The truth about being a lesbian parent
It’s now no longer remarkable, says Melanie Rickey, the wife of shopping guru Mary Portas
It was perhaps Jane Garvey, the presenter of Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4, who put it best: “The leader of a Conservative party in the UK is female, gay and pregnant. This, kids, is a world we could not have dreamt of. #Progress,” she wrote on Twitter this week. I would add: “Congratulations.”
Her message, liked by 1,700 followers and counting at the time of writing, followed the announcement on Thursday that Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, is three months pregnant.
The 39-year-old politician said she was expecting her first child with Jen Wilson, her fiancée, following successful IVF treatment, and that both were “overjoyed” at the prospect of becoming parents. “I actually can’t keep the smile off my face,” she said, sweetly.
I totally know how she feels. After coming out during my late teens, I quickly accepted that becoming a parent would never be a possibility, and it made me extremely sad.
It was the Nineties, and back then the idea of having a child within a same-sex relationship was far from the normal and achievable thing it has become today. But I was still young, so did not dwell on it too much. Only, as I grew older and the paths to parenthood multiplied, I realised it need not be like this at all.
I met my wife, Mary Portas, in 2003 at a Royal College of Art dinner. Then in her early 40s, Mary already had two children from her first marriage to their father.
But when we wed, in 2010, we talked about adding to our unit to make our own special family together. Mary has three brothers and we thought it would be lovely if one of them was willing to help us fulfil our dream.
In the kindest and most generous gesture, the brother in question said yes. And thanks to successful IVF treatment, I conceived Horatio, our son, now five. There was never any mystery to it; no bashful silence surrounding how all this happened. After all, why should there have been?
I was entirely open about everything from the start. “I’m pregnant,” I’d tell people happily. “And Mary’s brother is helping. I’ve had IVF.” And that was that.
Of course, some people were curious and wanted to know how it worked. So I told them. Many people need help conceiving these days, in any case – not just those of us in same-sex relationships – so there’s no reason to shy away from the subject.
We’ve been equally upfront with Horatio from the moment he was old enough to understand. I think he was around 18 months when we told him who his father was, and he sees the man he calls “Daddy” regularly.
I, meanwhile, am “Mummy” and Mary is “Mamma”, and together we share the parenting of our son as would any other couple we know.
We are both working parents
– Mary is a retail consultant and broadcaster, and I am a fashion consultant running two businesses of my own – and we both play to our strengths on the mothering front. I help Horatio with his music practice, for instance, while Mary does much of the reading, drawing and art with him.
Essentially, we are no different from other families. As Davidson said of her plans to lead her party into the 2021 Holyrood elections, she is “simply doing what thousands of working women do every year”.
Likewise, Mary and I are just two working mums, bringing up a child in a loving and caring environment. I don’t see myself as being in a separate category from any other mother at the school gates, and I’m pleased to say no one has ever made me feel like I am.
We live in north-west London and here, as in many other cities around the UK, it’s just not a big deal at all.
The statistics only confirm this. In 2015, it was reported that one baby was born through IVF to lesbian parents almost every day in the UK, while in 2016, one in seven adoption orders was made with a gay couple.
With the legalisation of same-sex marriage and the enormous leap in social acceptance, these numbers will surely increase. And fortunately, today, the ways and means available to same-sex parents are various: from donor insemination to coparenting, adoption and surrogacy, we now have options open to us that in the not-so distant past were unthinkable.
That said, the way a child is conceived or comes out of your body is far less relevant than the life they will have. Davidson does not plan to make public whether she knows the biological father of her child or used an anonymous sperm donor, as is her prerogative; not every couple, whether gay or straight, is comfortable with sharing the same level of detail.
But she has said that she hopes her announcement “takes some of the taboo or mystery away” from gay couples having children – and here, I believe, she is pushing at an open door. Everywhere we look, there are celebrities leading the way. Tom Daley, the Olympic diver, and Dustin Lance Black, his screenwriter husband, announced in February that they were to become parents.
Sir Elton John and David Furnish have two sons together. And Ricky Martin, the singer, has twin boys, born to a surrogate mother.
Such visibility is important, but I’m not pretending the process is always easy. We were very lucky, but I know some others struggle.
Daley, 23, spoke only this week of the difficulties of having a child via a surrogate in the UK, where the law recognises the woman who carried the baby and her partner as the parents. Davidson admitted there’d been “ups and downs” along the way for her, too.
Still, as Garvey said, we live today in a world we could not have dreamt of – with possibilities we never expected. Medicine, technology and, crucially, social attitudes have changed so much already, and will no doubt continue to do so.
There is nothing remarkable about what Mary and I, or Ruth and Jen, have done, and anyone who looks at it askance is stuck in the 20th century.
If anything, dare I say it, the amount of effort we in the gay community make to have children, in some ways, makes us more switched-on as parents.
In my case, at least, I love and cherish every moment of motherhood because I never thought I’d get the chance to do this.
As for our son, he has triple the love: with two mothers and a father in his life, his cup really does runneth over. At the centre of a happy, bustling family, he knows that all that matters is the love with which he’s surrounded.
Anyone who looks at it askance is stuck in the 20th century