- Isabel Mader is bisexual, married to a man, and has two children.
- As a new parent, she feels disconnected from her queer identity and queer social circles.
There is grief in parenting. With each milestone your child reaches, there is a celebration and the creeping certainty that sooner rather than later, they will not exist as you know them now. Sometimes, you miss all the previous versions of your children even as you adore the ones in front of you.
Similarly, there is the loss of the previous version of yourself as a parent. "I am a completely different person now. I will never be that way again," I remember thinking one day. I've always been a proud bisexual woman who existed in queer social groups. But I feel so far removed from that past version of myself, especially now that I've been married to a man for more than five years and have two children. I still feel the loss of my queer identity with unexpected ferocity.
Once we had children, everything changed
Everything that they tell you will change when you have children has changed — and there are some things that they didn't mention. At the top of the list of things I did not expect was the grief of feeling completely disconnected from a large part of my identity: my queerness. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but I do have a theory.
Days at the park replaced nights at the gay bar. The school drop-off line replaced the coffee shop. I am no longer taking smoke breaks in alleys with the same people I go to Pride with, intensely arguing about the merits of whatever media we consumed that week, projects we're working on, or who we're sleeping with (and why it's justified). Instead, I am on the playground, being asked by other suburban moms, "And what does your husband do for work?"
Even other queer people assume I'm straight, especially when I'm with my children. On a rare night away from them at an event this summer, I was approached by people who rightfully noticed my queerness. It's the presence of children that seems to determine whether or not I am visibly queer.
But I'm far from alone in this. A recent study by the Williams Institute of UCLA found that nearly a quarter of lesbian, bisexual, and queer women ages 18 to 59 are parents. Of those parents, they were more likely to be bisexual, in a relationship with a man, and nonurban. I tick all those boxes. But I feel isolated from that community, especially since I no longer have the social validation of being assumed queer.
I know being a member of the alphabet mafia is about much more than your sexual and romantic history. I also know with visibility comes risk. "Passing" can be a privilege. But there's also the fact that since my partner is a cisgender man, we don't operate in the social circles and spaces we had before, and especially since we had children, I feel a deep loss.
Mourning my visible queerness is really mourning the version of myself I was before I became a parent
The loss of all the versions of our children we know so intimately is made all the more devastating by the risk that they will not know us — not really.
As my children grow older, I will face a choice: Do I come out to them? Would it matter if all they see in their lives is my relationship with their father? Is that a boundary I should cross for their sake, so they have the privilege of understanding their mother as a multifaceted and nuanced human being? Or should I tell them so that they can acknowledge the experiences of people like me who feel disappeared by bisexual erasure?
I'm jumping the gun, I know. My sons are not yet 4 and 2. My oldest has decided that his identity is a magical kitty cat, and his little brother is still nursing. These are all questions that will keep.
The joy and affirmation that I and so many of us find in raising children is both the lid to the pot and the pot itself. The joy is the reason we had these children, after all. But just beneath that lid is the roiling grief of loss that is so hot, so acute, it rivals a steam burn. And I suspect it will continue to burn until I figure out how to honor the part of myself that goes unacknowledged.