Lucy’s Experiences as a Solo LGBT+ Parent
Lucy lives in Manchester with her 19 year old son and 10 year old daughter. She was one of the first ever parents to go to a Proud 2 b Parents meet-up! For LGBT+ Parents and Carers Day, Lucy has shared her trailblazing journey to parenthood, as well as the joys and challenges of being a solo LGBT+ parent.
I always knew I wanted to be a parent from at least 16 years old. I was obsessed with the idea. My friends would buy the usual teenage magazines while I would buy ones about parenting! By the time I was 17 I also knew I was gay. So I knew my route to parenthood wasn’t going to be the ‘normal’ way.
Starting a family in my mid-20s seemed like the right time for me. So I said to myself that no matter how life turned out, whether I was single or with someone, that was going to be my time. So that's what I did! As it turned out, I was single at that point in my life so I started the journey to solo parenthood.
At the time I had a couple of friends who I talked to about using sperm from a known donor - and for them it hadn’t worked out in terms of the donor later changing their mind and claiming parental rights and custody. So that strongly influenced my decision to have treatment at a fertility clinic.
Left: Lucy holding her baby boy 19 years ago
I did try one clinic in the UK in the beginning. But back then, the law was really different. You got very little information in the UK about the donor and unlike today all donors were fully anonymous.
The moment that really hit me was when I had the insemination. I looked at this tiny little sticker on the vial which had all the information I would ever know about this guy. And I imagined my kids going, what's my donor like? And all I would ever be able to tell them was the size of this sticker. In the end I actually felt relieved when I didn't get pregnant.
After that, I found a clinic in America and personally organised for them to send sperm to the UK. They said I was the first person to ever do that at their clinic! They also said I was the first single lesbian they'd ever had. They didn’t know quite what to do with me really. They gave me single mum leaflets and they gave me leaflets for lesbian couples. But their literature wasn’t written with people like me in mind.
In terms of resources available at the time, I remember looking for solo parent by choice websites or forums, and all I found was bitter mothers crying into their laps about how awful single parenting was after their horrible male partners had left them. And that was literally all I could find. Before I became pregnant though, I was on holiday in San Francisco and did find a book there called ‘Single Parents by Choice’. I shipped that back with about 30 diverse children's books because again, you just couldn't get them in the UK at the time.
Back then there was no social media like we have today. But most people used internet forums and message boards. People over 35+ might remember one called Ginger Beer [cockney rhyming slang for queer]. There was no parenting section so they had to create one for me.
10 years later, when I was having my daughter, the situation was just so different. That section of Ginger Beer just grew and grew and grew. But back then it was like, lesbian with child? What do you mean!? Whereas now I feel almost like lesbian couples are almost the same as straight couples. They get together, and most start thinking about kids. There’s just been the most enormous change in the last 20 years.
I’ve had really different experiences with each child. With my first child one thing I loved was just knowing I was raising my child in a diverse way, with openness and understanding of different sexualities and different gender presentations.
When he was young, I dated someone for a few years and so he saw me with a partner. He lived in this really diverse world and that just felt lovely. And he had his own gender expression. He wore skirts and tights and dresses for years when he was little because he wanted to, and he grew up in a world where that was just absolutely fine.
But for my daughter it felt really different. I think as I got older, my sexuality felt less and less important to me, and what felt more important was finding parents I connected with or had similar values to. And I sort of hit a point where I was like, it really doesn't matter who we hang out within the bedroom. And I sort of swung completely the other way, feeling like it wasn’t relevant at all. I have also been single for a long time so she hasn’t seen me with anyone.
But now that my daughter's 10, I'm seeing that it was a bit of a mistake because she's grown up in a much more normative world. I think for a long time she just forgot I was gay because I've always been single. So she’d ask, if I ever got together with someone, would I have a stepdad? I'd be like, well, no because I'd get together with a woman, so you'd have a stepmum. So it just wasn't on her radar.
I've also noticed that she carries a lot of anxiety about me being gay. She asks me to hide my sexual orientation from her friends. So that's really difficult. We have known a couple of other lesbian couples who were parents just through chance at her schools. But it's not been enough. So I regret not prioritising going to more LGBT+ meet-ups with her.
I remember when my son was younger when we did have some problems with homophobia from local kids. At one point it got so bad that we had to call the police. I lived a five minute walk away from my partner and so we'd walk between our houses a lot. These kids realised we were together and used to wait for us to walk by and harass us. My partner used to get graffiti on her drive too. Thankfully the police took it very seriously and dealt with the kids to stop their behaviour.
My son was only four at the time though. So it just broke my heart that he had to learn about homophobia when he was so young and learn that there were people out there in the world that hated his mum just for being gay.
Left: Lucy and her son today.
I have so many happy and positive memories too. For example I educated my son at home so I had a lot of time with him. A lot of time and freedom to just talk and talk in a way that you don't get to when your child is in school.
And my daughter is very affectionate. She tells me every single day that I’m not just the best mummy in the world, I’m the best person in all the multiverses! So it’s incredible to experience such unconditional love with the family I’d always wanted.