Summary:
As a biological mother I have at my disposal endless support groups, mothering books, and healthcare professionals including lactation consultants and post-partum doulas. Wherever I turn my sleepy head or engorged breasts there is someone willing to offer advice, assistance, and comfort to me as a new mother. Enter my partner, my child's co-parent, the other adult on the scene who has been present since the moment of our daughter's conception, who has shared with me childbirth classes, prenatal yoga, infant CPR, and the wonder of our daughter's birth, and you find another woman raising the same child but in an extraordinarily different world.
It's the twenty-first century and lesbians choosing to parent inadvertently have created a new family architecture, that of a two-parent household in which both parents are women but only one is biologically related to the child or children. This poignant and complex experience of a non-biological mother raising a child from conception alongside the child's biological mother comes complete with its own joys, complications, blessings, and tribulations, and is of yet without support, precedent, or analysis.
The proposed book-length manuscript, The Other Mother , is an edited collection of essays written by non-biological mommies raising children in two-mommy households. More accessible than an empirical dissertation on the subject, The Other Mother will offer gay and straight readers alike a series of anecdotes - some humorous, some serious - about this rarely discussed and ever increasing role in the history of the American family.
Topics will include (but are not limited to):
• Who writes the rule book? Does bio-mom get to make all the rules?
• Nursing envy and issues surrounding physical closeness to the child.
• The name game: What should baby call us?
• "Does he have your husband's blue eyes?" When and why a nonbio mom must come out again, and again, and again.
• On being a different race from your child
• "Is this your granddaughter?" On being old enough to be your child's grandmother.
• "I just wish you would have a child of your own ." Issues regarding the non-biological mother's parents and their roles as grandparents- or not.
• Jealousy of the birth experience.
• Jealousy in general.
• Differences in connection with the children if the non-biological mother later becomes pregnant.
• "But which one of you is his real mommy?" Educating the tot-lot.
• Competition between moms from the non-biological mother's perspective.
• Daddy-Vagina: The construction of the non-biological mother's role (i.e., second mom, dad, aunt, or "daddy-vagina" as one mom suggested, etc.).
• Is the experience of non-biological mothers who join a family later the same as that of any other step-parent?
• Issues surrounding the non-biological mother's relationship to the biological father (if a known donor is present).
• Dissolution: The battle for custody in a world that does not always acknowledge your presence as mother in the first place.
• What comes up when non-biological mommy is the stay-at-home mom.
• The potential freedoms and guilty pleasures of the non-biological mom.
Marketing:
Six months after its publication my recent book, Buying Dad: One Woman's Search for the Perfect Sperm Donor (Alyson Publications, 2003), appeared on local nonfiction bestseller lists nationwide including The Los Angeles Times and The Boston Globe , and was adopted as required reading by Dartmouth College and the University of New York-Binghamton, suggesting a wide academic as well as general audience for issues pertaining to lesbian parenting and the ethical and social implications of donor insemination. There is every reason to believe that The Other Mother will serve as a similar educational resource as well as a font of emotional support for all women mothering within this unique parenting paradigm.
Thus far literature available on the subject of non-biological mothering is limited to journal articles (see attached bibliography titled "What's Out There" ) and news briefs regarding custody issues facing lesbian mothers. Among the books that do exist about gay and lesbian parenting each seems to solely emphasize the psychosocial struggles and legal implications of being a gay mom or dad. From a marketing standpoint these titles are limited for three important reasons. First, none addresses the phenomenon of the non-biological lesbian mother post-partum (custody and legal issues aside, What's it like waking up three to five times a night and caring for a kid your girlfriend birthed? What's it like at the tot lot? At music class? At Thanksgiving dinner in your parents' home?). Second, by not providing the comedic, tongue-in-cheek, joyous tales of nonbiological motherhood, these books fail to reflect universal aspects of mothering, parenting experiences that are shared by any adoptive mom, gay or straight. Third, and most importantly, though they offer critical legal and psychological advice, they can be damn depressing and not at all fun to read, thereby appealing to no one but men and women in need of a reference book.
What the market and America's new lesbian-mom savvy readers ("The L-Word," "Queer as Folk") need is a pop-culture peek into the world of lesbian parenting, the telling of all stories - including the humorous, sarcastic, politically incorrect, and absolutely positive. |
