JERUSALEM — When the teacher in Adi’s nursery school asked all the children to bring in photographs of their families, Adi’s parents dutifully complied.
The next day, as the Tel Aviv nursery school prepared to mark Family Day, Adi handed her teacher a photograph of herself being warmly embraced by her parents, “Ima” and “Mama.”
Adi, 2, is one of a growing number of Israeli children who have two mothers — or two fathers or, sometimes, both.
There are no statistics on same-sex parenthood, but there are signs that it is becoming increasingly prevalent here — as it has been for a number of years in the United States and other Western countries.
The Community for Lesbian Feminists (CLAF) has support groups for lesbian mothers in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. In the last couple of years, the Tel Aviv group has grown from eight couples to more than 30, giving evidence of a “gaybe boom.” At the last annual meeting of CLAF, participants said there “were strollers everywhere” and for the first time, the organizers hired babysitters and ran activities for children.
That gay people have children is nothing new. But for many years, those who wanted children would try to hide their sexual preference, marry a member of the opposite sex and attempt to lead a relatively conventional life often with limited success. This is still common in the religious community, but is changing rapidly in secular circles, where gay families are coming out of the closet.
More and more homosexuals are choosing to become parents either on their own, with their gay partners, or through a wide range of co-parenting arrangements. And for a growing number of Israelis, being openly gay and having a family is no longer a contradiction in terms.
That attitude is almost unanimous among young lesbians here, according to Dr. Adital Ben-Ari of Haifa University’s School of Social Work.
“They don’t believe that being a lesbian will prevent them from having a family. On the contrary, they see having a family as an expression of their lesbian identities,” said Ben-Ari, summarizing the findings of a study, conducted by master’s student Rivi Efrat, that looked at the coming out process of lesbians aged 17 to 24.
“What they say they want in life is ‘a home, motherhood and a relationship,'” said Ben-Ari. “This is unique to Israeli society. In most Western countries, lesbian teens are often opposed to the traditional family structure. But in Israel, the idea of a family is so rooted that it also permeates the attitudes of lesbians.”
“The Jewish decree to be fruitful and multiply is being taken up by gay people, too,” added psychotherapist Racheli Bar-Or, co-founder of the Center for Alternative Parenting.
Gay parenting in the country was given an added boost by the landmark ruling in the case of Nicole and Ruti Berner-Kadish. In May 2000, the Supreme Court ordered the Interior Ministry to register former Berkeley resident Nicole Berner-Kadish as the adoptive mother of the son, Mattan, born to her partner, Ruti Berner-Kadish, an Israeli native.
The government later asked for an extended panel of judges to reconsider the decision, which is still pending. But the publicity surrounding the case and the ruling itself have already granted greater legitimacy to such families.
Gay women — like straight, single women — who want to be parents have three options. First, they can find a man with whom to conceive the child in an arrangement that may or may not include his involvement after the birth. Second, they can turn to a sperm bank at almost any hospital in the country. Third, they can adopt a child from abroad.
Initially many women are tempted to choose the first option — finding a man to help conceive the child — because it seems the simplest. There is no need to involve a hospital, state agency or any other institution in the process.
But many lesbians realize they are not ready to have a man become emotionally involved with the child. They don’t want a father. So they turn to a hospital to be inseminated with the sperm of an anonymous donor, a procedure that is becoming the preferred option among gay women and many straight single-parent mothers.
For others, adoption is more appropriate.
Israel’s relatively new international adoption law entitles anyone who is deemed qualified to be a parent to adopt, without any restrictions on sexual orientation or gender. In practice, most women — including lesbians who are in long-term relationships — approach adoption as single mothers.
For most parents, having a child is the easy part. The more daunting challenge of parenting comes after the child is born or adopted, something that is probably felt even more sharply by gay parents. They have to convince society as a whole, as well as their extended families, their children, and sometimes even themselves that they are real parents.
But how do you explain to your child that he has two mothers?
Tamara Klinger-Levi, a 38-year-old nurse on Kibbutz Sha’ar Ha’amakim, discovered she was a lesbian only after her marriage to her kibbutznik husband ended. The couple share joint custody of their two children, and Klinger-Levi is open about her homosexuality with her children and with members of her Hashomer Hatza’ir-affiliated kibbutz southeast of Haifa.
“My sexuality isn’t much of an issue to either the kibbutz members or my kids,” she insisted. “My children know there are women who love women, men who love men, and women who love men.”