I’ve already highlighted some of 2019’s key news events for LGBTQ parents, but here are a number of other stories from recent weeks to round out and round up the year. Pull up some hot cocoa (or break out the New Year’s bubbly early) and have a read!
It’s not news that starting a family can be expensive for queer parents. Many of us have lived that. But a new report from Family Equality lays out the costs for different options; looks at how income variation among LGBTQ people impacts their choice of option; and offers suggestions for addressing the imbalances.
A U.K. couple has shared gestational duties in creating their child—the latest in a small but growing number of two-mom couples taking advantage of new technologies to do so. What does this mean for the future of queer family building?
A few bits from round and about that I haven’t covered elsewhere, including family vignettes, information on fertility and family formation, and a child of same-sex parents left “stateless” after three countries have refused or delayed granting her citizenship.
Today marks the 41st birthday of Louise Brown, the world’s first baby born after in vitro fertilization (IVF). My spouse and I also used IVF to have our son, now one of more than eight million other people created through the procedure, so here’s a big happy birthday to Louise Brown and gratitude for the progress she represents.
Financial giant J.P. Morgan has announced it will soon offer expanded fertility benefits aimed at helping LGBTQ employees start or grow their families. Let’s take the opportunity, then, to look at what they and other companies are doing—or should be.
When my spouse and I first tried to start our family 17 years ago, we searched vainly for a book on assisted reproduction that was both authoritative and inclusive. There were queer parenting books, to be sure, but they covered such a range of topics that details of the actual babymaking processes and procedures were somewhat scanty. There were more detailed guides, but they omitted families like ours. A new book by a fertility expert—who also happens to be a lesbian mom herself—is just the book we would have hoped to have.
Sarah and Yessie Williams, spouses from Brooklyn, New York, are featured in a new documentary airing today about four different couples and their journeys to create families through in vitro fertilization (IVF). Watch it here!
The always wonderful Nancy podcast from WNYC has just run a series on Queer Money Matters, about “the straight economy and how queer people navigate it.” Listen here to their episode on “Babies and Bills,” about the costs of starting a family when queer.
Two two-mom couples in Texas have had babies after using a new fertility technique that allows both members of the couple to carry the child for part of its development.
