While heterosexual couples may struggle with traditional gender roles, queer motherhood offers a radical, beautiful alternative
What does it mean to be a mother? I’ve been thinking about that question since before I became one myself, not only in my own writing but while reading the work of others. I’ve read hundreds of thousands of words on the topic, by writers from a huge range of perspectives and backgrounds, and though it has been hugely rewarding, the question still lingers.
Not long after giving birth, while battling to feed a premature infant with my body, I picked up a copy of Claire Lynch’s memoir Small: On Motherhoods. It is, among many other things, a tender, powerful reflection on queer motherhood, and on what it means to be a mother when you are not the partner who gives birth to the baby or breastfeeds them, and how it feels to push against those archetypes. It sheds light on how it feels to be embarking on parenthood as an atypical family: the scenes set in pre-natal classes, where Lynch is grouped with the dads, are wryly funny but make a serious point about gender-divided parenting culture. The part where a colleague says: “Here she comes, the woman who can’t even be bothered to give birth to her own children,” (Lynch had had a miscarriage and eventually they decided that her wife would carry the baby) made me gasp.
