Ten years ago there were barely any books about being an LGBTQ+ parent, but that landscape is now entirely different. While LGBTQ+ parents are the same as any other parents in the ways that matter like being loving and capable, there are issues specific to our community like gender dynamics, discrimination and legal challenges, and pregnancy and adoption. These books help LGBTQ+ parents navigate those subjects in manuals just for them.
Written by a trans dad who went viral for being a pregnant man, this book is a memoir with beautiful insight on how queer parents have so much to offer. Reese argues that instead of falling into roles predetermined by gender, LGBTQ+ couples are freed from this by looking at which parent is actually best suited for overnight feeding shifts or laundry duty instead of which one is a “woman’s job,” for example.
This book isn’t a how-to guide, but a collection of stories and experiences from LGBTQ+ parents who share advice from the practical to the emotional.
This book actually covers more than just info for gay dads, such as how to know if you’re ready to be a parent and how to deal with schools that aren’t inclusive of same-sex parents. Of course, the focus is families with two men raising kids and it goes over how to raise a baby neither of you birthed and issues with raising girls when neither of you are one.
There are many more books that focus on how to become queer parents than actually being them, but this one is notable as a new release and as also having parenting information included beyond conception, pregnancy, birthing, and breastfeeding information from a LGBTQ+ perspective.
Mombian.com calls this “a must-read anthology about queer women and nonbinary people who are nonbiological and nongestational parents.” The essays look at what motherhood means and the writers’ diverse experiences as mothers.
