Travis

[INTERVIEWER] : So I guess first just freeform, tell me a little bit about yourself and your family.

[TRAVIS] : My family is my two moms and me and my twin brother Austin. We all live separately at this point. Yeah, I mean, that's the family pretty much.

[INTERVIEWER] : So when and how did your parents have the family structure discussion with you and explain how you were made?

[TRAVIS] : Uh, so I guess I must have been, I don't know, probably 10 or 12, somewhere in there. And it was more or less a conversation about them being gay and how some people might find that odd or we might, we might catch some flak for them being gay or something along those lines. That was the main point of the conversation and us being donor kids was more of a side point. Growing up, it was kind of automatically assumed that we were donor kids just because of the family dynamic.

[INTERVIEWER] : Did the subject come up with your peers and classmates growing up?

[TRAVIS] : Yeah, pretty frequently actually. It was mostly just curiosity just like, so you don't have a dad, you have two moms or like that kind of thing, but it was never really brought up that we were donor kids like nobody really got hung up on that point.

[INTERVIEWER] : So it was mostly just about like having gay parents? It wasn't anything that came to like how you guys were made?

[TRAVIS] : Uh, for the most part, yeah, but it wasn't even so much about them being gay necessarily. It was just like you don't have a dad, but you've got two moms like that's just out of the ordinary for so many people. So yeah, it was just most people didn't get it like they a lot of people were curious like. So you don't have a dad growing up like you don't have a male role model like blah blah blah like things like that. And I guess the main point of that is you can we were able to look to other people in our lives for that male figure and we weren't really worried about that because having the two moms they both sort of took on their own roles in a way of one being more of the Stern figure and one being. I wouldn't say softer, but you know what I mean?

[INTERVIEWER] : Mine were a similar way. One of my mom's is much more butch and the other one is much more fam and they kind of did things along like traditional mother father lines.

[TRAVIS] : Okay. Yeah, that's kind of how it was for us. Yeah.

[INTERVIEWER] : The next question is did you ever have any issues bonding with your non bio parent? That's an anxiety that many gay couples have actually, wondering ‘if this child isn't genetically related to me, Is it going to have a harder time bonding with me than my partner?’ Did you ever experience any of that or was it just kind of typical parental bonding?

[TRAVIS] : I would say it was just typical parental bonding. But I don't know it's like anything like you're going to kind of get to know someone even when you're a kid and you've got that like totally different worldview like one person's got these personality traits and one person's got these personality traits. So you don't necessarily like one more than the other obviously. It's just one you're going to go to for certain things and the other you're going to go to for certain things.

[INTERVIEWER] : When people ask which parent you're biologically related to what's your response to the question did it ever make you feel upset?

[TRAVIS] : I guess when I was a lot younger and it was a lot newer to me it made me somewhat uncomfortable. I don't know why but it was just one of those questions not everybody gets asked. So when you get asked it, it's just a little offputting. When I was younger, I guess it got to me a little bit but now, it's really not something that bothers me like especially these days when I get asked I just answer it's not anything ashamed of. It's not anything I worry about. So yeah. I mean it just is what it is.

[INTERVIEWER] : And so you said generally your parents raised you with one taking on a more traditionally fatherly role and one taking on a more traditionally motherly role. Do you have anything more to say or any examples of ways that your parents navigated raising you without a father? Was there anything in particular that they did or didn’t do that comes to mind?

[TRAVIS] : I would say in a lot of ways we were probably a lot more sheltered than a lot of other families growing up just because they were both very cautious. I don't want to say like women are more cautious than men or anything like that but they were both very cautious people so we weren't exposed to a whole lot growing up. So I would say in that way it was a little bit different but as far as one acting more fatherly I guess you could say one would take us like out to do like shopping and things like that and then one would go camping with us and things like that. So that was the only polarity I'd say but for the most part it was a real mesh.

[INTERVIEWER] : As a last question, coming out of the process if you had one piece of advice to share with same sex couples who are going into the process of having kids through donor conception what would it be?

[TRAVIS] : Regardless of if your family is quote unquote, I don't even want to say normal or not, everybody's going to have problems and no matter what at the end of the day being a gay couple is not going to make that big of a difference. You're going to have your family and you're going to love them.