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Our Culture Imposes Heteronormativity on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Queer People Trying to Have or Having a Baby

In our in-person therapy sessions at our Tribeca offices, as well as our remote therapy sessions, we talk to LGBQ patients about all the insidious ways heteronormativity is embedded into the culture. And when you are trying to conceive, are pregnant, or are parenting a newborn, the world caves to heteronormativity like never before, imposing it on your relationship, your body, and your family. At Tribeca Maternity, we support gay, lesbian, bisexual, and queer individuals, couples, and families in navigating this process in a way that feels true to them, not to the culture. While we also fully support trans, gender-nonconforming, and nonbinary individuals, couples, and families navigating this process, we appreciate the different set of experiences and challenges they face and have decided to address those in a separate section here.

We help individuals and couples talk about the intersection of your politics and the ways you’re experiencing trying to conceive, pregnancy, and parenting, as well as how you feel about all of it. Curiosity, slowing down, pacing, disruption, and care are all needed in equal measure.

Your Queer Relationship and Family Can Look However You Want It to Look

As a culture, we haven’t done a great job of creating family. It’s often insular, deprioritizing of community, hetero- and cis-normative, patriarchal, etc. At Tribeca Maternity, we appreciate the queerness of being queer, and believe that all relationships and families can and should look a lot of ways. You get to choose what your family looks like. In therapy, we’ll talk about your choice of how you build your family, whether that is more traditional (if that’s what you want) or alternative chosen families. You may not decide to do what your parents did or even what your queer friends are doing. And that’s okay.

We Are Fluent in Issues That Concern Queer Individuals, Couples, and Families, but We Also Don’t Assume (And Aren’t Afraid To Ask)

While many of the concerns about conception, pregnancy, and postpartum are the same for queer and cis-hetero people, there are also unique issues that come up with queer individuals, couples, and families. At Tribeca Maternity, we consider it our job to be concerned with the needs of queer families and fluent in the issues that concern them. And when we’re not as fluent, we aren’t afraid to ask. We don’t make assumptions about your identity, your relationship, or how you want to create a family. We give individuals and couples a space to talk about:

Deciding to have a child (or not)
How you want your family to look and what you need in order to create the family you want
Navigating the processes of conception: IVF/IUI, surrogacy, egg donors, sperm donors, adoption, etc.
Who carries the baby
Your identity and how it’s shifted, particularly when navigating having a child
How you identify in your relationship (monogamous, open, poly)
Sex
Your and your partner’s gender expression
Body changes during pregnancy
Navigating doctors and other providers who can be particularly challenging, often overtly discriminatory, when dealing with non-heteronormative families

Meet our founder and clinical director, Matt Lundquist, LCSW, MSEd

A Columbia University-trained psychotherapist with more than two decades of clinical experience, I've built a practice where my team and I help individuals, couples and families get help to work through difficult experiences create their lives.