I’m Trans and I Want to Be a Parent, But I Can’t
As queer would-be parents, we had to make a heartbreaking choice
Being a parent is one of those things most people imagine they’ll do one day — for many it features into their life plans: university, marriage, career, kids (though not necessarily in that order).
It’s part of the heteronormative, a taken-for-granted pronatalism that we’re socialised into — one of life’s almost-obligatory milestones.
It’s something many queer couples (or thruples, or polycules…) also aspire to, despite otherwise not fitting the cis-heternormative mould.
Of course, many people, single or partnered, queer or straight, don’t want children, and it should go without saying that the desire not to have kids is totally fine.
In fact, that’s becoming more common among us millennials, much to the confusion and dismay of the older generations who brought us into the world.
That concern has more than a whiff of the fin de siècle eugenics-inspired fears over low birth rates among the white middle class, by the way.
To parent or not to parent
Me?
I always wanted to be a parent.
