Kids aren’t the only ones to benefit from great LGBTQ-inclusive books this year. Here are some terrific reads for parents and prospective parents, too.
Click images or titles for full reviews—and check out my roundups of 2023’s LGBTQ-inclusive picture books, early reader/chapter book/early middle grade, middle grade fiction, and middle grade nonfiction. More books from previous years can always be found in my full database.
Family Creation
Baby Making for Everybody: Family Building and Fertility for LGBTQ+ and Solo Parents, by Marea Goodman and Ray Rachlin (Balance). An informative and inclusive guide to starting a family, written by two queer “millennial midwives” with extensive experience in queer and nontraditional family building. The book is inclusive of trans and nonbinary people throughout, but one chapter (edited by trans colleagues of the authors) looks specifically at getting pregnant as a trans person. The initial print edition of the book unfortunately contains a few errors with regard to securing one’s legal parentage, but these have been corrected in the digital version and will be fixed in future print editions.
Building Your Family: The Complete Guide to Donor Conception, by Lisa Schuman and Mark Leondires (St. Martin’s). Schuman, a licensed clinical social worker and therapist, and Leondires, a board certified reproductive endocrinologist and founder of Gay Parents to Be, bring both decades of professional experience and their own personal stories of fertility treatment and non-genetic parenthood to this thorough and informative guide to donor conception. The book is in places inclusive of all genders of pregnant people and donors, but slips back into gendered language at times. (See my full review for details.) Readers will have to decide for themselves if that is a showstopper for them in this otherwise extraordinarily helpful book by two leading experts.
Looking for more books on family creation and being an LGBTQ parent? Here’s my guide to how a number of recent ones compare.
Being an LGBTQ Parent
The Queer Parent: Everything You Need To Know From Gay to Ze, by Lotte Jeffs and Stu Oakley (Bluebird). hosts of the U.K.-based LGBTQ parenting podcast From Gay to Ze, have distilled their wisdom and that of their guests, friends, and other experts into an informative and fun guide. This is not primarily a how-to guide for starting a queer family, although it touches on that; instead, it looks broadly at being a queer parent and some of the particular experiences and challenges we may have. The legal and financial information here is geared towards readers in the U.K., but much of the rest should be of use and interest to readers in the U.S. (and elsewhere).
You’ll Be a Wonderful Parent: Advice and Encouragement for Rainbow Families of All Kinds, by Jasper Peach (Hardie Grant). Peach, a trans, nonbinary, disabled parent, focuses on the many small but important things to remember when embarking on parenthood, such as how becoming a parent can impact one’s own sense of identity or bodily autonomy; or that you are a parent regardless of genetic or gestational ties. This is the book you reach for when you want to view the big picture; when you need some extra affirmation; when you face challenges with your self, your parenting partner(s), your children, or the medical and legal systems not set up for queer families.
Memoirs, Biographies, and Photoessays
Choosing Family: A Memoir of Queer Motherhood and Black Resistance, by Francesca T. Royster (Abrams Press). This memoir is a rare and wonderful book: a lyrical personal story of a path into parenthood as a Black woman with a White wife, adopting a Black girl, but also a powerful look at larger ideas of parenthood, race, family and cultural history, systemic bias, and resistance. Royster, a professor of English and critical ethnic studies at DePaul University, not only shares the tale of her family, but also weaves in larger concepts and reflections—about queerness and Blackness, queer motherhood, Black motherhood, chosen family, and more. I think it will be a rare reader of any identity who does not gain something meaningful from this moving, thoughtful, and stimulating book.
Bernie’s Mitten Maker, by Jen Ellis (Green Writers Press). The photo of Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) wearing a large, brown pair of mittens as he sits at President Biden’s inauguration has become an Internet meme. In this surprisingly moving memoir, Jen Ellis, the Vermont teacher who created the mittens for him from an old sweater and fleece, shares not only the story of how that happened, but also how it ties into her wider story of coming out, becoming a parent, the power of crafting, and the magic of generosity.
Immaculate Misconception: A Story of Biology and Belonging, by Gwen Bass (New Degree). Bass’s parents were among the first two-woman couples to start a family via donor insemination with an unknown donor. In this introspective and moving memoir, Bass shares her thoughts on how that has shaped her life, from her birth in 1982 through her own coming out as gay, becoming a parent, and connecting after decades with her own donor siblings. This is a rare, full-length book by someone who grew up in the first generation of queer families formed via donor insemination. It offers much to ponder both as a piece of queer history and as commentary on still-current themes, such as what makes a family, how we choose to share our stories, and how we find the strength to form and express our true sense of self.
Talking to My Angels, by Melissa Etheridge (Harper Wave). This memoir by rock superstar and lesbian icon Etheridge is not primarily about parenting, but does contain many of her thoughts and experiences of motherhood as it also charts some of the most difficult periods of her life: sexual abuse as a child, her breast cancer diagnosis, two difficult breakups, and the loss of Beckett, one of her four children, to opioid addiction. There are obvious content warnings for much of the book, but fans, music lovers, and those who have experienced some of the same difficulties and obstacles may find resonance in her story. She not only shares these experiences with candor, but also explains how they influenced her music, and how she found love, strength, and the resilience to carry on even in the face of enormous tragedies.
Gay Fathers, Twin Sons: The Citizenship Case That Captured the World, by Nancy L. Segal (Rowman & Littlefield). Psychology professor Nancy L. Segal tells the story of Andrew and Elad Dvash-Banks, their twin sons, and the years-long fight to gain equal U.S. citizenship for both sons. (Learn more about this struggle in my post here.) Segal, who specializes in research about twins, explores each man’s upbringing and their life together, based on interviews with the men, their sons, and their relatives and friends. There are parts that feel a little dry, perhaps reflecting Segal’s academic background, but this is a thorough and positive look at their story and a reminder of why the law needs to treat all families with equality.
Authentic Selves: Celebrating Trans and Nonbinary People and Their Families, by Peggy Gillespie, photographs by Jill Meyers and Robin Rayne (Skinner House). Developed in collaboration with PFLAG National, Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund, and Family Diversity Projects, this stunning book of more than 60 full-color photographs and accompanying interviews celebrates the lives of transgender and nonbinary people in their own words and those of their family members.
Raising LGBTQ Kids
Raising Kids beyond the Binary: Celebrating God’s Transgender and Gender-Diverse Children, by Jamie Bruesehoff (Broadleaf). This extraordinary book is a thorough, practical guide for Christian parents about how to support and affirm transgender and nonbinary children; a guide for how Christian churches, leaders, and communities can create welcoming congregations; and a transformational exploration of why supporting these young people lies at the heart of what it means to be a Christian and to make the body of Christ present in our world. Bruesehoff draws on her own experience as the mother of a now-16-year-old transgender daughter, an LGBTQ advocate, a queer woman, a Christian with two degrees in religion, and the wife of a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. She shares much of her family’s own journey (with her daughter Rebekah’s explicit permission), but this is not predominantly a memoir. It is a guidebook, a practical resource, and a call to action.
Rainbow Parenting: Your Guide to Raising Queer Kids and Their Allies, by Lindz Amer (St. Martin’s Griffin). Amer, whose award-winning Queer Kid Stuff webseries has offered LGBTQ educational resources for kids and their adults since 2016, here offers their learnings to parents, caretakers, educators, and anyone who wants to help raise kids—of all identities and genders—in queer- and gender-affirming ways. Whether the kids you are raising (or helping to raise) are queer, questioning, or straight/cisgender, and whether you know nothing about LGBTQ identities or are proudly queer yourself, this book will assist you in creating an environment where they and their peers can grow up affirmed and supported.
My Child Told Me They’re Trans…What Do I Do? by Brynn Tannehill (Jessica Kingsley). Tannehill, a trans woman, has been writing about trans issues and listening to the experiences of parents of trans children for more than a decade. When one of her three children came out as trans, too, both she and her wife began noticing that the same questions were asked over and over in online groups for parents of trans kids. This book brings together 25 parents and experts (including doctors, psychologists, and social workers) to answer them (and sometimes share mistakes they themselves made along the way). The contributors’ answers sometimes vary in the details—but families vary, too, so it’s good that readers have a variety of answers to consider. This should become a go-to reference for many parents of trans kids.
Transister: Raising Twins in a Gender-Bending World, by Kate Brookes (She Writes). A thoughtful memoir about one woman’s experience raising twins, one boy and one transgender girl. Unlike some parents of trans children, Brookes never struggled with her own denial of her trans child’s identity or with an unsupportive religious community. In fact, she finds much support in the Reform Jewish community to which her family belongs. Even so, societal biases and legal hurdles meant many challenges. Brookes writes with candor about navigating the hurdles as their family attempted to help her daughter be her authentic self and to continue being loving, responsible, supportive parents to both of their children. She also weaves in broader information and anecdotes about transgender lives and rights in the U.S. during this time, in the shadow of the Trump presidency and growing anti-trans sentiment.
Out : A Parent’s Guide to Supporting Your LGBTQIA+ Kid Through Coming Out and Beyond, by John Sovec (Jessica Kingsley). A thoughtful guide by a queer therapist aimed at supporting parents who in turn want to better understand and support their LGBTQIA+ kids. The book would be valuable simply for the information it offers parents of LGBTQIA+ kids—but it goes above and beyond by really helping parents self-reflect—about their own experiences and assumptions, about their expectations for their child, about how they move in the world, and more.