The Queer Family Podcast – LGBTQ Families & Queer Parenting Stories
The show all about family; but with gay! A hilarious and heartfelt dive into LGBTQ family life, parenting, and the challenges queer families face. Hosted by queer mom Jaimie Kelton, The Queer Family Podcast brings you weekly interviews with LGBTQIA+ guests exploring how they made their families and how they navigate a world that wasn’t necessarily built for them. The mission? To normalize, elevate, and celebrate queer family life—while proving we’re just like other parents... trying (and often failing) not to lose it when our kid still isn’t wearing shoes and we’re 25 minutes late. Through laughter, honesty, and representation, this show tackles inclusive parenting, family-building journeys, and the age-old question: What’s it really like to raise a family as an LGBTQ person in a world built for the straights?
Episodes
As we head into a new year, we’re revisiting a very special episode — and carrying those Pride vibes forward with us.
This episode originally aired as the finale of our very first Pride Extravaganza, where all month long (and a little beyond) we doubled up on Queer Family goodness with incredible guests and powerful stories.
For this grand finale, I asked every single Pride Extravaganza guest one simple but loaded question:
What does...
Before The Queer Family Podcast had its name, it began as If These Ovaries Could Talk—a show Jaimie launched with original co-host Robin Hopkins.
In this very first episode, Robin interviews Jaimie and her wife Anne as they share the real-time story of building their family as a lesbian couple: unexpected infertility, choosing a sperm donor, navigating IUI and IVF, and the emotional and financial reality of trying to have a second c...
Jaimie talks with Naia, founder of Be Parent Surrogacy, about international surrogacy options, what intended parents can expect when working with an agency, and how Be Parent supports LGBTQIA+ families with transparency, ethics, and hands-on care. Naia also shares her own IVF story and her real-time sperm donor search—including why she’s choosing to freeze embryos as a future “insurance policy.
🏳️🌈 Key Takeaways
- The “quiet tim...
Anish & Miguel are two dads in Berlin who recently welcomed their son, Alexander, through agency-based surrogacy. And listen — some of us (cough… Jaimie… cough) approached queer family building with good vibes and very few spreadsheets. But THESE TWO? Absolute meticulous gay dad excellence. From cross-country agency visits, to karyotype testing, to annual goal-setting (“become parents” was literally on the list!), Anish and Mig...
Sam & Laura Abbey are BACK, y’all. The last time they were on the show it was still called If These Ovaries Could Talk, they only had one kid, and their Bravo reality show moment had just helped catapult them into queer family-building visibility.
Seven years and two very boy-ish boys later, we’re catching up on IVF paid out of pocket (twice), using the same sperm donor for both kids, what happens when you over- or under-buy spe...
Midwife, parent, nurse, educator, and proud Palestinian Ash joins Jaimie for a powerful, expansive conversation that connects queer birth work, liberation, bodily autonomy, and the politics of modern healthcare. From becoming a parent before coming into their trans identity, to the crisis inside U.S. obstetrics, to creating community-centered birth education for queer & trans families, Ash brings depth, clarity, and truth. The ...
Queer Parenting and Interracial Family Life: Navigating Donor Conception and LGBTQ Family Challenges
Jaimie chats with Yanica & Leah, the interracial two-mom family behind @thefaustinfam, about building a queer family with intention. They discuss their donor conception journey, navigating race and colorism, raising multiracial donor-conceived kids, second-parent adoption, coming out stories, and parenting free spirited little humans in the South.
If you love stories about LGBTQ family building, intentional parenting, mixed-race...
Author and educator Kirsty Loehr joins Jaimie to share her beautifully messy story of queer family building — from reciprocal IVF with her ex-wife to co-parenting their 4-year-old son and now navigating life in a blended family with her new partner and her partner’s two kids.
Kirsty talks candidly about the breakup that came just months after welcoming her son, the challenges of 50/50 custody, and learning to blend families while ba...
Alon Rivel joins Jaimie for a brutally honest, funny, and heartfelt conversation about what it really takes—emotionally, financially, and spiritually—to build a queer family through surrogacy. From his surrogate’s iconic one-liners (“I’m not keeping it”) to his reflection that queer parents are architects of love, Alon reminds us what intentional parenthood looks like.
🏳️🌈 Key Takeaways
- The intentionality of queer family build...
Meet Mark and Eoin, two Irish dads proving that queer family building is both an act of love and of advocacy. Their path to fatherhood took them from Ireland to New York and Texas—navigating surrogacy independently, honoring their daughters’ Nigerian-Irish heritage, and pushing the Irish government to finally recognize families like theirs.
Together, they’ve turned loss, learning, and legislation into love and legacy. From discoveri...
What happens when you grow up in an evangelical cult, spend years closeted, marry to appease your family, and still find your way to queerness, healing, and chosen family? Therapist and author SC Nealy (they/she) joins Jaimie to share their powerful story of resilience and reinvention.
From a childhood in religious isolation to co-parenting two daughters one block away from their queerplatonic co-parent, SC shows us that family can ...
In this mind-expanding conversation, Jaimie sits down with Maya Gonzalez — genderqueer artist, author, publisher, educator, parent, and creator of The Gender Wheel — an innovative, nature-based framework that reimagines how we understand gender, identity, and self.
Maya takes us through their lifelong work of blending art, research, and spirit to help kids (and grownups!) move beyond the binary and return to connection — with themse...
Episode Summary (Podcast Apps)
Kevin and Alim—longtime partners, dads of two, and global citizens—share how they built their family through Canadian surrogacy, what they looked for in an egg donor, and how they talk to their kids about donor conception using a “meet them where they are” approach. We get real about the bio vs. non-bio parent feelings (yes, they’re normal), the difference between a natural birth and a planned C-sectio...
Screens are everywhere — but how do we keep them from taking over our kids’ lives? In this special ally episode, Jaimie sits down with Casey O’Roarty, a positive discipline trainer, parent coach, and host of the Joyful Courage podcast, to talk about raising kids in a high-tech world.
Casey shares practical strategies for balancing independence with safety, building critical thinking skills, setting real limits, and creating a united...
Queer therapist and “kid of queer parents” Ann Russo joins Jaimie to show what ordinary, extraordinary queer family looks like. Raised in the ’80s by a mom, dad, and dad’s partner under one roof—publicly “the roommate” for safety—Ann shares how chosen family (yes, Deadhead potlucks) and three parents taught compassion, and why bio vs. non-bio bonds never mattered. We get religious trauma 101: Ann’s fly-on-the-wall years inside a fu...
Transmasc author and parent Jesse Callans joins Jaimie to flip the parenting script. Jesse shares how he pressed pause on transition to build a family (surprise—then three more!), what it looked like to transition while his kids were 7, 4, 2, and 1, and how toddlers helped distill a complex change down to “the things that stay the same” (yes, there will still be spoons and napkins). We dig into gendered expectations in public, the ...
We went in-studio (!) with journalist Orion Rummler (The 19th) and Rachel Minkin (Pew Research Center, and a gay mom) to unpack Pew’s major 2025 study of LGBTQ+ Americans—released around the 10-year anniversary of Obergefell. We talk social acceptance gaps (L/G & bi vs. trans/nonbinary), how data actually moves policy, the everyday realities of queer family-building (hello, insurance barriers), chosen family, medical micro/macr...
In this Season 20 opener, Jaimie sits down in person (for the first time in years!) with two powerhouse voices in the LGBTQIA+ family-building world: José Rolón (aka NYC Gay Dad) and Luce Remey (VP of Public Policy at Family Equality). Together, they dive deep into what it really means to build, protect, and nurture queer families in today’s political climate. From navigating wills, Social Security benefits, and second-parent adopt...
🎉 Bonus Episode Alert! 🎉 Season 20 officially drops on September 1st, but while you wait, we’ve got one last bonus for you. This heartfelt and thought-provoking conversation redefines what it means to parent in our queer, messy, beautiful, modern world.
Writer, activist, and parent S. Bear Bergman sits down with Jaimie to explore love, family, and LGBTQIA identity against the backdrop of today’s political climate.
Bear shares his j...
As we gear up for the launch of Season 20 this September, we're sharing some favorite past episodes that continue to resonate—because queer family-building is never just a one-time story.
Originally aired in Season 14, this episode features Emme Reynolds, a transgender parent of two in a newly blended family. Emme brings honesty, vulnerability, and wisdom to the conversation as she shares her personal journey of self-discovery, ...
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