At your service: talk to us!

At the end of last year, my colleague Henry and I held some focus groups with service providers who work with new and prospective parents: maternal child health nurses, general counsellors, family mediators, psychologists, IVF counsellors, family therapists, midwives, educators, and others working in this general field.

We wanted to know what sort of information they would like to see in resources designed to support them to improve service delivery for same-sex parented families. The workers in this group had a range of experience. Some had met just a few same-sex parented families in their professional lives. Others had met many.

I personally found the insight offered by these people to be incredibly thoughtful and complex. I had expected much more basic discussion about the need for rainbow stickers on the doorframe. But, as it turned out, people in these groups were highly tuned into the psychology and emotions of new parenting and had many thoughts about their work with same-sex parents. So I wanted to share some of what they told us.

In one session, a counsellor recounted her observations of the lesbian mothers she had met. She said, most people don’t really understand how becoming a mother might be different for lesbian mothers to heterosexual mothers. People see that lesbians might face extra discrimination, but beyond that they assume it is pretty much the same. While this isn’t an unwarranted assumption, because a lot is pretty much the same, there are some issues specific to lesbians that aren’t always acknowledged.

For example, this counsellor has met many lesbian mothers who find it incredibly confronting to admit or accept that they are having problems parenting – that they are finding it difficult or not feeling right, that they aren't happy or not enjoying their children. She explains this as the flip side of an unplanned pregnancy. A pregnancy that is highly planned, desperately desired, and potentially years in the making often brings with it pressure for the experience to be perfect. Unplanned pregnancies of course bring their own particular brand of stress. But people who have unplanned pregnancies might expect to find it hard, or not enjoy every moment or to be living in chaos for a while. People who have had to go to extraordinary lengths to become pregnant can feel like they are letting everybody down if they then become depressed or just find it difficult being a new mother.

This same counsellor also spoke about the way in which new parenthood can ‘ambush’ people emotionally. It’s not uncommon for an unanticipated well of emotion to topple new parents – the world suddenly becomes much more delicate with the awareness that life now has potential to bite, and bite hard, should anything happen to your child. Also people often come to re-live their own childhood and family experiences through parenting. This counsellor has observed many lesbian parents (and I am sure the same could hold for gay fathers too, although this woman works specifically with mothers), struggling with a fresh knot of grief about their own family relationships or coming out experience when they become mothers. Issues of acceptance and place within their family of origin were now much more intense.

People in the group also spoke about the role of the non-birth mother in lesbian relationships. Some nurses observed that it was often difficult for them, as nurses coming into the home, to understand the dynamics of lesbian couples, when those couples are also in the midst of working out their new roles as parents.

For heterosexual couples, the role of the father is much more culturally defined, even if it is an unfamiliar or awkward place for men in those early days of parenting. One nurse explained that many nurses feel awkward working with two mothers. They are conscious of not wanting to assume the non-birth mother will take on a fathering role, but equally they are not always sure of how to involve her.

Another nurse spoke about how she has noticed – but not quite known how to speak about – the often subtle and subconscious ways in which lesbian couples negotiate their parenting relationships. She has seen some couples who work extraordinarily well in partnership as two women, each highly intuitive about the other’s needs. But she has also seen couples struggle. In some cases, she has observed struggles over power and control, where one of the mothers (not necessarily the birth mother) emerges holding all the baby cards – with a greater sense of control over all things child-related in the household. She has also observed some women lapsing into insecurity, being unable to establish a sense of purpose and place in their baby's or family life. These are not necessarily issues specific to lesbians, but many nurses and counsellors are not familiar with these circumstances and find it harder to engage with lesbian couples about parenting and relationship issues than they might with a heterosexual mother.

Another counsellor spoke about how she has met lesbian non-birth mothers who experience a sense of grief about not having carried their child. This is difficult for some women to express as they are often conflicted about feeling sadness at a time that is supposed to be joyful. They feel they are not being supportive of their partner if they admit to a sense of personal loss with the birth of the baby.

I don’t have space here to explore all the points that were raised in these focus groups. We will publish something later this year, so watch this space. Some other issues raised were: how to engage gay fathers who have children via surrogacy in maternal child health services, how to engage gay fathers in ‘mother’s groups’, how to create appropriate support services for non-birthmothers (beyond joining the ‘dad’s group’), how to assist families to negotiate co-parenting arrangements with donors and so forth.

I found it fascinating, and incredibly heartening, that these nurses and other workers were able to articulate such honest and nuanced observations of the same-sex couples with whom they have worked. They were genuinely concerned about what they could do to help these couples through a stressful life change. They said they would love more information that might help workers who hadn’t met many same-sex families to feel more confident in talking to families, even simple resources about what questions to ask, what terms to use with two parents of the same gender and so forth. But they were also keen on information that explores some of the more complex issues of same-sex parenting and relationships.

So now parents, we want you!

For the next stage of this research we are keen to speak to parents. We are hosting a focus group for same-sex attracted parents (who are in a couple or single) to speak about their experiences with the mainstream service sector and what resources they would like to see produced for both parents and service providers.

If you live in Melbourne and might be available to talk to us, we a hosting a lunchtime focus group:

Wednesday 7th March

12.15pm

Lunch will be provided

Children are welcome (we have toys)

The Bouverie Centre

8 Gardiner st, Brunswick, Melbourne

If you would like to attend, please RSVP to Henry at h.vondoussa@latrobe.edu.au

or call Jen on 9385 5131 (leave a message if I don’t answer!).

We realise that this timeslot will not be a good one for people who work, or people’s who have children with midday sleep requirements. So if you can’t make this time but are still keen to be involved, please get in touch anyway as we will try and arrange another time and/or some phone interviews as well.

Hope we get to talk soon