Being a parent is never easy. Becoming an LGBTQ parent felt like it was nearly impossible. As Director of Family Equity and Diversity for Family Equality, the leading national nonprofit advocating for LGBTQ families, I feel confident in saying that a majority of LGBTQ families are created very intentionally.
Regardless if your LGBTQ family was created via adoption, ART, surrogacy, co-parenting or any other queer-focused way, without the privileges of an “oops,” LGBTQ family formation is a mixture of time, money, emotional investment and sacrifice. For many of us, it was a journey with countless chapters.
For my wife and I, we are so grateful to have two happy and healthy kiddos. Despite the wild ride to create our family, we would have never anticipated parenting during a racial justice revolution and global pandemic.
Like most people, my family and I are living our “new normal” of extra hand washing, mask-wearing, social distancing and quarantining. And, like most parents, our lives revolve around our children. Our household was rocked when the end of the school year was drastically impacted and suddenly shifted online, missing our opportunity to truly thank our favorite teachers with goodbye hugs and experience closure. We celebrated the completion of second grade with a teacher parade through our neighborhood full of decorated cars, honking horns and a lot of air hugs.
To our dismay, we watched our summer plans of attending Family Week in Provincetown, Massachusetts dissolve along with sweaty theme park visits, play dates with our favorite friends, exploratory museum trips and other adventures. Our summer camps were replaced with virtual spaces and activities. All the while, my wife and I had to learn how to navigate conversations about the harsh reality of safety in a COVID world with our 4 and 8-year-olds.
Adding to the complexity of our situation, one of my kiddos has special needs; a speech delay along with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). Thus, even our therapeutic spaces have become virtual. Thankfully, my wife and I have always found LGBTQ-friendly and welcoming professionals and direct service providers to work with our son and our family. We are exceedingly grateful for this fact when these professionals entered “inside” the safety of our home. My son, excited with the newly discovered technology of video conferencing, gave thousands of virtual tours of our home — including his bedroom and ours. Most importantly, everyone met his beloved guinea pigs who all too often participated in the sessions.
Having these therapists inside our home was a little uncomfortable for me at first, but welcomed since I was excited to see him so engaged and adapting to the change. I will admit I was a little reluctant to lose our privacy. I was fully aware they were seeing our family pictures. They were seeing our Pride and rainbow decorations, overhearing our conversations and witnessing our family dynamic firsthand. Being huge believers of transparency and having always had the privilege of living our authentic lives, my wife and I have never hesitated about openly sharing our family structure, especially people who are in our children’s’ lives, but this time it wasn’t on my terms. It was on COVID’s.
Our days turned into weeks and our weeks turned into months. My position with Family Equality has always been remote and my wife’s role with a local university, easily translated into remote work. We officially settled into our quarantining lifestyle. As time passed, my wife and I anxiously watched COVID numbers continuously rise.
As longevity and gravity of our “new normal” began to truly set in, our summer conversations soon turned into questions about school starting in the fall. We chatted with other parents. We reached out to friends who are teachers. We joined Facebook groups. All in hopes for some answers. However, all we found were more questions.
Ending the school year on an online platform was a tremendous challenge for my 8-year-old with an IEP (Individualized Educational Plan), who struggles with transitions, sudden changes to his routine, sensory overload, performance and social anxiety and limited attention span. Not to mention my wife and I found ourselves attempting to teach common core math, which alone is a test to our intelligence and patience.
With our 4-year-old, we tried our best to continue his preschool curriculum but found ourselves laboring to juggle our work and his school. He was not happy. He missed his friends, his teachers and playing on the playground. My wife and I failed in comparison to his classmates.
Overall, it was not pretty for anyone. With this experience, we anxiously awaited to see the plan for starting schools in the fall and finally, a few weeks ago, the state and our county released their back to school plan and options.
Our back to school conversations continued amongst ourselves and our village. It quickly became very apparent to us that the future of our children’s education is directly correlated to our family situation. Since my wife and I had the privilege of both working from home, we have the privilege of keeping our kiddos at home, which is what we’ve chosen to do. But this is a privilege and luxury many are not afforded.
We had a choice. Countless other parents did not have a choice due to a plethora of other reasons. To me, it felt like it directly tied into the already ongoing cultural conversation about race, socioeconomic status, immigration, healthcare, employment equity, unemployment support and overall accessibility to resources and assistance.
As an immigrant, a queer person of color and an LGBTQ parent who lives in the intersectionality of several marginalized communities, this broke my heart. It is very clear how dramatically and drastically marginalized and oppressed communities are inequivalently and inproportionately impacted by COVID.
I believe ALL parents and caretakers should truly be given an option to choose what is the best for their children. However the harsh reality, with our current systemic oppressive structure in place, this is not the case. So, as we all continue this uncharted journey that is 2020, I refuse to pass any judgment on any parent or caretaker doing their best for their family.
Tatiana Quiroga is the Director of Family Equity and Diversity for Family Equality. She is a proud mother, wife and LGBTQ advocate in Central Florida.
