Rainbow Parenting or What steps should lesbians and gay men take to start a family?
Until recently, children from rainbow families were rather the exception. They usually came from heterosexual partnerships in which, after a period of cohabitation, one parent went through a coming out and started a new family with a person of the same sex. Nowadays, children are also born directly to gay and lesbian couples - there is even sometimes talk of a gayby-boom. "Today's gays and lesbians realize that they can have children and that it's perfectly OK if they want to have them. They are more confident and not so afraid of pressure or rejection by those around them. This situation has long been common in the West, where generations of children have been raised by same-sex couples," says Tereza Pelechová, who runs Parent Preparation courses under the banner of Prague Pride.
Heterosexual couples often fall into parenthood and simply accept the pregnancy. In rainbow families, it's all about planning and long-term strategy. Moreover, parents continuously re-evaluate it, for example in response to initial failures of assisted reproduction or the search for suitable fathers, during adoption interviews or on the thin ice of surrogacy.
Over the past few years, Prague Pride has organised several Parenting Prep courses for gay and lesbian couples and individuals planning a family. From the experience gained, we have selected three basic steps that every person should take on the path to rainbow parenthood.
1. Everyone should come out of the closet
A child constantly outs a person. Questions such as "What is Daddy doing?" or "Don't you have a mother?" or procedures at the doctor's office or nursery automatically assume that the child has a father and a mother. In the same way that children from stitched or incomplete families have to learn to answer questions after a missing parent, children from rainbow families have to learn strategies to talk about their two mothers, two fathers, or how to explain that there are more parents and that their family arrangement looks different than usual.
"We are a role model to the child. And if we don't have ourselves sorted out, we pass on our insecurities to the child," says Tereza Pelechová. Every parent has to be able to stand up for their child - and you can't do that very well if you can't even stand up for yourself.
But a similar situation awaits grandparents. They have often had their own difficult coming out, when they had to find a way to announce to the world that their child is lesbian or gay. And they've had to deal with the uncertainty of whether they will become grandparents at all. Now they, too, will develop strategies for talking to the outside world about their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
2. Choose an appropriate parenting model
The most important decisions fall when choosing what form the family will actually take. Although lesbians have an easier situation than gays, we can say without exaggeration that every couple has an original approach to parenting. A high number of variables come into play.
First of all, a lesbian couple faces a major decision regarding the degree of involvement of the child's father. At the assisted reproduction clinic, the woman must appear with the man who acts as the father of the child. But later, no one decides whether or not this man will be included on the birth certificate. At the other end of the spectrum of possibilities is the family where both mothers (biological and social) and both fathers (biological and social) participate together in raising the child. Lesbians, however, can find a sperm donor even through an advertisement and then the donor may never see the child. This differs from anonymous donation in that the mother knows the identity of the father and has contact with him, even if the father is not involved. Slightly more father involvement involves an option called buddying. The child knows that this man has helped the mother and is therefore the biological father, but they usually see each other a few times a year. If the insemination does not happen in a clinic, it is done by a homemade syringe method.
Gay men have a more complicated path to parenthood. More and more gay fathers are choosing the foster or adoption route. But the number of those who have a child from surrogacy abroad is also growing. In surrogacy, they take a child out of the country who has both fathers on the birth certificate. And the Czech authorities have been recognising birth certificates completed in this way in recent years. It is the only way for a Czech gay couple to have both fathers registered as parents. The disadvantage of surrogacy abroad, however, is the financial cost. Although it is possible to find a surrogate mother in the Czech Republic, our laws do not properly treat this route and fathers enter into a number of risks. The biological mother remains forever registered on the child's birth certificate. Unlike in a lesbian family, where the mother does not have to put the biological father on the birth certificate after the birth, gays cannot achieve such a situation for a child born in the Czech Republic.
3. Check the openness of relatives and institutions
When choosing a parenting model, future rainbow families also take into account how open and respectful the extended family will be. A lesbian couple is therefore not only auditioning for fathers, but also for grandmothers and grandfathers. It is worth asking whether and how grandparents will be involved in parenting.
Similarly, rainbow families also deal with finding pediatricians. They test doctors to see if they will be willing to take a respectful approach to caring for a child from a rainbow family. And in the same way, they need to select preschools or schools. It's always a bit of a dance between institutions that may not be respectful enough.
This brings us full circle back to the beginning - only a truly fully bonded couple can withstand the comments and questions from those around them. It usually starts with amazement that gay couples go into parenthood at all. "It used to be taken for granted that LGBT people just wouldn't have children. And it's also the first thing parents deal with when their own children come out to them. The fear or sadness of not having grandchildren falls on them. If this could be shifted in people's minds, it would be a great relief to everyone," says Tereza Pelechová.
The Prague Pride association has been running the Parent Preparatory School for LGBT couples and individuals planning to start a family since 2014. The spring session of the prep will be two weekend sessions, so people from outside of Prague can attend. Participants can expect lectures and discussions with gay and lesbian parents and experts on selected topics.
