For many queer millennials, parenting may be out of reach

[xchrom]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/28/queer-parenting-high-costs


Between the cost of medical procedures and legal fees, the cost of parenting for queer couples may be prohibitive. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian

I'm 23, I'm queer, and I want kids – not now, but in the next decade. It's my inherent desire, but it's not without complications. I hear all the time that I'm too young to be worrying about something as far-off in the future as a family, but most people don't understand the costs of accomplishing queer parenthood.

Everyone grows up hearing kids are expensive. What queers don't hear – because a lot of us aren't out when we're young, and because heteronormativity dominates popular discussion of family – is that our children will probably be even more expensive than other people's kids. Because, for us, conception and parental rights aren't free.

As a millennial, I am: college educated, underemployed, and saddled with high student loan debt and an increasingly obscene cost of living. In these ways, I'm hardly unique. But, when you find yourself googling the price of sperm while planning your monthly budget, you realize your fiscal concerns are different from those of the average millennial. Although I'm young, if I have children, it will be because I financially plan for them now.

The median price of artificial insemination (cost #1) with donor sperm (cost #2) hovers around $2,500, and it can take upwards of four tries (cost #3, 4, 5) for an embryo to be fertilized. Artificial insemination is often supplemented with monthly fertility drugs (cost #6), because frozen sperm has a lower success rate for fertilization. The price of attempting biological parenthood is variable, but generally expensive. Adoption through foster care can cost next to nothing, though it's a much less controlled process than private adoptions, which can be as affordable as $5,000, and as expensive as $50,000. Regardless, joint same-sex adoptions are not explicitly legal in the majority of US states.

[Laelth]

1. k&r for the truth, however depressing it may be. n/t

-Laelth

[marginlized]

2. I prefer Doug Stanhope's take on the issue

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[Fearless]

3. It is becoming less of a challege

As time goes on. Thirty years ago, this issue, at the level we're talking about, was nearly laughable, but we've moved a lot and we will continue to move further. There are alternatives not mentioned here as well. The first being a donor whom you know and who is willing to do so for little or no cost. And the opposite, a friend or relative willing to be a surrogate. I've seen both and they are economically inexpensive, albeit rare. Other than that, many states are more than willing to place babies in the care of same-sex couples. In time, others will, and believe it or not, eventually all will.

Time is on our side, it will become easier as the years continue. Maybe even in the next ten years.