In our penultimate post for LGBT History Month, we’re featuring Rebecca and Kelly from ‘Amelia’s 2 Mummies‘ – a UK-based, two-mum, family who write about life with their daughter Amelia. Similar to us, they started their conception journey only, however things quickly changed when they found out their donor was a lot closer than they realised.

If you would like to read last weeks post, you can do so here.

Why do you have two Mummies, Amelia?

Do you think children are born with prejudices?  In my opinion I don’t.  Children around our daughters age (three) are so inquisitive.  They are really starting to notice differences between themselves and others.   Children who look different to them and act different to them.  We’ve really started to notice this because we have had a couple of children the same age as Amelia ask why Amelia has two Mummies.  To them this is a big difference; they have a Mummy and Daddy so why does Amelia not?  

A little girl at Amelia’s nursery asked why Amelia had two mummies a couple of weeks ago.  Her nursery is fantastic, and the nursery worker said,

That was it; no funny expressions, no more questions, just acceptance.  Earlier this week another little girl that we’ve known since Bumps & Babies group asked the same question.  I gave the same answer as the nursery worker and our friend said, ‘Amelia’s very lucky isn’t she’.  The girl nodded her head and went off to play.  Neither of the girls were asking in a prejudice way, they were just curious and wanted to know why.  

I think what created prejudice in children is the people around them; parents, siblings, grandparents, other family members and teachers.  I don’t think any child is born homophobic, racist or a bully, it is learnt behaviour.  We were once told by (ex)friends ‘when you decide to be gay you give up your right to have children’.  I won’t go into the ‘when you decide to be gay’ part (that’s for another day!).  Their reason for this way of thinking was because children of gay people will get bullied.  OK, this may be true, but children get bullied for all sorts of reasons.  How about caregivers teach children not to be bullies, isn’t that the actual problem?  Children are so impressionable, and they pick up on every little thing. 

If we show prejudice against others, children will learn that behaviour.

We nearly didn’t have children for this exact reason.  Kelly never saw herself having children and this was a deal breaker for me; to be honest it nearly ended our relationship before it really began.  Kelly came out in the late 90’s where she had faced prejudice for being gay.  This gave her an entirely different view on having children to me.  Kelly’s main worry was what the effects would be on the child because they had gay parents.  If we did have a child, it would get bullied and how could we bring a child into the world knowing that it would get bullied.  

I always wanted children. As a toddler I role played with my dolls, attempting to breastfeed them which my Mum loves telling people!  I’ve always been broody, and I had my life plan mapped out in my teens.  My plan was in place by the time I was 21 when I bought a house, got engaged, got married at 23 and was planning to have children.  Then it all fell apart.  Three years on and I was divorced, and all my plans went out of the window.  I found this year particularly hard.  Not only had all my plans gone out of the window, I had started a relationship with Kelly (my now Wife) which wasn’t at all in my plan.  I knew that I wanted children, but I didn’t know how or if that would happen in this new relationship.

We talked a lot about having a child and the effects of us being gay, and the sad fact is, children get bullied for many different reasons.  I was bullied in school so knew that unfortunately this is an issue for many children.  LGBT families are becoming more common and we hoped it wouldn’t be so much of an issue when our child got to school age.  We realised that if a child has love and attention from their parents whether they are opposite or same sex that was all that really mattered.  So here we are, 6 years later and we have a three year old.  We have a house, we’re married, and we have a child so I have everything I hoped to have but it’s nothing like I thought it would be back in 2010! 

Prejudice will always be a part of all our lives in some form unfortunately.  Social media has its negatives and positive but I’m hoping that it can be a good platform to show families like ours as becoming more ‘normal’ in society and that children grow up with less prejudice towards people that are different than them.  Wouldn’t the world be a lovely place if we could accept everyone’s difference like a three year old!