Lots of people talk about having a kid as ‘starting a family’. This rubs me the wrong way. For me, choosing to commit to a long term relationship with my husband was when we started our family. We got married as a symbol of that commitment but our family was started even before marriage. Having a child is an expansion of that family, not the start of it.
I think my definition or experience of family is particularly common in the queer community. One of the queer community slogans that I grew up hearing is ‘Love makes a family’. I think this partly is to say that it doesn’t take a man and a woman to make a family, but simply two (or more) people who are in love. It also relates to being rejected by biological family due to being queer and finding new family within the queer community who love and support you – your chosen family.
So why is having a baby referred to as ‘starting a family’? Is this a cisgender, heteronormative concept? Do people feel like their lives aren’t full enough as simply a couple and therefore their family isn’t complete or even formed until they have kids? I think this distinction matters and can have a big influence on how we view our relationships with our partners and the impact of having kids.
If you see having a kid as being the start of your family, the kid takes the position of being the glue that holds the family together. Without the kid, there is no family. I think this really devalues your relationship with your partner (who’s love, ideally, is what made you want to have a kid in the first place). This also devalues family units that don’t include children in society at large, increasing the stigma and shame for people who struggle with infertility, do not have the resources to access medical or social systems that would allow them to have kids, or simply chose not to have kids.
If you see your family as starting from when you make a commitment to your partner, it follows that you will need to cherish and nurture that relationship as being at the core of the family. You will value the time you had together before having a baby as well as the times you spend together away from the kid after they’re born as quality family time.
Am I missing something? Is there a positive spin to the concept of having a kid as ‘starting a family’? If you have a different perspective, I’d love to hear it. Leave a comment below or send me an email!
For now, I’m going to stick with Jake and I being a family unit that is soon to be expanding with the addition of a kid.
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