of comfort in her role:
The truth is, I am completely happy in my role in our family. Never, when Kim was pregnant, did I wish it was me. Not even when Erik was born. I loved him with all my heart from the moment I saw him. Before that, even. From the moment we started talking about having children, I’ve loved this little boy. And I know that we made him.
I’m not his biological mother. But no matter how I try to look at it, I am his mother.
And that’s a perfect fit.
I’ll add my own note to these posts, which is that while the bio/non-bio dichotomy is a central one for many of us who create our families through conception, it is not the only one, nor does it always play out the same way. The thing about diversity is that there are always further layers. For a couple that chooses a donor who looks more like the non-bio mom, the bio mom may experience the assumption of non-parenthood when among strangers. (There can be a racial bias here, too; a mixed-race, brown-skinned friend of mine with a white husband gets “Are you the nanny?” comments when out with her lighter-skinned son.) For my own part, neither my partner nor I fit the standard bio/non-bio categories. I donated an egg, which she carried, so we categorize ourselves as gestational and genetic when we stop to think about it (or, as I used to tell her when she was nursing, “I’m the chicken, you’re the cow.”) Most of the time, though, as the above bloggers relate, the mechanics of creation fade before the current reality of mutual care and love.
