Navigating Parenthood: LGBTQ+ Families Today -panel recap

The “Navigating Parenthood: LGBTQ+ Families Today” panel, hosted by myGwork, brought together parents and carers whose stories highlighted how love, resilience, and advocacy shape modern queer family life, and what institutions must do to catch up.

As host, Aasha Tikoo of myGwork set the tone by grounding the discussion in both celebration and realism. She linked the conversation to research and to LGBT+ Parents and Carers Day, underlining why visibility still matters in 2026:

“LGBTQ plus families come in many forms, yet visibility, acceptance, and inclusion remain important challenges, both at home and at work.” Aasha emphasized the role of employers and events like this panel in driving change for parents, carers, and their children.

For Rhi Evans, a service relationship lead at VodafoneThree and co‑chair of the Allies in Business community, becoming a parent turned visibility into a responsibility. She spoke about volunteering in schools and the importance of her sons’ peers seeing two mums as entirely ordinary, not exceptional. Rhi also reflected on her own mother’s assumption that queerness meant not having children and how vital it is to challenge that narrative.

“You can be queer, and you can be a parent, and I think it’s really important to get that across.”

David Gonzalez, Director of Optical Architecture at Colt Technology Services, shared how his journey into parenthood via UK surrogacy with his husband Dennis has shaped his advocacy. He described the effortless acceptance his daughter received from children in nursery and how prejudice only emerged as kids grew older, reinforcing his belief that intolerance is learned, not innate. For David, that insight fuels the need for early, everyday representation in schools and communities:

“For me, the conclusion from all of this is that bigotry is an acquired trait, it’s not natural in us, and we need to protect that with natural empathy, and we need to reinforce it with examples very early on.”

Adelle (Del) Barker, a team leader at Sky UK and creator of “I Don’t Know How to Be Trans,” brought a candid and often humorous lens to a deeply complex family story. Having transitioned in her mid‑30s after years in what she described as a “2.4 children” cis‑hetero setup, she now co‑parents with her ex‑wife in a large, blended queer family that goes on holidays together and models solidarity for their children. Adelle stressed that the core of parenting has never changed:

"We are going to keep raising these kids to be empathetic, sympathetic, understanding children, and they’re brilliant. They are the best allies in the world, they’re the best champions of everything.”

Amber Rorris‑Crow, Senior Inclusion and Diversity Specialist at TE Connectivity and Deputy Director of Salem County Pride Plus, spoke openly about the emotional, financial, and logistical weight of building a family as a queer couple through fertility treatment and a difficult NICU experience with their twin daughters. Living in rural South Jersey, Amber and her non‑binary spouse have often felt the isolation of being one of the only LGBTQ+ parenting families in their community—and the constant need to “re‑introduce” their family structure to schools and institutions. Over time, that struggle has crystallized into pride and purpose:

“What we’ve learned is that our family doesn’t need to fit into someone else’s template in order to be valid. We worked incredibly hard to build this family, and that’s something that I’m really proud of.”

For Nichole Woodford, Sales Enablement Lead for North America Marketing at HP and co‑chair of HP’s Global Pride BRG, some of the most powerful lessons have come from confronting her own fears. As a non‑birthing parent and step‑parent, she described how anxious she felt walking into youth sports and school settings, convinced she would be “the gay one” who didn’t fit. In practice, she found parents and children far more accepting than she expected—yet the internal battle was real. Reflecting on those early days at her son’s flag football, Nichole shared:

The biggest challenge actually was within my own self. It was an unconscious bias that I had, that I was just afraid of going into these spaces where there were going to be other parents.”

Across the discussion, the panellists also highlighted how policy, law, and workplace culture either smooth or obstruct the path to family building. It was clear that LGBTQ+ parents still carry an additional administrative and emotional load simply to secure basic parental recognition.

In closing, the panel circled back to the power of supportive institutions, such as schools that normalise diverse families in everyday language and books, and workplaces that offer inclusive benefits, flexible working, and gender‑neutral, family‑building policies. These structures, the panellists agreed, can either reinforce stigma or help ensure what their children already know instinctively: that love, care, and commitment are what make a family.

Watch the full Navigating Parenthood: LGBTQ+ Families Today panel here.

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