Challenges in Creating a New Family: Family-Making Plan

Forum Discussion: You are to pretend you have decided you want to build a family.
Your task is to come up with a family-making plan. Answer these questions:
How do you intend to have children if your partner is sterile?
How will parental responsibilities be divided?
What will be your parents’ legal rights and obligations?
What particular obstacles to parenthood do transgender people face?
You must integrate into your discussion the assigned reading
You must cite APA style or lose half a point.
Example of the assigment:
Question: What are the challenges of starting a family?
If my partner is sterile, I would intend to have a child through adoption. As much as I would want to have a biological child, there is not much I would be able to do. Regardless of whether my child is biological or not I would still love them very much.
I would try to keep parental responsibilities as even as possible. I think it would be best to alternate in terms of changing the child’s diaper because that is a task that will be done often, and it would be tiring if one of us had to do it every single time. I would also try to alternate other tasks, such as feeding or bathing the child, or would consider sometimes exchanging one responsibility for another. For example, If I were to feed the child, the father would bathe the child or do the clean-up after the feeding, etc. Also, if one person has worked, the other would do things around the house, and then that would alternate when the other goes to work. I think keeping a nice balance between responsibilities is important.
My legal rights and obligations as a parent would be to take care of my child as best as possible and nurture my child. I would make sure to also provide affection, protection, and support both physically and emotionally. I think it is important for parents not only to take care of their child physiologically but psychologically and emotionally as well. Ionut Anastasiu said, " Parents are not limited to ensure their children’s food, but also, no doubt equally important, protection, self-confidence and support in relation to the difficult situations, medical support, etc when is necessary" (2012, p. 6) and I agree with this. However, I know parenting is not easy, and therefore I would seek advice or help when I needed it. In terms of my parents' legal rights and obligations, I would not necessarily give them any specific ones, but I would allow my parents to come and visit and help with the baby or around the house if I needed it.
Transgender people face a number of obstacles to parenthood if they want a biological child. In some couples involving transgender people, both partners may be carrying sperm or maybe carrying eggs, so they would be unable to get pregnant on their own. They may need donor sperm or an egg. For transgender people considering getting sexual reassignment surgery, they would have to bank their eggs or sperm if they wanted a biological child in the future. In both of these cases, the couple would have to be pregnant through a medical procedure such as in-vitro-fertilization, which may be costly.
One source notes that many transgender men are able to carry pregnancies because many still have the female reproductive organs they were born with. (Obedin-Maliver, Makadon, 2016) However, as they identify as men, they may be using testosterone, but female hormones such as estrogen play important roles during pregnancy, thus possibly complicating a pregnancy. In order to be pregnant, the men would have to stop taking testosterone, which they may not like. They would also face the issue of being judged as “Western society's view [is] that pregnancy is an activity reserved exclusively for women.” (More, 1998), or at least many people see pregnancy as a women's thing. Transgender females were born with male sex organs, and are thus unable to become pregnant.
References:
Aanastasiu, I. (2012). The Social Functions of the Family. Euromentor Journal,3(2), 1-7.
More, S. D. (1998). The pregnant man--an oxymoron? Journal of Gender Studies, 7(3), 319-328. doi:http://dx(dot)doi(dot)org/10.1080/09589236.1998.9960725
Obedin-Maliver, J., & Makadon, H. J. (2016). Transgender men and pregnancy. Obstetric medicine, 9(1), 4–8. doi:10.1177/1753495X15612658