Online TTC/pregnancy community

August 3, 2020 12:00 PM

I'm looking for something not as woo as mothering.org, but more thoughtful than babycentre.

When I was pregnant with my first child I was active on mothering.org, but ultimately found it too woo-woo. The more mainstream alternative, babycentre, seems full of heteronormativity and people propagating harmful myths about pregnancy and childbirth.

I'm a queer feminist with whole bunch of university education, and I want to talk about baby/pregnancy/ttc stuff with thoughtful people. I do receive some complementary/alternative medicine treatments, which I feel ambivalent about, and I'm sort of woo-neutral.

Is there a place for me?

posted by unstrungharp to Grab Bag (5 answers total)

What about reddit? /r/queerception bills itself as "a support community for LGBTQ folks growing their families". I don't know anything about this subreddit in particular, but the pregnancy related subreddits I've been a part of have been both queer-friendly (although the overwhelming majority of users are straight/cis) and both pretty chill and informed w.r.t. woo-y stuff (although tending towards evidenced based). There's also /r/moderatelygranolamoms for that particular aspect. There's a number of closed/non-public smaller subreddits for pregnant people as well.
posted by quaking fajita at 12:20 PM on August 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

Are you pregnant? If so I highly recommend going on r/babybumps, finding your due date group and joining or starting a Facebook group with that due date group. Mine is particularly exceptional and still going strong 3 years later, but I think the lack of anonymity on FB makes people behave much better than they might on Reddit. We have several queer members and all kinds of families in my group. There is also a metafilter parenting FB group called More Inside, it wasn’t for me but it might be for you!
posted by tatiana wishbone at 12:21 PM on August 3, 2020 [5 favorites]

Seconding the r/babybumps due date group suggestion if you're expecting - I had my first child last year and maybe was just lucky, but my due date group was terrific. It has largely migrated to Facebook and is still several hundred members strong, and well-moderated. I'm mostly a lurker but it has been invaluable to have some place to go for all sorts of (generally well-sourced, non-woo or woo-neutral) advice/community from pregnancy through, now, toddlerhood, from people at roughly the same kid-stage. (Lately I have been very grateful for the inspiration to be found in the "what are you feeding your kid today?" and "what is your toddler playing with these days?" posts!)
posted by Synesthesia at 1:49 PM on August 3, 2020

The queer parenting group on Facebook is good. There’s also a group for the non-birth parent.
posted by melodykramer at 3:32 PM on August 3, 2020

Thirding the r/babybumps Facebook group associated with your due date month
once you’re pregnant. Ours got incredibly tight-knit. Two years later, I’m still in a group with 87 other women who are ride or die BFFs, it’s amazing.
posted by beandip at 4:38 PM on August 3, 2020 [1 favorite]