For Women’s History Month, let’s take a trip back to 1985, when a book for lesbians considering parenthood—one of the first books about queer parents—offered some wisdom that still feels relevant today.
In Considering Parenthood: A Workbook for Lesbians, by Cheri Pies (Spinsters Ink), Pies shares this wisdom:
As lesbians, we often feel an intense pressure to raise perfect, all-around healthy children. Our fear, of course, is that anything less might be considered directly related to our sexual preference. Our responsibility, however, is simply to do the best we can as often as we can. That is the most any child, whether raised by a homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, transsexual, or asexual parent, can hope for. It is not a liability to be a lesbian parent; in fact, with growing regularity I am coming to see it as an asset.
Yes, some of the terminology is dated, but I think the main point—that we shouldn’t pressure ourselves or our children to be perfect just because of society’s scrutiny, still holds. I also think it’s notable that although the book is informed by Pies’s own experiences as a lesbian and addressed to a lesbian audience, she includes in the quote above a wider spectrum of queer identities here (albeit with 1980s terminology). It’s a reminder that even back then (and, honestly, long before), a great diversity of queer parents were raising kids.
The book, first published in 1985 and revised in 1988, evolved from two influences: Pies’ work in the 1970s as a health educator for Planned Parenthood, where she was running workshops for straight women contemplating motherhood, and her own experience becoming an adoptive parent in 1978 with her then-partner. With little guidance, and few other lesbian parents to turn to for support, Pies realized that she and other lesbians considering motherhood could benefit from group workshops, too, she explained in the book’s introduction. She held the first one in her living room in the fall of 1978 and 25 women attended, attracted by fliers put up in the nearby women’s bookstore and other local points of congregation for queer women.
In her book, Pies offered information not only on how to start a family, but on critical related topics like making the decision to parent in the first place; building a support network; interacting with one’s family of origin; work and money issues; maintaining a healthy relationship with one’s partner; being a nonbiological mother; single parenting; disabled lesbians considering parenthood; considering another child, and choosing not to parent. With practical tips, numerous questions to ask oneself and/or one’s partner, and plenty of quotes drawn from the hundreds of lesbians Pies had worked with, much of the book feels startlingly applicable today, even though some of the terminology is dated and many of the legal details have changed. Today’s crop of books on queer parenthood owe much to Pies’s work and that of other early books like Joy Schulenberg’s Gay Parenting.
Among other things, Pies also addressed a question that still gets asked often of queer mothers (and that many of us may ponder ourselves). I appreciate the answer she shares:
One lesbian mother I know who does a good deal of public speaking on the topic of lesbian parenting is frequently asked what lesbians are doing to include men in the lives of their children. Her response is quite emphatic: ‘I am more concerned that my child have people from different cultural and ethnic groups in her life. There are plenty of men around, but we live in a world made up of so many different kinds of people. Exposure to people with different backgrounds and values seems infinitely more important to me.’
For more on the book and Pies’s work, see my 2023 In Memoriam post. If you’d like to read Considering Parenthood, it’s available to read free at Open Library. Again, while much of it is dated, there are still helpful nuggets in it—and it’s a reminder that even more than four decades ago, queer parents and prospective parents were creating and raising families and facing some of the same questions, challenges, and joys that we do now.