Family Proclamations: “Building LGBTQ Families,” with Abbie E. Goldberg

About the Guest

Abbie E. Goldberg is a clinical psychologist, psychology professor, and an internationally known scholar of LGBTQ families. She’s been featured in places like the New York Times, The Atlantic, USA Today, and more. She is director of the Women’s and Gender Studies program at Clark University. Her book is called LGBTQ Family Building: A Guide for Prospective Parents. 

Transcript

ABBIE GOLDBERG: For me, it would have been a light bulb even to see one LGBT family and to know this was something that was real, and this was happening. But it wasn't being talked about. And the invalidation those families face is heartbreaking to me because it doesn't have to be this way. Everyone's families can be recognized as valid. We don't have to demonize certain kinds of families.

BLAIR HODGES: When Abbie Goldberg was growing up with two moms, she didn't see any families that looked like hers. People had a lot of questions about LGBTQ families, like whether kids like Abbie would turn out alright being raised in a queer household.

Today, Abbie's a clinical psychologist and an internationally recognized scholar of LGBTQ families. She's an expert on how queer families are made—especially the practical and legal obstacles they face. She also understands the strength these families bring to the family-making enterprise. In this episode, Abbie joins us to talk about her new book, LGBTQ Family Building: A Guide for Prospective Parents.

There are many ways to be a family, and every kind of family has something we can learn from. I'm Blair Hodges, and this is Family Proclamations.

MAKING FAMILIES VISIBLE – 1:43

BLAIR HODGES: Abbie E. Goldberg joins us today on Family Proclamations. Abbie, it's really great to have you on the show.

ABBIE GOLDBERG:  Thank you so much for having me.

BLAIR HODGES: You've done decades of research, you've written a lot of journal articles, a lot of books and academic work about LGBTQ families. What inspired you to write about this topic and to research this as your career?

ABBIE GOLDBERG: I'm going to go way back. I was raised in a queer parent family myself in the eighties, mostly in the suburbs of New York. I did not see my family represented in most media depictions of families and most of what we were reading about families in school. I grew up thinking a lot about what families are visible and what families are invisible. I was always really passionate about trying to understand and to make visible different kinds of families.

BLAIR HODGES: Wow. That was well before, obviously, the legalization of same-sex marriage. What was that like for you? Were you only child? Siblings? What was the family like?

ABBIE GOLDBERG: I have two brothers, one much older than me and one younger. We experienced our heterosexual parent's relationship dissolution at different times in our life. So it shaped us, I think, in different ways. Our family from the outside looked pretty typical, like a divorced family. On the inside, my mother was partnered with a woman. That was really not something most people knew. It was only something we started talking about when I went to college, maybe late in high school. A few people knew, but it was mostly a secret.

I thought a lot about that over the last couple of decades, about how keeping those kinds of secrets—when there's really nothing wrong with your family as it is, it's that it's just not accepted in the broader society—how that can shape kids.

BLAIR HODGES: That makes me think of two things. One, the fact that there’s been a sea change here in your own lifetime, you're a part of a big change in visibility for families. Also, the fact that families like this have always existed in some way, or people have always been experiencing feelings in love, and trying to make that work in a society that hasn't always been accepting.

The work you're doing for prospective parents in this book is really valuable. In a way your own family was pioneering things, and now you as a scholar are a pioneer in helping move that along. I didn't know that about you before I set up the interview. That's really fascinating.

ABBIE GOLDBERG: Thank you. Oprah Daily did an interesting piece profiling my work and how my personal life influenced me and a little bit about my trajectory. It's a fun piece. It's done by a wonderful New York Times reporter I've worked with over the years and who I trusted enough to tell my story. It gives a little bit more detail.

GETTING PERSONAL – 4:26

BLAIR HODGES: Say a little bit more about that "trusted enough," because obviously this is a really personal thing. When you're thinking about being public about it, what was that like for you?

ABBIE GOLDBERG: When I was earlier in my career, I was advised by some folks not to really talk about my own personal experience and how it shaped my interests and my trajectory. I think that's complicated advice. I'm not going to say it's bad advice. I think what people were concerned about is, so many of the high-profile researchers studying LGBT families were gay themselves and there was some concern that their work was invalidated because of that. Here comes this nice cisgender, straight woman, by all intents and purposes that's the way I am perceived, and so I can sort of elevate my work in a different way, and maybe be taken seriously and get the work taken seriously in a different way. I think because of that, there was a kind of excitement.

On the other hand, I think the personal is important. I'm at a stage in my career where I don't really have concerns about sharing my story in the way that it could affect my access to certain opportunities, for example.

BLAIR HODGES: That's interesting you got that kind of advice. We've seen a shift where people are a bit more confessional now in the academy. Scholars might be more willing to talk about where they're coming from, about their background, but there are ongoing taboos. I think this still exists, and there is a fear it could call into question people's research or something.

On the other hand, I think knowing a little bit about your background helps because of who you are as a person. There have always been questions about whether non-heteronormative families could raise successful children, or what those families would look like, and so not only are you doing research, in some ways you yourself complicate stereotypes that way. Thanks for sharing that. I'll make sure to link to that piece in the show notes so people can check that out.

This book is set apart from your other work because it's written for a broader audience. Doing academic research, an article might reach dozens, if you’re lucky. [laughter] After so much work, you've turned to write for a broader audience for this. Talk about that decision a little bit and how that's been for you.

AUDIENCE – 6:52

ABBIE GOLDBERG: My work has straddled both the traditional academic audience and the more popular press over the last ten years, but definitely I've been increasingly moving towards a more mainstream audience. I wrote a book in 2012 called Gay Dads, but it was with an academic press. A lot of lay people seem to have read it, because I still get emails about it. But it was more of a story about how do gay dads become dads.

This is taking all the things I've learned in the last twenty years and saying, "Here's some information I hope will be helpful to you." There are stories in it, there are vignettes, there's a lot of data for people who want that. But there's a lot of guidance and exercises and thought questions, and really trying to make this information interesting and usable for a wider range of folks.

DECIDING TO BECOME A PARENT – 7:52

BLAIR HODGES: The questions you include for the reader are so helpful. Throughout the chapters there are different places where it'll just have a series of questions you can ask yourself, or you can talk to a partner about, about things like whether you want to have kids, or just a lot of different things. The kinds of questions that it's helpful to have someone who's spent so much time in this space give some ideas for people to discuss.

To me, one of my favorite parts of the book were those question sections, because I'm cis-het—I have a partner and two kids. We look very "traditional." And even for me a lot of those questions were useful.

ABBIE GOLDBERG: I think a lot of the questions are great for anybody to ask themselves. We need to start thinking about parenthood, I hope, as something people think through before they endeavor to pursue it. Do I want to be a parent? Do I feel like I need a partner? When do I want to be a parent? What kinds of things do I have to have achieved or reached personally before I pursue that? What's valuable to me?

I think right now we're at a point where so many folks are really considering parenthood much more seriously in the sense that they're not just automatically assuming they'll do it. But they're thinking about the state of the world. They're thinking about climate change. They're thinking about things that make them pause a bit. I think that's great. I don't love the reasons for why people have to pause, but I love that people are really asking themselves, why do I want to be a parent? Is this an important part of my journey in this lifetime?

BLAIR HODGES: One thing that really stood out to me in your chapter about deciding to become a parent is, when people are thinking about that question you suggest that LGBTQ folks are usually more likely to spend more time on this question, in part just because of being a new visible type of family system. Talk a little bit about that. There's probably been more deliberation for queer couples than for heteronormative couples.

ABBIE GOLDBERG: A big piece is parenthood has not been expected. It's not seen as a normative life goal or transition, which of course is evidence of heteronormativity—the idea that's just something straight married people do. In a way that encourages that deliberation, that consciousness, but of course, there's also so many more practical barriers.

Will my family support me? Will I be able to be a parent? Especially right now if I want to adopt, can I find an agency that will work with us? If I want to pursue biological means of parenthood, what are the implications, for example, of the Dobbs decision for my access to in vitro fertilization? Thinking through the many, many hurdles folks have to go through, inevitably it's going to be a much more deliberate ponderous process.

BLAIR HODGES: It's much rarer to have an accidental pregnancy or something for queer couples.

ABBIE GOLDBERG: Right. I mean, it does happen because there are so many bisexual folks, for example, and queer folks and people who have sex with people with different reproductive organs, that it absolutely can happen. In fact, there's some data showing that among young people, among teens, that queer and trans people are actually at a higher risk of unintended pregnancy because they don't experience or receive appropriate STI prevention that is geared towards their specific circumstances. It's all very heteronormative. Or they think they can't get pregnant. 

That aside, there are unintended pregnancies, but it's not typical for the situation we're thinking about, which is a same-sex couples.

REIMAGINING THE FUTURE  – 11:35

BLAIR HODGES: One of the most moving parts, I don't remember who the person was—I think you were quoting someone who had grown up thinking it wasn't a possibility for them. It was a gay man who was saying he wanted to have a family but it just wasn't on the radar and so it was something he had emotionally relinquished with grief, and then realized the possibilities and was able to think about it again. What a gift for someone like that.

ABBIE GOLDBERG: It can be a real roller coaster. For many of the men I talked to, especially those who grew up at a certain time, they buried their desire. There was a grieving process—"This isn't going to happen for me. I came out and everyone kind of grieved for me. My parents were like, oh, I'm so sorry, we love you, but we're really sad you're not going to be a parent." It was only when they reached adulthood and realized this was an option, they kind of reimagined this possibility for themselves.

BLAIR HODGES: You interviewed a lot of people for this book as part of a broad survey. What kind of reasons did you hear from people about why they wanted to have children?

ABBIE GOLDBERG: Many of the reasons would be exactly what you would find from cis straight people. A lot of them wanting to shape and have an influence on a young person, wanting to have some sort of legacy and live on, even an adopted child that wasn't necessarily through bloodlines or anything, but impacting another human being and having your influence live on. Teaching moral character. Some people joke, but I don't think it was entirely joking, that they wanted somebody to take care of them when they got older.

But much of it, especially because so many LGBT folks adopt, a lot of it does come from altruism. We have a certain amount of resources, we've reached a certain level of stability in our lives, we want to give back, we don't want it to just be about us, and we would like to give a home and give a family, and provide for somebody who otherwise wouldn't have a family.

NAVIGATING DIFFERENT GOALS – 13:41

BLAIR HODGES: You also talk about how sometimes a gay couple has different levels of desire. One partner might be driven to have children, the other might be more ambivalent or even opposed to it. There's a great thought exercise you suggest in the book. I like this a lot. I think this could work for a lot of different people.

You say, "Live in the ‘yes’ for a week. Imagine you've decided to become a parent. And then live in the ‘no’ for a week. Imagine you've decided not to. Write down all of your thoughts and feelings and questions. Write in a journal." You suggest using different colors when you're feeling more excited or when you're feeling more ambivalent or maybe even scared. Then after living in the yes and the no, to then evaluate that with your partner. How did you come up with that? That is such a great idea.

ABBIE GOLDBERG: I drew from a bunch of different resources. I've been leading different workshops for many years, and I sometimes think my greatest ideas literally come on the spot. I'll be working with some parents or prospective parents and I'll say, "Okay, this isn't working. Try this,” you know, or, "Go home and try this."

I think that particular exercise came from a couple different sources and then with my particular spin on it, which is usually to really be thinking about how there's really no single right answer. The idea that maybe you're not going to be a parent. Or maybe you're going to become a parent alone, maybe your partner is ultimately going to say, "I'm not doing this." It's looking at the reality head on and not necessarily making an assumption about what's going to happen.

For some folks, they complete this exercise with their partner and they realize, "Wow, one of us is not so onboard and one of us is," and then there is a reckoning there where we either do this, and we do it not knowing really what will happen, or we're going to go our separate ways, or we're not going to do it, this relationship is the most important thing to me and I don't want to start this parenthood journey without a completely committed partner.

FACING BARRIERS – 14:29

BLAIR HODGES: So many people face these crossroads. It's a great opportunity for regrets, but this is life and the fact your book is guiding people and helping coach people through these questions, it's extremely valuable. What kind of barriers do LGBTQ folks talk about that get in the way of becoming parents? What are some of the responses you got to that?

ABBIE GOLDBERG: There are the internal barriers, which are the things like, "I can't be a good parent, I won't be a good parent because I'm gay," or all this internalized homophobia or transphobia—the things we're getting from society saying you shouldn't be a parent.

BLAIR HODGES: Or “you'll harm kids.”

ABBIE GOLDBERG: You will harm kids, or most of them say, "I don't think I will harm kids," they haven't fully internalized that, but they think, "My kid will be teased, my kid will feel like an outsider, my kid will be bullied." They may actually be hearing that from their own families. Families will say, "I'm sure you would be a great parent, but it's other people I'm worried about. I'm worried about other people treating you badly. Your neighbors not accepting you, your kids' peers not accepting them, other parents being cruel to you."

It's certainly that, but it's all the external stuff. It's the fact that in many states, it's really hard. There are many agencies that are either explicitly or implicitly biased against LGBTQ foster carers or adopters.

Many of the folks I talk to face barriers where, even if they can find an agency that's willing to work with them, maybe they don't get any calls for prospective children, or birth family members don't choose them to be the adoptive parents in open adoptions. The stigmas sort of have many, many different tentacles of potential influence. There are all those structural barriers.

For many folks, too, they don't really consider it until they're maybe older, and so that curtails their options a little bit more. They're in their forties, for example, then they're thinking, well, my reproductive options are more limited. Now I'm turning to adoption. Now I maybe face bias based on age as well as sexual orientation, as well as gender for many gay men because many people think men can't be as good of parents as women. There's all those gender related barriers as well.

Then, of course, for a lot of folks, not all LGBT people have access to financial resources and they don't necessarily have supportive families. If you have limited income and you don't have family support, those can be significant barriers as well.

CHILDREN WITH LBGTQ PARENTS – 18:32

BLAIR HODGES: Let's spend a second, too, on—we've both mentioned this—the claim that children in LGBTQ families are at a disadvantage compared to children who are in other families. This is a big talking point amongst people who are opposed to marriage equality, for example—that this would be bad for the children. What does the data show about that? There's been research about this. What do we learn from that actual research?

ABBIE GOLDBERG: We know from decades of research on kids with LGBT parents who were not married, and then we have some data from kids whose parents were married, that concerns about the wellbeing of children are unfounded, that children do fine. They show similar social emotional developmental outcomes. There are some places where they even arguably outperform kids who are raised in cisgender heterosexual parent families. It's not entirely clear why.

For example, they may do better in certain areas because they are born or adopted to parents who have more resources. Because the folks who become parents are a little bit more rarefied, they're a little bit more select, because they have had to get through so many things to become parents, they may have more resources. That could help to explain that. It could also be the challenges their parents have had to face have built a certain resilience that those parents then pass onto their children. It could be they work harder in school, or have greater access to therapy because of their parents' alertness to the ways their families might be perceived.

There are so many different reasons why, but they don't seem to show negative outcomes. They're not mad they have gay parents. The only challenges they experience systematically comes from outside. It comes from external judgment.

Right now what we're seeing, as I'm doing a lot of work in Florida looking at how that legislation around the Parental Rights in Education Act is affecting LGBT families, those families, they are stressed. They are stressed by the fact that they now face pressure, for example, not to talk about their families in school or feel they can't be as open about their families. But that's coming from outside. The limited work we have looking at kids in married families, or what happens to kids when their LGBT parents get married, shows really positive outcomes. For kids, having one parent whose legal status might be tenuous or unclear, that was stressful too. Having a biological and a non-biological mom and only being connected to your biological mom—that's very stressful for families. Having some greater legal protections is incredibly beneficial.

BLAIR HODGES: Speaking personally, what would it have meant for you to just see other families like yours when you were young? Because you talked about stressors and it's connected to visibility. Personally, what would it have meant to you to see more visibility growing up?

ABBIE GOLDBERG: It would have been huge. At the time I don't think there was a single poster family of LGBT for our families, that happened much more in the nineties when Rosie O'Donnell and other queer parents became more visible. But there was nothing. For me, it would have been a light bulb to even see one and to know this was something that was real, and this was happening. It was something that wasn't being talked about.

Secrecy and isolation breeds shame. For kids, for example, right now living in states where they're being told they shouldn't talk about their families, that could really turn inward to feel something is wrong with me, something is wrong with my family. The invalidation those families are facing is heartbreaking to me because it doesn't have to be this way. Everyone's families can be recognized as valid. We don't have to demonize certain kinds of families.

BLAIR HODGES: There seems kind of a bad faith effort on the part of people who are already discriminating against LGBTQ families, to then try to say, "Oh, these outcomes are bad. Look, these kids are being hurt," when societal pressures and discrimination themselves are harming people. Any kind of negativity, or any kind of bad things that happen in the LGBTQ family can then be used as a referendum on the idea of marriage equality.

Instead of saying, "Oh, here's some of the difficulties these particular families face. What can we do as a society? What can we do as therapists, whatever to help these families?" Instead, they're really talking about those things as a way to disqualify LGBTQ families, rather than address how to improve situations for LGBTQ folks.

ABBIE GOLDBERG: One hundred percent, and I don't ever want to assume LGBT people are somehow immune from stress. We don't want to say that. Actually hard things do happen in these families. These families also, like straight cisgender families, experience challenges with mental illness and substance use and family struggles and dysfunction. All families struggle with those issues. Children with behavior problems, physical illness, and death—all of these things happen. It's not fair to take any family and look at something that's happening within it and blame that family structure for that thing, especially when we're denying them access to resources.

If we see, for example, that queer parents in Florida suddenly report higher levels of depression, it would not really be fair or make sense to blame them for those high levels of depression and how it might be impacting their job performance or their parenting. It would make a lot more sense to think about the laws and the policies that are creating the circumstances where they are becoming so stressed that they're becoming depressed.

FIGHTING INTERNALIZED STIGMA – 24:35

BLAIR HODGES: How do you recommend LGBTQ folks deal with any internalized stigma they've grown up with? That sense of shame, or the questions they have about whether they would be fit parents because of stereotypes they've heard? What are some ideas for people as they're dealing with their own internalized stigma in deciding to become a parent?

ABBIE GOLDBERG: Community support, so having access to other queer people and parents who have reached some level of security in themselves and who are confident and competent around parenthood, can be really powerful and empowering, to see role models and to begin to take those lessons on oneself. Access to LGBT competent therapists can be helpful in processing those feelings of inadequacy, doubt, self-doubt, doing a lot of that personal work, and being able to eventually situate those beliefs where they belong, which is that they're coming from out here. They don't have much to do with us in here. Could be society, but it could also be your parents, or your religion, or your extended family.

ADOPTION – 25:45

BLAIR HODGES: That's helpful. People can check out more in that chapter. Let's move to adoption here. Your second chapter talks all about adoption. You say LGBTQ folks are somewhere between four and ten times more likely to adopt than heterosexual couples. You've already touched on some reasons why that is, so let's talk instead about what kind of questions you suggest LGBTQ families think about when they're thinking about adoption as their option for expanding their families. What should they be thinking about together?

ABBIE GOLDBERG: It's important to think about the basic question of how important it is to be biologically related to a child you are raising. For some folks, that is not an issue. They imagine parenthood not connected to having a child that looks like them or that will carry on certain characteristics.

Some amount of flexibility, cognitive flexibility, emotional flexibility, is really important with adoption, because, hey, any of us who are parents know, you just don't know what you're going to get. Your kid could be so different from you. You're going to have so many things you never expected you'd be dealing with. But when a kid is adopted, that's kind of to the nth power. Just because you really love to read, and you love to do puzzles, you went to college, and you got your PhD, good for you. But your kid may have no interest in any of those things. They're not going to share, say, your whatever—your sense of humor, your attention span, who knows. To be open is really important.

Then you start to winnow down into the other kinds of decisions around how important it is to have a child that is racially similar to me. How would that be for my extended family? What kinds of things am I open to in terms of prenatal drug exposure? Or an older child or sibling group? Where do my values and my sense of my own abilities and limitations, where do those fall? Having a sense of your own limitations is an important thing as a parent in general, but especially when you're thinking about adoption.

TRANSRACIAL ADOPTION – 28:05

BLAIR HODGES: You mentioned race. There was a section that talked about some of the anxieties that a particular couple talked about with you. Basically, the idea that this person wasn't sure if they were equipped to raise a Black child, for example, in the United States. It wasn't from a sense of racism in the sense of, "Oh, I don't like Black children," or whatever. But rather, "Am I equipped to raise a child. I'm white. I don't have that background. It would be in a white circumstance."

One of our episodes is on transracial adoption, so this comes up. Talk a little bit about how LGBTQ folks might wrestle with that idea of race. There's this weird like, "Oh, I don't want to seem racist if I don't want to adopt children who aren't white or who aren't my same race." But at the same time there are real reasons why that can be a concern. Transracial adoption can be really difficult.

ABBIE GOLDBERG: It's not fair to adopt a child of a different race than you are if you are not up for it and comfortable with it, period. That being said, most kids are not just in these little boxes. First of all, there's a lot of multiracial kids. We don't want to encourage a practice where people say, "Well, I will be open to adopting transracially if they're mostly white." That leads us down some not great paths. In terms of race, you need to be thinking beyond yourself. You need to be thinking about your community, your school, and your family. There are plenty of families that say, "I'm open to a white person adopting a child of color," but then they bring this child into their world and they live in a white community. Their children would be attending a predominantly white school, their extended family is white.

It's important that parents do that work, to think, “Is this even really fair?” before they go down that road, because a child who, say, is Black and is living in a white town, white school—that's not great for that child. It's not fair as a parent to immerse that child in that world. You may need to decide, I'm going to move so I can have access to these resources. I talked to many parents who did make choices. I have a whole area of research about how parents choose schools for their kids. Many parents will say, "There's this school, which is mostly white, and it's a really good school. Then there's this school, which maybe has less of a great academic reputation, but my kids will be surrounded by people who look like them." That's more important.

UNIQUE STRENGTHS – 30:37

BLAIR HODGES: It's a helpful chapter. It talks all about different adoption options, public and private, international adoption, a lot of different things. People that are considering adoption, this is a great primer for that.

What strengths would you say LGBTQ folks bring to the table when it comes to adoption? Are there any unique strengths you found as you were doing your research?

ABBIE GOLDBERG: Many folks will tell you something they feel, which I do think is a strength, which is they have a history of being discriminated against, or being judged, or people making assumptions about them based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. That, in turn, makes them more open to adopting a child of a different race or with a variety of different potential differences. They feel like as somebody who's faced stigma in the world, or as somebody who has faced challenges, I could feel I can be a more sensitive parent because of that. It makes me more open both to adopting children, but it also makes me more open to dealing with whatever issues the child comes along with. The challenges they feel they faced in their life when they have actually made them better parents.

DONOR INSEMINATION – 31:51

BLAIR HODGES: Your book also talks about donor insemination and surrogacy. These are more ways LGBTQ families are formed. What kind of advice do you offer for people that are thinking about donor insemination when they're thinking about having children?

ABBIE GOLDBERG: We're moving towards a place where, both in the adoption world and reproductive technologies, we understand kids will want information about their origins regardless of how their families are formed. There's a movement towards if you're going to pursue donor insemination, for example, people want to access donors where there's an option of them becoming known if they're not known already.

For example, the child can contact them or know more about them at the age of eighteen. It used to be that we had mostly fully anonymous donors, and now we're realizing children eventually want to access that information. Likewise, in the adoption world we're really moving towards open adoptions, where children have access to their birth families, or at least birth family information.

BLAIR HODGES: This is very child centered. Parents might feel protective or want to be like, "I just want separation from that." But then they're finding as kids grow they don't want that separation. There's a drive to know more.

ABBIE GOLDBERG: Many parents would say, “Before I had a kid, before I adopted a kid or early on, it was very important to me to have those boundaries. We are the parents.” As they're parenting real human beings who have real questions, that becomes less important than helping that child access information. They realize all those concerns around boundaries, and who's really the parent—that's actually less important.

BLAIR HODGES: Your chapter has a lot of great questions, again, for people that couples can talk about together, like, will we be genetically tied in some way? Who will? Why are we making that decision? How are we going to feel about that?

Also, you talk about trans and nonbinary folks, and how providers who are helping people transition, especially younger folks who are transitioning, should be well informed about options for reproductive technologies to help them. If someone who's assigned female at birth is transitioning to male there are ways to preserve eggs, for example. They're not making a decision to use those eggs. They're just keeping those options open. Talk a little bit about that for trans and nonbinary folks.

ABBIE GOLDBERG: First of all, trans and nonbinary folks may not know when they're teenagers, for example, or young adult if they even want to be parents. It is, as you said, a matter of keeping those options open and finding providers who will help them to make the kinds of decisions they may not know they might want later down the road. Helping to fully inform them of their options, what things are reversible and what things are not reversible.

This isn't a barrier to getting the care they want, absolutely they should have access to the hormones, for example, that they want, but enable them to make those decisions that will help them have those options.

For reproductive providers who are working with trans and nonbinary folks when they're actively trying to get pregnant, for example, we also need providers to be knowledgeable about that as well. What are the options? When does somebody need to go off of hormones? How can we support them in getting pregnant? What kinds of things can we do to make the birth experience more pleasant? To make visits more pleasant? How can we refer to body parts, for example, in a way that feels affirming and respectful and not alienating and offensive?

TRADEOFFS – 35:37

BLAIR HODGES: Chapter five is so good on this. You talk about how important it is for LGBTQ families to consider agencies they're working with to be tuned into where discrimination exists, and also recognizing they might have to make tradeoffs. They might have a provider they'll be working with who is throwing microaggressions around or making them feel uncomfortable, and there are tradeoffs that LGBTQ families end up having to make in navigating the medical system and the adoption system and fertility system as well.

Spend a little bit of time on what kind of problems were waiting in the wings once marriage equality became the law of the land, for example. Now couples could be legally married and now they want access to these different services. What kind of issues are people still confronting, even though we're years past the legalization of marriage equality?

ABBIE GOLDBERG: I could go in so many different directions. In terms of tradeoffs, people often make tradeoffs when they're building their families, when they're thinking about agencies or where to give birth, where to put their children in daycare or school, or where they live. It's all a matter of balancing.

Say I have a black child who also has two dads and we live in a rural area. What am I going to do to create the best environment for my child? I probably won't send them to a top academic school that is very racially diverse and has lots of two mom families. What's most important for my child? What's going to help them to develop into a confident person? There's constantly that tradeoff.

Likewise, if you're pursuing a birth—you're trying to figure out where to give birth as a trans person. You're balancing finances and geography and comfort, maybe a medical condition, maybe you're an older parent giving birth so you're also thinking about that. It's a constant place of tradeoffs.

Right now we're at a place where there's the explicit barriers people face and then the more subtle or implicit barriers. You may go to a hospital, for example, or a school that says, "Oh, we're LGBTQ friendly", or "We have other two-mom families here." But what that looks like in practice can really vary.

Likewise, you might be living in a red state that seems to have very little access to LGBT friendly providers. But you find a place and the people are quite wonderful and lovely. You just don't know. There's a lot of variability.

Sometimes it's about finding the right people or the right person within a given agency who will be an advocate who maybe has a personal connection, maybe has an LGBT child themselves, who will be a warrior for you even in those places in the country where it can be hard to access formal supports.

BLAIR HODGES: I like how you talked about the networking that LGBTQ families engage in as well. The internet makes it even easier than ever to network with people, to get advice, suggestions, to read reviews about different places and experiences people have. In some ways, despite ongoing discrimination, we're also at a time when people can feel more empowered because we can talk to each other and connect with each other and get ideas from each other too. Barriers, but also opportunities to navigate those because we can communicate more easily.

ABBIE GOLDBERG: One of the suggestions I always tell—I do a lot of workshops with schools who are trying to become more LGBT affirming—I say just offer names and contact information to LGBT prospective parents so they can contact other folks who have had students at your school because that's the in-person version of the Yelp review. They can talk to another human being and ask questions and they can network. It also shows you're confident enough to be able to share that information, which is a good thing.

SURROGACY AND GENDER ASYMMETRY – 39:15

BLAIR HODGES: It's your own personal Yelp. That's great.

Let's talk about surrogacy for a second. You say this is an option that's mostly chosen by gay, bi, or queer men in particular. What are some of the things people consider when it comes to surrogacy, so having someone can carry the child for a couple?

ABBIE GOLDBERG: For folks who are pursuing surrogacy, I always have to start by saying it's about $150,000 or $200,000. It's really an option for a very small segment of the population, unless you do overseas surrogacy which has its own real ethical issues, which is less expensive but you're going to another country and paying a woman to carry your child.

BLAIR HODGES: There may be safety issues. Your book goes into these. Inequality.

ABBIE GOLDBERG: Travel. There's a lot that goes on there, and a lot of uncertainty in terms of that process. In terms of things to consider for folks who do pursue surrogacy, who go down that route, there's a lot of uncertainty there too. It may seem like the most obviously certain outcome versus adoption, where everything seems very unclear, but surrogates do not always get pregnant right away. They may not conceive. They may have a miscarriage. They're a human being. Just as many unexpected issues can come up there.

Some folks really bond with their surrogates and other folks there may not be that same relationship. It is a relationship like all others. There's also so many people and institutions involved in surrogacy, there's so much legal interaction, that it's a very complicated process. It's not even legal in some states.

BLAIR HODGES: There are legal issues. People that want to pursue it, again, your book does a fantastic job in a short chapter laying out a lot of questions. Not just about practical things but about emotional things.

"Genetic asymmetry" is a term you bring up that I hadn't really thought of. We've touched on this a little bit, but the idea that if one partner is genetically related to a child and the other one isn't, that could cause complicated feelings people might not have anticipated before they actually have a child.

ABBIE GOLDBERG: In many cases, if it's either surrogacy or conceiving, through donor insemination, there is usually one partner who is biologically related and one partner who is not. That's significant to the outside world in that we place a lot of emphasis on biology and to primacy of biological bonds, which can lead that nonbiological parent to either be perceived or to feel like less of a parent. I'm of the belief we shouldn't pretend those things don't exist, there are many ways to bond with a child and have a great relationship with a child. But we shouldn't say it doesn't matter because that's disingenuous.

I do know of surrogacy families where they do not tell their child who the parent is that is biologically related to them. Which dad, for example, is biologically related. I have questions about that. To say it's not important kind of almost reaffirms how important it is. If we're not going to tell you it's clearly so important. As somebody who doesn't really like family secrets, I think it's more important to say he's the biological parent and we're a family, and here's all the reasons why we're both equally your dads.

TRANSITIONING TO PARENTHOOD – 43:15

BLAIR HODGES: So many things for people to consider. Again, a lot of the questions in the book will help people think through things they might not anticipate if they haven't talked to people about this or spent a lot of time thinking about it. That's Abbie Goldberg, clinical psychologist and professor. We're talking about the book, LGBTQ Family Building: A Guide for Prospective Parents.

All right, there's a chapter on the transition to parenthood. You talk about the ways people can become parents, and then you talk about how becoming a parent is a huge transition for anybody. The book is helpful because it talks about the general life changes people can expect, but also what LGBTQ people in particular might face.

You pay special attention to mental health, for example, and there's a stat here that really surprised me in this chapter. You say there are some studies that suggest that most parents, seventy-two percent of parents, said their life satisfaction increased during the first year of parenting. That's a really challenging year and that's a really high number. I'm interested in what you make of this life satisfaction increase.

ABBIE GOLDBERG: It points out the importance of looking at different dimensions of change, because most people looked at stress and they look at mental health. You do see stress increase, and you do see mental health decrease. What we have to always think of is joy and life satisfaction are other components of life. You can have a really stressful job, for example, but have a lot of joy associated with your job, a lot of satisfaction associated with your job. To some people that's valuable. It's more valuable than having an easy job where there's very little stress, but very little satisfaction.

It makes sense because most people will say “parenthood transformed me, it transformed my life, it's changed who I am, and I'm a lot sleepier, and our relationship is a little bit more tense, we don't have as much time together.” Really understanding parenthood causes changes in multiple domains.

The ideal, of course, is that mental health will eventually recover, and often it does. We have to also know that some of those negative changes, they're really temporary. They're not always temporary, but they're often temporary.

BLAIR HODGES: You lay out some of the stressors that happen. There's the obvious stuff that happens to every kind of parent—lack of sleep, redistribution of household work, which can be distressing. Whether LGBT couples take on traditionally feminine or traditionally masculine, provider/nurturer, or whether couples find ways to create their own family dynamics.

What are some tips, some practices, some advice you would give to people to navigate those early parenting years? I know it's hard to rank that kind of stuff, but does something immediately come to mind that's like, this is a crucial thing for couples to do?

ABBIE GOLDBERG: I think two things. One is that relationship is important. Presumably, if you are a member of a couple you want to stay together. So many couples I've interviewed have said, "We put our relationship on the back burner." You can only do that for so long. In an ideal world you will have access to some time alone where you can honestly just laugh or enjoy each other's company without the constant challenge of caring for another being's needs. Whether that means taking time at the end of the day to talk and sit outside and catch up, or going out, whatever. But making sure that relationship remains a priority.

I think some flexibility and awareness that what things are now won't always be this way and being flexible to change things up. Especially around the division of chores, for example. Reevaluating and reevaluating how that is going, I've done so much work on the division of tasks, and how couples divide up chores. One thing that seems important is a lot of times nobody really likes most tasks, so it's really about who hates it the least. That's how I think about it. Who hates cleaning the litter box the least? Who hates unloading the dishwasher the least? Checking in about whether that's continuing to be a satisfactory and fair division of labor.

When things feel unfair and when people feel unappreciated, that's when the problems start. If I feel like I'm doing seventy percent and I don't even feel like my partner appreciates me, I'm much madder than if I'm doing seventy percent and I feel like we're constantly acknowledging that I'm doing seventy percent because I'm maybe working outside less, for example, and how things need to change but this is the way it is right now.

BLAIR HODGES: You say that, overall, studies show that same-sex/gender couples tend to share paid and unpaid labor more equally on average than heterosexual couples. Perhaps because they already have higher expectations for equality, or perhaps because they don't easily slot into your 1950s Leave it to Beaver view of how Mom and Dad should be.

But also, you say there are some couples who do fall into these more traditional patterns where, let's say there's a gay couple who one partner has a higher paying job, they're gone more often. And then the other partner, he's at home doing more of the "domestic stuff," the unpaid stuff.

Those circumstances, that doesn't mean one of them is necessarily more or less happy, you say differences in contributions don't necessarily lead to tension or conflict, it really depends on the particular relationship and how the couples actually feel about the stuff. Some couples might feel okay with a division like that. That works for them. It's not like everyone needs to fit a particular vision of marital equality. It's more about making sure people are informed and feeling they're treated fairly. That is what people should pay attention to.

ABBIE GOLDBERG: It's really about the match between values and expectations than what the actual division of labor is.

ESTABLISHING A FAMILY STORY – 49:19

BLAIR HODGES: The last chapter talks about the early years. Let's talk about this briefly here. You encourage people to establish their family story really early with their children, to have a story of how their family came to be, what it is, especially because they're still living in a heteronormative society where a lot of people around them, a lot of peer children, might be casting judgment or even making comments like kids do. Like, “why don't you have a mommy” or “why do you have two dads?”

You say communication with young kids is important. Some people might think, "Oh, I just want them to stay innocent and not even think about stuff until they get older," rather than establishing a family story early. Why do you think that might not be the best approach?

ABBIE GOLDBERG: You can establish a family story early and do it in a developmentally appropriate and age progressed way. If you don't tell them anything or you avoid those questions, you're not being truthful, and so giving them a simpler story they can internalize and then maybe share with others, even if it doesn't have all the details, it may not be perfectly truthful for what they share with others—

BLAIR HODGES: Every parent does this. [laughter]

ABBIE GOLDBERG: Right, I was going to say. There's a lot of things parents are explaining to their kids, they're not going to give them the whole story because they're going to tell their friends or whomever, but they're going to give them enough information that they need. "I have two moms. We got help from somebody else to make our family." Okay. That's what you got.

BLAIR HODGES: You also give great advice on gender expansive parenting practices, like using “they” pronouns for people that people don't know. So you can kind of normalize they pronouns so things aren't so binary essentialized. Also, actively challenging gender stereotypes. So if someone says, "Oh, boys can't have long hair," just say, "I actually think they can," or talk to your kids about those.

Reading books that show diversity is really important and modeling some nonconformity and being conscious about that with kids. This chapter has a lot of practical advice on dealing with kids in their early years. That's where the book cuts off. It takes people through the process of deciding to become parents, the methods they can use to become parents, and then those early parenting years.

It seems to me your overall hope in the book is that people will have choices, understand what the choices are, and be empowered to make those choices. That seems to be the driving purpose of your book.

ABBIE GOLDBERG: Absolutely. For folks who can pick it up, they can pick it up at an earlier stage in their life, maybe when they're not even thinking about parenthood but are interested to know what the different pathways might look like in the future. Or folks who are at a crossroads in trying to figure out what they're going to be doing, as well as people who are already parents and maybe are thinking through their next transition of parenthood, or maybe they would like some guidance around supporting other people in their life around these decisions.

REGRETS, CHALLENGES, & SURPRISES! – 52:28

BLAIR HODGES: I can honestly say I found the book to be helpful. Again, my family—me, my partner, my two kids—there are questions we probably should have asked before we had our second kid or before we had our first child, but it's not too late to even address that, though. To think through those things together. Even though we've passed some of the chapters up, it still for me has been helpful to go back and look at some of these questions and to see how LGBT families are navigating them and what the differences are and the unique strength. I think this is a book with broad applicability. We need more books like this. So many of the parenting books are very heteronormative, which I think limits their strength.

Now we're going to talk regrets, challenges, and surprises. You can speak to one, two, or all three of these. Is there something you would change about the book now that it's published? Or something that was challenging in the process of reading, or something that surprised you that sticks in your mind as “wow, I didn't expect that” as you were researching the book.

ABBIE GOLDBERG: I'll speak to two. In terms of change, it's not that I would change it. It's just so much has happened since I wrote the book. We're in such a different state with respect to this country I probably would give more time to if you're living in a particularly challenging geographic area or state with respect to figuring out how you're going to become a parent, what are the things to think through in terms of relocation, or working with providers across state lines and the kinds of challenges that might come up there. Some of the challenges I talk about are intensified for certain folks.

In terms of a surprise, it's hard to overemphasize how much money matters. How much your access to financial resources impacts everything from where you live, what options are available to you even as you start the family building journey, can you pursue private adoption, can you pursue infertility treatments, or are you working with the child welfare system? What kinds of access to therapies can you have if your child is having challenges? Can you think about private school if you're living in a state where you don't really want to send your child to public school because of what they might be exposed to in terms of ideas about their family? Just in terms of the access to resources, it shapes so much of what people have available to them.

BLAIR HODGES: Your work continues, Abbie. What are you up to now that the book's done? You said you do workshops, you do a lot of things. What else is what else have you got going on?

ABBIE GOLDBERG: One of the things I'm doing is I'm doing a lot of work looking at how the Parental Rights and Education Act, the "Don't Say Gay Act" has affected families in Florida, as I mentioned. Doing some research there. I'm also going to be writing a human sexuality textbook which really centers LGBT folks as opposed to them being off in the periphery. There are many human sexuality texts that don't give enough attention and foregrounding to how those experiences play out. I'm continuing to do different talks and workshops for folks, different audiences, a lot of lawyers, and the legal realm is very interesting to me, serving as an expert witness in trials where custody, for example, on same-sex couples is an issue.

BLAIR HODGES: That's Abbie Goldberg, clinical psychologist and professor, author of the book LGBTQ Family Building: A Guide for Prospective Parents. She's also been featured in places like The New York Times, The Atlantic, USA Today, and more. She's director of Women's and Gender Studies at Clark University.

Abbie, thanks so much for spending this time with us to talk about this great book.

ABBIE GOLDBERG: Thank you so much for having me.

BLAIR HODGES: Thanks for listening. Thanks to Camille Messick for being a wonderful transcript editor. You can check out transcripts of every episode on the website familyproclamations.org. I'm also grateful to longtime supporter David Ostler, who sponsored the first group of transcripts. I'm always looking for transcript sponsors so if you've got a little extra change rolling around in your purse, let me know. The email address is blair@firesidepod.org. You can also send me feedback about any episode to the same email address.

There's much more to come on Family Proclamations. If you're enjoying the show, tell a friend. Get some podcast chatter going at your next family reunion. You can also rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts.

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Well thanks for that review. I learn a lot every time I do an interview.

Thanks to Mates of State for providing our theme song. Family Proclamations is part of the Dialogue Podcast Network. I'm Blair Hodges, and we'll see you next time.

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Note: Transcripts are edited for readability.

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NOTE: Transcripts have been lightly edited for readability.