THE SAME-SEX COUPLE
When Hannah Bayliffe and Tash Dallow talked about having a baby, getting married first didn’t even figure.
But they are engaged. Dallow, 36, proposed in January 2020. The couple had been together four years, Dallow was really happy and Bayliffe was a great stepmum to Dallow’s son Harlow from an earlier relationship.
‘‘I just didn’t want to let it get away,’’ Dallow laughs.
But buying a house together took priority, and then having smiley 4-month-old baby Ollie. Life got expensive and the wedding got pushed back.
When Harlow was born, Dallow and her then partner were mostly surrounded by supportive gay friends. This time around there’ve been more questions around ‘‘What does your husband do?’’, she says.
‘‘I’ve had to correct a lot of people. But me personally, I haven’t felt judged or questioned. And if they do, you just don’t have anything to do with them any more.’’
As the non-birth parent, 31-year-old Bayliffe has appreciated health workers asking her straight up who she is. ‘‘I’ll be like, ‘I’m the other mum’.’’
Harlow has split care between his two mums and their new partners. He gets the odd comment: ‘‘Your mum is gay’’. But he likes to brag that he has four mums.
One enduring frustration is people saying Harlow needs a male role model, Dallow says.
‘‘He’s a boy’s boy. You would not think he’s got four mums. I coach his rugby team. You don’t feel like he needs a dad in his life.’’
With Ollie, Dallow and Bayliffe have the same parental challenges as any family. Bayliffe has returned to work, but sometimes wants to just stay home with Ollie.
Dallow feels lucky to live in a time when no-one bats an eyelid at the idea of two mums, compared to her parents’ generation, who couldn’t come out until after having children.
Bayliffe says it’s cool to see more families that don’t conform to traditional norms.
‘‘It does make you feel more accepted. No matter how much you think ‘I don’t care what people think of me’, everyone at the end of the day wants to feel like they’re not the only ones.’’