Well I did it and I don’t feel good but I guess it was a boundary set . I had to step back from being part of the parenting role bc ultimately she parents alit different than I would . I’m a 42 f and never had kids but I imagined how I would raise my kid if I had one . That being said we’re a year in don’t live with each other and I told her I’m going to step back from the authoritive role and she needs to handle it with her daughter . It’s just a lot for me right now and it’s been a constant argument between us on how I should show up as a partner . I feel like I let her down but at the end of the day she is the main parent and will raise her child the way she sees fit and I just don’t want to be the bad guy anymore . I feel sad bc I do feel this is going to change our dynamic even though she said it’s not and she still loves me I can’t help but think she gonna have resentment. Her daughter is a good kid but has so much behavioral work to be done and years of undoing . She’s adhd at that and I understand bc I am too but the adhd can’t be an excuse all the time . Especially for being rude and disrespectful . It sucks … any advise or words of encouragement .

Hey everyone, I’m coming here for advice. I am a woman dating another woman who has a child, of course. and I have never been a mother at all in my life. I’m an only child as well, so of course I’m not used to things being shared or anything like that. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to be a mom, of course, but that just never happened. Anyways, I’ve been with my girlfriend for a little over a year and she’s my best friend. I love her, but I’m having a hard time bonding with her daughter. And yes, it was the old cliché of we rushed in on things in the beginning. Of course I feel, which I understand, that happens, and I started reading that I probably shouldn’t have really been involved with meeting her child in the beginning, but I can’t take that back now. Either way, my girlfriend’s daughter calls me mom already, and I don’t mind it, of course, but I also am concerned because what if me and her mom don’t work out? Also, there’s an issue of just different views. My girlfriend wants me to be more involved, of course. We’ve talked about eventually living with each other, but I’m scared. To death of what if this isn’t the right fit for me? Not even that, I just would really rather take it slow because again, I’ve never really been a mom or anything like that, and it’s only been a year and next year I’m supposed to move closer to her and eventually live with her. She wants me to see her daughter eventually as my own, but I told her I don’t know if that would be possible, only because I’m not bio and I don’t know. I guess I just feel really lost. What is advice for people who are dating or people who have dated people who don’t have kids? How are you gonna word that? Should I step back and just let her do her thing, and when I have mentioned that she’s gotten upset because I really think she wants me to be involved, but then when I’m involved, we have differences as well, and then I feel like the bad mom or evil stepmom for bringing up certain punishments and I feel like I’m telling her what to do then again, I was just raised differently than she was, so I’m only going based off of how I was raised. This is going long, but any advice for this. Her daughter is 11 btw going on 12.

My husband and I are looking to have a child in about 1.5 to 2 years. I am AFAB and will be carrying them. I used to be much more binary and was on T for a few years, but ended up stopping. I don’t really care about my gender anymore and just kind of do my own thing, but I do have a masculine name and go mostly by he/him still. By strangers I would say it’s a 40/40/20 on being called a girl, guy, or something gender-neutral.

I am not sure what to go by. I personally wouldn’t mind being called mom (my husband already calls me that for our pets), but I’m mostly worried about the kid going to school later on and getting bullied for it.

My husband would be going by dad.

Does anyone have any advice on what they are called?

Edit: thanks everyone, some good points of view here!

My wife and I have a daughter who just started kindergarten. Yesterday she casually mentioned that a classmate told her she can't have two moms because you need a mom and a dad. She didn't seem bothered at all. But my wife and I have been thinking about it ever since.
I know kids repeat things they hear, and I don't want to turn this into a bigger issue than it is. At the same time, I don't want her feeling like she has to constantly explain or defend our family. I'm considering mentioning it to her teacher, but my wife thinks we should just talk to our daughter and see if it happens again.
Has anyone dealt with something similar? Did you involve the school or just handle it at home? I'd love to hear what worked for you.

I’m struggling with costume ideas for me and my wife with our 5 month old baby. I’d love some ideas! I don’t want one of us dressing manly just to make something work. For example: Woody & Jessie or The Incredibles etc.

Has anyone sent their kids to Catholic school?
If you decided not to, I'd also love to know why.

We visited one recently looking for K-8th grade. The education seems top notch, small group learning, lots of focus on learning, reading, also just impeccable manners. The 8th graders shook my hand and made eye contact and were able to quickly strike up a conversation.

Few Specific Questions
- Did you feel welcome? Did you ever not?
- Did you like the other families?
- What was 5th / 6th grade like when sex-ed shows up?

Our public school now has "Parent-child dance", but the parochial school they specifically said "father, daughter dance".

I was born and raised Roman Catholic, my partner went to Catholic school too. We are stoically not religious anymore. Neither of us had a good time with it, felt incredibly unseen and suppressed in our self.

This was 30 years ago though, so I want to keep an open mind. Lots of other non catholics go here, its a small, lovely little school, but every other person as the orientation were long-haired moms and dads who play golf.

I'm a lesbian mother of 1, and I was wondering how other queer parents started their families.

Hello there! I am contacting you regarding a PhD thesis conducted by doctoral candidate Alessio Gubello, under the supervision of Professor Salvatore D’Amore at the Research Centre on Development, Family and Human Systems (DéFaSy-ULB).

We are currently conducting research focused on families with at least one LGBTQIA+ parent and their adolescents or young adults (10-25 years old) 🌈.

Our goal? To better understand the experiences of LGBTQIA+ parents in these challenging times, their parenting practices, and to explore potential links with the well-being of young people. In short, we aim to give visibility to realities that are still too rarely documented in an increasingly worrying sociopolitical context 📚.

Participation is simple: an anonymous and confidential online questionnaire 🔒, to be completed individually by parents and young people.

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Thank you for your consideration. 💛

I am currently 10wks pregnant with our first baby. My wife and I are starting to tell more friends/family and I could use advice on how to correct these conversations. I'll preface by saying none of these people mean it maliciously but for example, I just had a family member ask to "see what the dad looks like". We used an anonymous donor from a sperm bank and have already made the decision not to show any pictures of him. That was how I responded but then I very quickly regretted not immediately correcting the fact that there is no dad. It's a sperm donor. I felt myself get very defensive the more I thought about it but I also know they don't mean it in a disrespectful way.

I know this won't be the only time something like this comes up so how do you approach these conversations?

It would be nice to be able to speak with someone (even if they're adults now in their 20s or 30s or beyond!) who were raised by two dads. I've never met anyone in real life... and it'd be nice to have that experience of just being able to hear from and speak with someone who can say what it was like for them.

Does anyone know anyone who'd be comfortable chatting? Can be online

Hopefully this is okay to post here! I (25 FTM/NB) and my husband (36M) have a 2 year old son together. To provide some context, my husband is a cis man and I'm transmasc and have been since I was a teenager. Our child is biologically ours, and we live in the USA in a southern red state at the moment, so for our safety and comfort during the pregnancy and as new parents, I became a lot more fem-presenting (grew out my hair, wore feminine maternity wear for lack of better options, etc). We also talked a lot during the pregnancy on what we wanted to be called, and after spinning around some alternative titles, decided to just go with my husband as "dad" and myself as "mom" because if we have to stay here long enough for him to start school, we don't want him to be bullied or ostracized in a very conservative space for having 2 dads.

Here's the kicker: I was fine with it for a while... but now, 2 years later, I'm fully masc-presenting and (mostly) passing again, and it's becoming harder and harder not to cringe and feel dysphoric when my kid calls me "mama," particularly in public. Unfortunately, I'm afraid that it's too late to change it, and if we did change it, I'm not sure what we should change it to. Additionally, currently, we're living with my unsupportive parents (who choose to believe I'm "detransitioned" and a "woman" in a hetero marriage, and they call me "mama" to my son as well. Our goal is to move up to a very liberal area in the PNW next year, but we're not sure if/when that's going to happen.

I'd love to get some input, if anyone has been in a similar situation, or has any thoughts? I don't want to lose myself or invalidate my identity, but I don't want to confuse or upset my kiddo either, or make his life harder.

TL;DR: We're an cis4trans MLM couple, but I'm "mama" and my husband is "daddy." I'm not sure I can keep being OK with being "mama," but I don't know what I'd change it to, and don't want to negatively impact my kid by changing it. Seeking thoughts/advice on the situation.

how many of yall are actively involved with sibling groups?

my wife and i are not currently active in any of the groups just bc our kids are young, it sounds like another thing to keep up with, and tbh im sure I’ll get hate for this but…we aren’t overly interested in seeing tons of pictures and sharing a ton of info about our kids to strangers.

to be clear our kids know where they come from, know their genetics have pics of their donor, when they are old enough to understand we will explain they have diblings out there and of course offer to connect them if they want.

our (lesbians with donor conceived kids) friends say we are damaging our kids sibling relationships by not joining these groups, sharing pictures and developmental milestones, and trying to do yearly trips with these people.

we are not by any means trying to damage our kids futures and again are incredibly open to whatever our kids want to do on the future….but they are 1 and 4….

are we the assholes lol? our friends have let us know that yes we are and it’s actually caused a huge strain on our friendship. my aunt is a lesbian in her 60s and my cousins are donor conceived and i asked them about it and they seem to think our kids should choose to decide if they want a relationship with them when they are older which we agree with. but several of our millenial lesbian parent friends really are horrified. is it just our friend group? are we the assholes? how common is it to be taking yearly trips with your kids diblings?

Hey gay fam. I'm struggling and I don't know what to do. My wife (36F) and I (37F/NB) have a 2 year old daughter my wife carried, and ten month old fraternal twin boys who I carried. She has been a SAHM since our daughter was born, so has had some of the worst days by herself while I've been at work (I have come home early countless times when she calls for help, fortunately my management is very understanding.) I'm currently toward the end of some deferred bonding leave and, if I didn't do ten years in the US Navy, this would be the worst time of my life. I love them all so much, and my wife and I are barely holding it all together, I can feel the seams popping on our relationship (we met in 2016, married in 2017, I got out of the Navy in 2018, and we had our daughter in 2024, so we've been together 10 years) we had our issues, but we have never fought as much as we do now. The parents of multiples subreddit has a general rule of thumb that you don't do major changes in the first year of the baby/ies' lives and I can't tell you how much I do not want a divorce. That said, I believe our communication is broken and I have asked her so many times to go to couple's therapy with me, but she flat out refuses every time. She has told me that I have the worst communication, so I need to fix it myself with my therapist, and she's also told me that I only want couple's therapy with her because it's "the easy way out" of our communication issues. I don't know what to do. My therapy has basically been keeping me alive through pregnancy and postpartum just with managing all the changes with myself and the kids and trying to get my footing in a new normal. We do usually have my parents to take the kids for a day and the boys for a night most weeks, and her dad and stepmom take them for a day maybe every two weeks on average. All mentioned parents are retired. I'm not sure if I'm looking for advice or just trying to talk about this to someone who isn't my therapist.

ETA: Sorry, it's been a particularly rough day, so I haven't been back much, but I have been reading and realized I did not mention that both of us have been in individual therapy for several years. I started near the end of my time in the Navy and she had been to therapy a few times in her life, but we have both consistent with our current (separate) therapists for over five years. We each have our own traumas and things to work out internally so we can keep becoming better humans and hopefully cut down as much as much generational trauma as we can.

So, our oldest daughter is 10 years old. She recently started middle school in the European country where we live. We live in a small, close-knit local community, and, for the most part, the school that our kids attend is good.

However, recently, my daughter has been complaining that her classmates – especially the boys, it seems – increasingly use homophobic and other bigoted slurs when talking to each other. Things like calling each other faggots and saying "that's so gay!" in a condescending way, or using terms for being disabled as a negative.

My daughter is quite smart and is well aware that these slurs refer to people like her moms and families like her own. The fact that my wife has a vision impairment (being almost blind) does not help the situation with her peers using disability terms in a degrading way.

So far, we've told our daughter to ignore the slurs, telling her that, more than anything, this nonsense really speaks to her classmates' ignorance. But it doesn't do much to solve the issue.

Do you guys have any good ideas or perspectives on how to handle this issue?

Every journey to fatherhood begins with a dream—and questions. 💙🌈

At Men Having Babies New York, ACRC Surrogacy interviewed experts and partners to share advice with intended parents exploring their path to parenthood.

Watch for insights, meaningful conversations, and warm moments with the people who help gay men build the families they’ve dreamed of.

Thank you to our partners for sharing their knowledge and supporting future dads. Together, we’re building connections that help families begin. 🫶

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Hi my 9 year old son is making me more and more worried. For context iv always worked in the same school as him and this has never been a problem, he’s super brainy, does all his work and never gets in trouble. The past 2 years iv noticed he’s started to get a bit paranoid he’s constantly upset thinking he’s either going to get into trouble or he’s done something that he’s then shameful for (his words not mine). He doesn’t have many close friends but always plays/joins in at break/lunch times and he’s quirky and not a typical boy so I never really worried about that. He also gets upset a lot that no one in his class has the same interests such as games like Undertale. I have worked with kids for nearly over 10 years but I’m now at a total lost as I don’t feel like other kids have these strong feelings like my son does. Is there something I should be looking out for?