I admit it: this is my favourite time of year! October’s spectacular fall colours and beautiful weather usher in a barrage of birthdays and festivities to our family, mine included. Plus there are Thanksgiving, Halloween, and many hours spent together with family and friends catching up on the summer’s activities, kid’s exploits and family gossip. For me, in particular, it is far less stressful, more relaxed and even more intimate than the approaching holiday season. I think of it like Christmas without all of the fuss, expense or insanity of endlessly driving in snowstorms.

With four generations, and over 40 people in our immediate family alone, it’s hard to keep up with everyone sometimes. Ours is truly a modern family in every sense of the word, and I never overlook just how fortunate we are to have an enlightened, eccentric, and progressive brood to raise our son around. As such, it has got me wondering, how has the landscape changed over the past decade for gay families in Canada?

According to Stats Canada in 2012:

The census data clearly shows that legalizing same-sex marriage accounted for the sharp rise in married same-sex couples, but if you have been to any gay gatherings of late there is also something else happening: a gay baby boom. Over the past ten years, as our community saw a sharp rise in marriages, we are also seeing those couples paving the way for a new generation of the Canadian family archetype. It’s an exciting time for sure, and although my husband and I spent decades fighting on the front lines for change now that it is here, it’s still hard to believe so much progress has occurred in such a relatively short time.

Progress, yes, but we aren’t all the way there just yet. There are still some inequities, even within our own community. According to the Vanier Institute (http://www.gaycalgary.com/u688 ) in 2013, of the couples in Canada who identify as same-sex married couples, 9.4 per cent have children under the age of 24, and 80 per cent of those are female couples. This means just 20 per cent of same-sex couples with kids are male couples. These stats might make it seem like the lesbian moms are beating us gay dads in our endeavours to start our own families, but the number of married gay men starting families through surrogacy, adoption or guardianship is the fastest growing segment, by percentage, of all Canadian families – same or opposite sex couples, according to a CBC article (http://www.gaycalgary.com/u681 ).

I’m hopeful for the future of all families in Canada. In many ways, we are leading the world in our cultural acceptance of gay as a new sort of normal in society. This increasing diversity means less intolerance for our kids to have to suffer through, as more and more gay families are visible in schools, churches and events.

Does it mean that discrimination is a thing of the past? Of course not, but it will mean that my son will never have to know a country where one segment of society lords over another based on archaic stereotypes; families are just free to be.

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