8 of the Best LGBTQ-Inclusive Books About Parenting and Pregnancy

Advice columnist S. Bear Bergman shares essays on how to treat people with compassion and respect, particularly from his perspective as a Jewish and transgender man, a parent, and a husband. Each guide is accompanied by thoughtful illustrations by Saul Freedman-Lawson.

Through interviews of over 40 families, sociology professor Katie L. Acosta examines the legal challenges and social alienation LGBTQ stepparents face. She also offers an analysis based on these interviews of how queer stepfamilies take steps to make the best decisions they can to protect their children, despite navigating a system that often does not recognize their family structures.

Drawing on their expertise as queer midwives, Marea Goodman and Ray Rachin offer a fertility and pregnancy guide written to meet the needs of queer families as well as solo parents. Of special consideration in Baby Making for Everybody are transgender and nonbinary parents, whose experiences and questions are often excluded from pregnancy guides.

In this poetry collection, Lambda Award-winning author Hasan Namir reflects on his and his husband’s experience with surrogacy and their son’s newborn years. Addressed as a letter to their son, he recounts how excited they were to meet him and how much joy their son brought to their lives when he arrived.

English professor Francesca T. Royster reflects on her experiences with adoption as a queer Black woman married to a white woman. She explores the joy her family brings her, the complexities of the adoption process, and the challenges she faces raising her daughter, who is Black, in a deeply prejudiced society.

Essayist Krys Malcolm Belc reflects on his pregnancy and early parenthood with very few resources available that applied to what he was going through as a nonbinary person. He also examines his discomfort with being placed by others under the category of mother.

Written for LGBTQ parents and prospective parents alike, this book written by clinical psychologist Abbie E. Goldberg offers a guide to building a family, including going through the process of pregnancy, surrogacy, or adoption; finding inclusive healthcare providers and child care; and raising a child while navigating the societal barriers that queer parents face.

Actor B.D. Wong reflects on a life-changing moment and the aftermath at the beginning of his parenting journey in the late 1990s. When the surrogate mother carrying his twins prematurely went into labor, he spends the next three months in the NICU facing uncertainties about his family’s future.