I came across a post on reddit by a neurodivergent asexual person, titled “I don’t know if I want queer children.” It was a short post, about adopting in the future, but not wanting queer or neurodivergent kids. It didn’t get a lot of attention before the poster deleted the post. But it’s something I think about from time to, not because I didn’t want queer or neurodivergent children but because of what the poster actually meant:
“Not because I won’t support them if they are, I just wish any kids should have the easiest life they could.”
The few people that commented probably glossed over that line but that was the most important part.
While most of the time, when people say they don’t want queer kids, it’s because they’re homophobic and transphobic, sometimes, sometimes it’s because people are queer and tired with the world, they’re struggling to navigate their life and wouldn’t wish that on someone else.
I am queer and disabled, and not actually biologically related to my children. I have two kids. The eldest is probably on the spectrum somewhere and is also trans. The youngest probably has dyslexia (and maybe ADHD) and also had cancer at 16 months. She’s cis as far as it goes.
Life has not been easy for either of them, though, luckily, most of the transphobia in the world hasn’t affected my eldest (yet) but she struggles a lot with her neurodivergency. We took her to the doctor last minute yesterday and she got incredibly upset of the change in routine. She struggles with her sister who has glue ear and is hard of hearing. The eldest uses loop earplugs, the youngest uses hearing aids; not the best combination. The youngest misses a lot of school, the eldest is not accepted completely by members of her own family and struggles to eat most things because of her sensory issues.
Is this the life I would’ve chosen for them? No, definitely not. Would I change anything? Only the cancer, everything else about them makes them who they are and I am a better person because of them and a better parent because of their challenges.
My eldest is an empathetic 9-year-old who builds incredible things out of Lego and in Minecraft, draws mad complicated worlds in pixels, dances, does archery, has friends and family who love her and loves them back. She stopped eating chicken because we got chickens and it was too hard to reconcile her beloved pets with her dinner.
My youngest is slightly feral but a very funny nearly 6-year-old, who loves her best friend more than anyone else, and her big cousin (who’s 14). She loves cats, all cats, loves everything cute and has never seen Frozen but has watched multiple versions of Cinderella (operas, ballets, animated, live action).
My mum didn’t really want kids (a post for another day) and got a kid with undiagnosed ADHD, depression and social anxiety and another with undiagnosed dyslexia, dyspraxia and autism (my sister was recently diagnosed). She didn’t deal with parenthood well for a variety of reasons and my dad – who did want kids – drank. I try to do everything they didn’t. I don’t drink, I listen, I try not to shout (very rarely do), I accept that my eldest is 80% toast at this point and my youngest is going to be behind on her milestones and, despite having hearing aids, still doesn’t listen to me.
Wanting a better easier life for your kids is normal, I think it’s okay to have those feelings, but, as my old therapist would say, it’s what you do with those feelings matter.
You won’t get a say on how your kids will turn out even if you’re not biologically related to them (weirdly, my kids are so much like their cousins somehow), but it’s what you do about that, if or when you have kids, that will be important. It’s easy to say “don’t have kids” but it’s harder to admit that we would all want our kids, our siblings, family, friends to have it easier.
When it comes down to it, it’s not that life is hard for my kids because they’re queer or disabled or neurodivergent, it’s that life is made harder by: a lack of accessibility, transphobia, homophobia, ablism, cancer, health problems, long waiting times for assessments, school environments that lack nuance for ND children, a million other things that make life hard when you’re ‘different’.
So, when a queer neurodivergent person says they don’t want queer kids, what they really mean is, they don’t want this world for their queer kids. And I think we can all agree with that.
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