Mother Jones - May 01, 2018

CRISTINA SPANÒ

ECONUNDRUMS

LOVE, CONTRACTUALLY

How to protect an unconventional family in the age of Trump

by nicole pasulka

FOOD

+

HEALTH

for several years, friends Megan Hessenthaler and Sully

Ross lived on a boat in Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal, played in

a punk rock marching band, and joked about having a baby

together. They’re queer, so they would crack up thinking

about Ross providing the sperm for artificial insemination

and taking on the name “Uncle Daddy.”

Then the joke got real. They lost their boat. Hessenthaler

got married, and she and her wife, Heather Sommerville,

did, in fact, want Ross to help them have a baby. “We had

to talk about it like a real thing,” Hessenthaler says.

In recent decades, America has come to look more

like Modern Family than Leave It to Beaver. The number

of unmarried couples living together in-

creased by 61 percent between 2005 and

2016, and more than half the nation’s

kids are no longer raised in households

headed by a heterosexual couple in their

first marriage. Most of our family law,

though, is still written for the Cleavers.

The Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell deci-

sion gave millions of gay couples the right

to marry, but it didn’t do much for a single

lesbian having kids with her best friend

or for sperm donors who want contact

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