This ground-breaking collection of writing brings vital and refreshing insights into current discussions about queer parenting. The essays blend narrative and academic voices from Canada, the United States, England and Australia. The contributors are parents, prospective parents, writers, academics, lawyers, activists, health care professionals and — most significantly — queer spawn, the children of LGBTQ parents. The themes represented in these 40 essays include butches raising sons; queer youth as parents; trans experience in fertility clinics; legal and historical reflections; bisexuality and adoption; race relations in the family; heteronormativity in queer family kids’ books; class issues within families; dealing with infertility; polyamory and parenting; discussions with sperm donors, single moms, gay dads; developments in reproductive technologies; rural and urban experience; and reflections on the meanings of biology and of “queer” parenting.

Rachel Epstein has been a queer parenting activist, educator, and researcher for close to twenty years and coordinates the LGBTQ Parenting Network at the Sherbourne Health Centre in Toronto, Ontario. She has published on a wide range of queer parenting issues, including assisted human reproduction, queer spawn in schools, butch pregnancy, and the tensions between queer sexuality, radicalism, and parenting. Rachel is the 2008 winner of the Steinert Ferreiro Award (Community One Foundation), recognizing her leadership and pivotal contributions towards the support, recognition, and inclusion of queer parents and their children in Canada.

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“Postmodern indeed. As a single Black lesbian mother, I assumed that a resource like this wouldn't yet exist. On searching, I discovered a literary road map to queer parenting and family that is current, diverse and mini-encyclopedic in its breadth. Reading this work made me feel as though I had added to my family of choice.”

—Ruth Cameron, The Feminist Review