Helen Tunnicliffe Young, 56
We met 16 years ago at work. Karen was a psychiatric nurse and I was a senior social worker. We lived together soon after – like the old joke: what does a lesbian take on her second date? A removal van.
After spending some time living in Australia, it was when we got back to the UK and bought our house that we started to think about having a family. Ever since I was in my 20s, I’d had thoughts of having a child; my sister has four, whom I adore. I’ve been so lucky to fall in love with someone who also wanted to be a mum, and we have been blessed to have two children who enrich our lives.
I remember Clause 28, which said that we were a pretend family. That’s why it’s so important for me to be visible, for my family to be visible. We haven’t got rainbow flags outside the house, but we’re visible in our community and at work.
Karen Tunnicliffe Young, 43
When Helen and I got together, a lot of people weren’t happy with the idea of us as a couple. We left for Australia, where we didn’t have to worry about what other people thought. Once we had spent time together where we could be ourselves, we came back.
The challenges of same-sex parenting are outside the home. It began when our son, Stanley, eight, started nursery and he talked about not having a father. So we got a few books from the Donor Conception Network to help us explain to him.
All the children in his class know that he has a mum and a mama. But there were hardly any books where Stanley and his sister, Esmie, five, could see our family reflected, so I wrote my own, Our Mummies And Us Go Camping.
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