Just like every working parent everywhere, you’re going to deal with blowout diapers, a packed schedule, guilt and self-doubt, performance feedback—and you’re going to savor each career win, weekend, and end-of-workday reconnection with the kids. LGBTQIA+ workparenting is just that: workparenting. At the same time, this road can come with a few distinct twists, particularly early on. While your own experience will be unique, let’s take a look at what those common turns are, in rough workparent-chronological order. We’ll also look at how to steer through each one safely and confidently so you can keep your true focus where you want it: on your career, family, and future.
Even if you live in a progressive area and work in an inclusive organization, you may not have had much exposure to successful, satisfied, confident, career-minded-yet-balanced LGBTQIA+ workparents, or perhaps to many LGBTQIA+ workparents at all. Your family of origin, education, and early-career experiences likely didn’t offer a host of examples, and you may or may not easily find them now, among your peers. Which isn’t the end of the world: as we’ve explored throughout this book, you can become the workparent you want to on your own terms.
‘‘People will often reach out to me to talk about being a working parent. It’s a mix, and from inside and outside the firm, often LGBT—people who are thinking about starting a family, and want some advice, some insight. That kind of mentoring and connection is important. It’s not easy as a busy working parent, but I try to talk to each one.”
—João, management consultant, father of two
The risk, though, is that you forge ahead into workparenting without a yes, that’s what I’m shooting for, and I know I can get there! kind of vision. Combining career and kids is already a tall order, and without a comforting, compelling, empowering template, and/or role models you “see yourself” in, or fully relatable mentors who can advise and encourage you, things may feel a bit harder.
We could keep on going here, but you get the point: if you’re willing to network persistently and creatively, just as you would when hustling for a new job, you can find LGBTQIA+ workparents who are a little farther down the path—who are top of the game at work and at home, and who can help you “see” your workparenting future.
When you do find those people, don’t be shy. A statement like the following will open many doors: “I’m thinking about starting a family, and wondering if you would be willing to speak with me for twenty minutes about your career-plus-parenting experience …” Remember: most workparents want to help each other. And even if some ignore you, who cares? The conversations that you do have will provide anchoring and confidence—two things every workparent deserves.
As an LGBTQIA+ parent, and depending on how you’re forming your family, you may find yourself effectively workparenting—simultaneously managing work and child-related responsibilities and concerns—for quite some time before your child’s arrival. Whether you’ll be welcoming your child via adoption, or surrogacy, or with the help of reproductive technology, there’s the up-front work, decision-making, and costs that go into the process. And then if the surrogate lives far away and you’ve committed to attending prenatal appointments in person, you’ll need x days out of the office to be there … and so on. In other words, if the “typical” path-into-workparenting sequence looks like this:
… yours may look more like this:
And this can be stressful. All those days for the appointments, right before our annual deadlines. And then twelve weeks for parental leave? Nobody takes that kind of time! If you’re one of few LGBTQIA+ parents in your organization, or if you don’t yet have a good array of workparent mentors to guide you, these up-front pressures and attendant anxieties may loom even larger.
Then—crucially—flip the timing coin over and gaze at the other side, which is this: any additional time between the decision to start your family and the child’s actual arrival is, from a pure-play workparenting perspective, a huge plus. It’s extra runway to get ready for what’s ahead. You can fully examine your template, talk to other working parents about their various care arrangements, consider various scheduling options, cut back on other expenses, build out your Village, get more comfortable talking about parenthood at work, and attend to all the other to-dos we covered in earlier chapters. If you need to make any big move, like a job change, you’ll have more time to properly attend to it. You’ll get to step into working parenthood well prepared, and with your intentions set.
Let’s say you’re at an organization that’s employee-friendly and well resourced: you’re still likely to face a complex maze when it comes to family-related benefits, including parental leave, and that maze may have a distinctly heteronormative bent to it. Maybe the leave policy offers “primary caregivers” additional time away … but what if neither of you is carrying the baby? Or what if your partner is, but she’s a freelancer without paid leave, and the two of you are both all-in as parents? Or what if the organization is sensitive and accommodating toward new moms who are lactating (offering flexible schedules, lactation rooms, and the like), but doesn’t seem to offer any logistical or scheduling “give” to dedicated parents who aren’t?
Because the range of individual circumstances, plans, and programs is so broad, and because those plans’ fine print is so varied, and because relevant laws and workplace norms are so wide-ranging and dynamic, we can’t cover every possible what-if scenario here (that would be its own book). The key point is that you owe it to yourself to get smart, early on; to consider how you may want to advocate for yourself; and to think about how to actually use the benefits and programs available to you.
If you can’t easily find the information you’re looking for, or if it’s in any way confusing or ambiguous, ask your human resources contact to walk you through things in person. Any HR representative worth their salt should—note the conditional should—have full mastery of the details, including how various plans and programs dovetail with any legal requirements or government offerings (for example: in the United States, your Family and Medical Leave Act entitlement), and be able to provide you a lucid, respectful explanation. During that conversation, assume good intent, but—particularly if you work at a newer or smaller organization—do not assume that the person has played through the implications of any particular offering, or the overall family-benefits package, from an LGBTQIA+ perspective. Be ready to push a little: if you bump up against a policy that feels poorly defined or inequitable, try inquiring/explaining why that’s so. If your organization has an LGBTQIA+ employee resource group, its leadership will likely be wise to any specific benefits concerns or policy changes.
As soon as your colleagues learn that you’re expecting, chances are high that they’ll start asking questions, and a lot of them, and of a jaw-droppingly personal type. Most will be earnest, and well-intentioned. In fact, some colleagues may even ask about the details of how your family was formed as a sort of ham-handed way of signaling their support. That’s well and good, but those questions can still feel assaulting. You’re at this organization to do your particular job, not to be a one-on-one diversity educator or science tutor. Nevertheless, here you are.
Bias has no place whatsoever in your child’s life—or your own. It is essential that the day-to-day care experience be consistently warm, nurturing, honest, and affirming, for your whole family.
‘‘We’re completely open and honest: it’s one of our guiding principles, and we want the people around us to be completely comfortable too. So when we interviewed nannies, we went right in for it: ‘We’re a two-dad family. How do you feel about this?’ It was a job requirement, just like the ability to work certain hours.
The answer you really want to hear from a prospective caregiver is, ‘I know a lot about babies and children, and I can support your family, and help make you an effective parent.”
—A.J., venture capitalist, father of one
As we’ve discussed throughout this book, the camaraderie and practical advice you can get from other mothers and fathers, particularly within your specific professional environment, is invaluable. Joining a formal parenting affinity network, or informal meet-up, can be both helpful and reassuring. That said, the membership of the “parents” network may be made up mostly or entirely of recent moms, or the network’s programming may be focused around (heterosexual) dual-career couples. That is, it may or may not reflect your identity or concerns, or provide the welcome, breadth, or value you want.
‘‘A lot of our friends don’t have kids, and there’s no model for queer parenting. We joined a local queer-parents listserv that has a lot of other families enrolled. And our son’s daycare is a collective, run by a group of very involved—and competent—working parents. I can drop him off at 8:00 and do pickup at 6:00, and run into other families doing the same. Being able to connect, and get referrals and ideas, and have that community is so important.”
—Tracy, creative producer, parent of two
In other words, do not be dissuaded—or afraid to take an entrepreneurial approach. There are a lot of other parents interested in getting together and sharing notes.
It’s a powerful thing to be in a partnership free of gender assumptions and culturally assigned roles, but if you don’t have a basic agreement on who’s supposed to do daycare pickup or dinner prep, or pay the sitter, or be up with your sick child the night before you both work double shifts, you’re going to spend a lot of time in improv mode—which can be confusing, and generate tension between you, and become an additional strain for the entire family.
Read the following two scenarios. Does either ring a bell?
In some sense both scenarios are workparent-typical: in the absence of better information, and based generally around their views of parenting, your colleagues have come to their own conclusion about your professionalism, priorities, way of working, and desire to get ahead. In these cases, though—or in others you may well face—those assumptions are further complicated by the intersection of gender stereotypes and LGBTQIA+ parenting—by “what moms want” or the “fact” that many dads have (female) partners at home to handle things. That may not be right, or fair—but the promotion committee looms, and you have your boss to deal with, today.
Remember, tell the story: Priorities, commitment, enthusiasm, next steps.
You know the ones: those colleagues who aren’t opposed to LGBTQIA+ workparenting, exactly … but aren’t explicit supporters, either. Maybe the body language you get from them is awkward, or the senior vice president in your department didn’t offer much in the way of congratulations when you announced that you were expecting, or the startup parents group somehow forgot to include you on the invitation. It’s frustrating and wrong. And it’s not on you to reeducate anyone or to co-opt everyone at your workplace.
Every single working person, from the mail room all the way to the CEO suite, has particular ways they want to be seen professionally—part of a closely-held work identity, for which they may or may not get much regular or external validation. Each person differs, but for the most part, we all see ourselves as hardworking, intelligent, expert, important to the organization, good with people, generous, moral, and a mentor. We have workparenting-specific professional identities too: most busy mothers and fathers want to see themselves as committed, going above and beyond, balanced, and so forth.
If you’re dealing with a difficult or an unsupportive person and can manage to reflect one or more of those “identity stakes” back at them—in other words, if you can allow them to see and experience themselves in the way they wish to be seen and experienced—it usually softens them up, often considerably. So:
In other words: hold up that Mirror, and let them like what they see. If the senior vice president knows that he’s going to feel validated when he speaks with you, he’ll want to speak with you more often.
The LGBTQIA+ workparenting movement is happening in real time. Whatever your experience so far, you can use it to help smooth and guide the way for other workparents to follow.
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