When I had my son, I was so excited to find a queer-friendly new parents group within walking distance of where I lived, and I was even more excited to open up and share the common stresses that all new parents face with other people like me. I particularly hit it off with a lesbian mom who was there without her military spouse and I was happy to listen to the particular difficulties deployment raised for her family. “But it could be worse,” she said. “I could be married to a man.” Now, I am not married to my partner, but he does happen to be a man, and I said as much. “Oh,” she said, “I thought this was a queer parenting group.”
And a bisexual parent faces additional stigma, especially early in parenthood when they need the most support.
It was, in fact, a queer parenting group. And I am, in fact, queer. But as it so often happens with bisexual people, I was erased in the context of my romantic relationship. I wish I could say this was the only time this had happened to me, but a bi person almost constantly has to be coming out. And a bisexual parent faces additional stigma, especially early in parenthood when they need the most support, because the normalization of bisexuality continues to take a back seat to other LGBTQIA+ issues.
A study conducted by the Society for Research in Child Development has shown that bisexual parents experience substantially greater stress than both gay and straight parents, with as much as 20 percent of those surveyed exceeding the threshold for a diagnosable psychiatric disorder. The increased stress of “double discrimination”—discrimination from both the straight and gay communities—puts bi people at higher risk for poor mental health outcomes. And that has troubling implications for our children. The study’s findings concluded that when a bisexual parent’s stresses are controlled for, the impact a parent’s bisexuality has on children is no different than the impact of a straight or gay parent’s sexuality, meaning that it is the very act of erasure and discrimination against the parent that is having a negative impact on our kids. Parenting is challenging for everyone, but when you pile on the added stressors of erasure and the isolation that comes with it, parenting becomes that much harder. They say it takes a village to raise a child; more and more, bisexual parents are entirely on their own.
Ultimately, that’s why I wanted to write this article in the first place: to connect with other bisexual parents who are, in one way or another, erased by their relationships. And to show all parents how the simple act of validating a bisexual person will go a long way toward better mental health outcomes for both the parents and the children.
They say it takes a village to raise a child; more and more, bisexual parents are entirely on their own.
I interviewed a number of other bisexual parents and was relieved, in a way, to find that they were having many of the same issues I was having. Nate Clark, a writer and director, lives in Los Angeles with his husband and their two-year-old son, but he always corrects people when they say he is in a “gay marriage.” “What I think is important,” he said, “from the perspective of a bisexual, and as a parent around other parents (most of whom are in heterosexual relationships or couplings), is to use every opportunity I have to assert the fact that I’m bi. Whenever somebody labels us as gay, I really make sure that I’m using the terminology that I am comfortable with. I refer to us as being in a same-sex marriage, as opposed to a gay marriage.”
Terminology is really important for me as well. I always refer to my significant other as my partner, a term that is often a point of contention both inside and outside the queer community. And although my partner is straight, he’s begun using the term for me as well. I, like Nate, am comfortable with the term “bisexual”—as I define it as being attracted to genders like mine and genders unlike mine—but that isn’t necessarily true for everyone under the bi umbrella.
Sarah Murphy, a nonprofit fundraising and management consultant who lives with her husband and three children in New Orleans, does not like to use the term “bisexual.” “I identify as queer,” she said, “and prefer not to use the term ‘bisexual,’ because I think it implies that I am only attracted to cis people, which is not the case. My sexual and romantic attractions are really not reliant on others’ gender expression.”
Bisexual individuals face unique challenges compared to their gay, lesbian, and straight counterparts. According to Psychology Today, bisexual people are also significantly less likely to be completely “out” in our communities, instead picking and choosing with whom we are fully honest about ourselves. Dr. David J. Ley writes: “A majority of [bisexual people studied], 58%, reported either high or very high levels of psychological distress, with histories of anxiety, depression, and eating disorders the most common reported diagnoses. And 67% reported they had been diagnosed with mental illness by professionals. Almost half of the respondents disclosed self-harm or thoughts about suicide within just the last two years. More than one in four (28%) had attempted suicide in their lives and 78% had thought about it.” These findings have wide-ranging implications for those of us who go on to become parents, a journey that is already wrought with difficulties even for our gay, lesbian, and straight brethren.
Simple visibility wouldn’t solve all of these problems, but it would certainly be a start. When I asked them about erasure, all of the bi folks I spoke to had stories about their experiences with it. “I experience erasure on a daily basis,” Sarah said. “I feel like I’m perpetually coming out. When discussing things in online forums and I’ve said things like ‘as a queer woman,’ I’ve had people say things like ‘But you have a husband and children. Are you lying or just closeted?’” She went on to describe how her husband worked as a teacher for the archdiocese for the first few years of their marriage, and how her sexuality could very well have cost him his job.
Simple visibility wouldn’t solve all of these problems, but it would certainly be a start.
But it isn’t only heterosexual spaces that are problematic. “I’m routinely rejected from queer spaces,” she said, “[and] straight people have labeled me as ‘wanting attention.’ I’ve been met with deep skepticism in professional queer spaces as some kind of interloper because my marriage is straight presenting.”
My relationship is also straight presenting, and while there is privilege in “passing” as straight, the damage the erasure does is undeniable. When I tried another parenting group, I was about 10 years older than the other moms there. And while we were watching our babies crawl over the grass to snatch toys out of one another’s hands, one of the moms turned to me and asked, “So, what does your husband do?” “Oh, I’m not married,” I said, before I could tell her that my partner was a photographer. But I never got the chance to. “That’s so sad,” she said. And that was about when I scooped up my kid and made my excuses.
“It’s vital, in my opinion,” Nate said, when I asked him about his experiences with erasure, “to just keep making sure that people get it and that the representation happens, because I don’t want any more kids growing up the way that I grew up: feeling alone and having self-esteem issues based solely on the fact that my identity is not represented.”
That resonates with me too. And though my son is too young, at two years old, to understand sexuality, I am going to make sure he grows up understanding that families come in a rainbow of beautiful configurations and that no matter how he identifies, he will be loved.
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