25

Proud Workparents

Combining Career and Children as a Member of the LGBTQIA+ Community

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.

Templating, Role Models, and Mentors

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.

To do:  Think about how to expand your LGBTQIA+ Workparent Template now, in real time. How can you find workparents who resonate with you? Inspire you? What can you learn from them? Those role models and mentors may be inside your organization or out. If you don’t know where to start:

  • See if your organization has a parenting group, and/or a LGBTQIA+ employee network.
  • Seek out other LGBTQIA+ parents working in your field, perhaps even at senior levels.
  • Ascertain whether there’s a local LGBTQIA+ community center near you that offers career and/or family programming.
  • Look into professional and trade associations. Many have dedicated LGBTQIA+ subchapters.
  • See if there are LGBTQIA+ parent and aspiring-parent “meet-up” groups in your community.
  • Make use of social media, where you might find examples of professional, successful LGBTQIA+ folks with kids. (Yes, social media can be a double-edged sword with all the ideal images of a life nobody actually lives. But if you’re ever going to look to it for inspiration, why not now?)
  • Rely on your existing mentors and sponsors at work. Maybe they don’t identify as LGBTQIA+, but if they’ve reached a certain professional level, they’re likely very well networked, and given that they clearly care about you and your success, they may be able to help make some good connections.

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.

Extra notes:  While the template-building process is particularly powerful before or at the very start of workparenting, it remains useful all the way through. Whether you’re just planning a family, or have an eight-year-old already, keep building that positive, authentic, can-do vision.

The Path-to-Parenthood Timeline

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.

To do:  Talk yourself up—and down. Try getting a little indignant: becoming a parent is a wonderful thing, and you’re not going to allow any professional pressures to chisel away at your joy, are you? Besides, you’ve worked hard for this organization, you’ve been supportive of other colleagues with varying family needs, and you’re not the type of person to let work projects drop. So sure, time away from work can be stressful, and maybe you feel unusually preoccupied when you are on the job, and your bank balance is lower than you want. Welcome to workparenting! But is there any reason you should be taking an awkward or apologetic stance here? No. Other workparents cover off on their family and professional commitments, and you’re covering off on yours. This is your family—and your priority.

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.

Extra notes:  For guidance on how to announce that you’re expecting—including if it may come as a surprise, or if you’re not certain of your child’s arrival date—refer back to the section on “announcing the news” in chapter 1.

Benefits and Leave

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.

To do:  Start by working through the “Planning Your Leave” section in chapter 3, paying particular attention to any policy differences for men, women, birth mothers, and “primary caregivers,” as well as to permitted timing. (Does leave need to be taken directly after the birth/arrival, for example, or can it be taken sequentially to your partner’s?) If you can, connect with other LGBTQIA+ parents inside your organization, or in comparable ones, to get their advice and hear their experiences. If you have a partner, be certain you’re both doing this research and assessment. You’ll also want to perform a side-by-side comparison and combination of your plans, to see how they fit together into a “total family benefit.”

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.

Extra notes:  If you have questions about market standards or your legal rights, or you want to connect with other LGBTQIA+ parents about their experiences, consider consulting a family-law attorney or contacting your local LGBTQIA+ community center; many larger ones have dedicated family-issues advocates who may be able to help.

Boundaryless Questions

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.

To do:  To keep both your personal cool and your professional brand intact, here are options for responding.

  • The direct answer.  Depending on your personality, workplace culture, relationship to the person asking the question, and desire to “fund the future” by normalizing LGBTQIA+ workparenting, you may choose to be forthcoming. Which is fine, but bear in mind that in telling any one colleague, you’re effectively telling all, and that the more information you share, the more likely you are to get follow-on questions.
  • The generalized education.  “Good question. What many LGBTQIA+ parents do is ” In other words: shield your own personal life while doing a bit of public education.
  • The new-parent-chatter deflection.  “Of course, what [partner’s name] and I are really focused on is the baby. Becoming a parent is such a profound and wonderful thing! And wow, the number of choices you have to make to find the right stroller
  • The flip-around.  When you get that total stunner of a question, gently put it back to the person by very politely saying, “Why are you asking?” The questioner may realize he has crossed the line, and stammer or slink away. Or he may confess that he just doesn’t know a lot about LGBTQIA+ families, and is curious—that he comes from a positive place. Either way, you’ve called out the awkwardness, and subtly taken control.
  • The shut-down.  A firm, confident “I don’t believe that relates to our work together. But I do believe we have more to do to get ready for Tuesday’s presentation ” or, “I know you’re asking in a positive spirit, but that conversation isn’t one I’m going to have in a professional setting ” should put an end to things.

LGBTQIA+-Friendly Care

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.

To do:  Make inclusion one of your key search criteria. Here are various things to look for as you sift through the options.

  • An explicit commitment to diversity.  If touring a daycare center that’s part of a larger chain or institution (e.g., an ongoing school, church, community center, etc.), ask or check online if that larger entity has issued a diversity statement. In this day and age, we can all reasonably expect institutions to have a stance on inclusion, and to be up front about it. A strong declarative statement doesn’t guarantee the center will be right for you, but it does provide a bit of top-line reassurance that families of all kinds are welcome—and that staff can be held to account.
  • Parent composition.  Are there other LGBTQIA+ families at the center? Single parents? Blended families? Again, not a guarantee—but if parents of all sorts are happily using the center, it’s a good sign.
  • Past experience.  Make the issue part of your reference-checking process. What other LGBTQIA+ families have used the center, and can you speak with a few of them? Has the prospective nanny been unfailingly positive and nonjudgmental with past employers?
  • Visual and interpersonal signaling.  You know what to look for here: trust your spidey sense. If the nursery library has books about different family types, or the walls are decorated with pictures of an incredible array of different families, or if the babysitter admires your wedding photo during the interview: positive. Aloof body language, awkward conversation, hesitation on those reference calls: warning.
  • Direct questioning.  Be blunt! Say to the center director or prospective babysitter, “We want to make sure our experience is a comfortable and positive one, in both directions. We’re an LGBTQIA+ family. Will that be an issue?” If you sense any equivocation, move on.

‘‘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

Extra notes:  You may not be able to find a care center or caregiver who’s worked with LGBTQIA+ families before. That’s fine: past experience is helpful, but it’s the approach, attitude, and willingness that count. Trust your gut as you determine which care arrangement will be right.

Finding Overall Workparent Community on the Job

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.

To do:  If it doesn’t, consider:

  1. Talking to the network leadership about expanding the frame to include fathers, LGBTQIA+ parents, and so on; or
  2. If your organization has a dedicated LGBTQIA+ network, asking if there’s any way to “joint venture” with the parents group on events or discussions; or
  3. Talking to HR or your diversity & inclusion head about numbers 1 and 2, and how to make employee resource groups more inclusive; or
  4. Starting your own informal subgroup, even if it’s as simple as opening a messaging channel; or
  5. Joining an LGBTQIA+ parents group outside the company or institution you work for as a way of broadening your network.

‘‘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.

The Need to Divide and Conquer

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.

To do:  If you’re part of a busy dual-career LGBTQIA+ workparent couple, be sure to spend dedicated, thoughtful time working through the nuts and bolts of managing child-related responsibilities on top of your jobs. While the beauty is that you’re unconstrained by shoulds, you do still need the who, what, how, and whens. That doesn’t require an elaborate treaty, but whatever system you come to should be 1) something you both understand and are comfortable with, 2) realistic, given your work, finances, etc., 3) reflective of the values of your partnership, and 4) regularly updated and adapted to meet the needs of growing children and advancing careers.

Extra notes:  To make the weekly division of labor easier, and a positive part of your partnership, use the Check-In tool outlined in chapter 22.

Owning Your Narrative

Read the following two scenarios. Does either ring a bell?

  • You’re a lesbian just back from maternity leave—dead set on getting promoted this year and looking to get on that next big project. But your colleagues keep asking you “how the baby is” and if you want to go part-time.
  • You’re a gay dad whose wonderful six-year-old has just been diagnosed with a learning difference. Because your husband works crazy hours, and you take the lead on the kids’ health and education concerns, you’ve had to be off work several times recently for all the related appointments. You’ve started picking up some snark from colleagues—and your manager made a recent comment about “focus.”

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.

To do:  Make your workparenting approach clear. Don’t let your colleagues come to their own conclusions: tell them what to think! That means talking about career goals, schedules, outside responsibilities, and the ways you’re meeting them without dropping the ball at work—and perhaps talking about how your family works. In the first case:

  • “I’m delighted to be back from leave—and focused on earning my next promotion. While we’re both very engaged mothers, Bettina’s schedule allows more flexibility, so I’ll be billing the same hours as I usually do. I understand there’s an interesting new project opportunity with the California client

Remember, tell the story: Priorities, commitment, enthusiasm, next steps.

Creating Allies

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.

To do:  If you want to soften those people up, or for career reasons want to improve your rapport, simply hold up the Professional Mirror.

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:

  • With the senior vice president: “Jonathan, don’t be surprised if I come back to you and ask for advice on how to balance this whole working-parent thing. Even with three kids, you clearly have it all together. And with a team of twenty, you’ve no doubt mentored a lot of people through this before
  • With the head of the parenting group: “Do you mind adding my name to the distribution? You’re clearly the expert working parent around here, and I know you’ve killed yourself to put next week’s session together. There’s so much I could learn from it

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.

Extra notes:  If you’re recoiling as you read this, or thinking, how political! How disingenuous! Well, yes: it is “political,” or manipulative, in a way. But people maneuver and play politics at work all the time, and often for not-so-good reasons. Why shouldn’t you do the same, as an LGBTQIA+ workparent? Particularly given that this concerted approach is in the service of greater goods: your comfort at work, your positive, genuine connection to other colleagues who are also combining career and kids—and some small erosion of the barriers that can exist for proud workparents.

Paving the Road Ahead

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.

To do: Speak with prospective LGBTQIA+ workparents one-on-one—be a model and mentor. Offer to be one of the presenters on the “return from parental leave” panel that your workplace-parenting employee resource group puts on, and share your personal experience. At your organization’s next recruiting event, talk with potential employees about your experiences as an LGBTQIA+ leader, and parent. Tell the daycare director that you stand ready to help welcome new families. Be visible, and set an example. Think of what help, advice, and support you would have liked, and could have used at the beginning of your journey—and then provide it to others.

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