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James and Ashley from Sydney/Gadigal

Ashley Scott is the co-founder of Rainbow Families — a charity that supports, celebrates, empowers, and advocates for LGBTQ+ parents and their kids — and a dad of two girls.

I came out when I was 18, and I remember chatting with a friend around that time who said, “What about children? Don’t you want to have children?” I hadn’t thought about not being able to have children because I was gay until I was asked that question. I responded, “Well, I guess I won’t have kids.” She said to me, “No, I’m sure you can. Don’t write it off.”

It wasn’t until five or six years later that I started thinking having a family of my own was something important to me. I spoke to my partner about it, and we decided we wanted to be parents. We started exploring the options for gay men to become parents.

For any queer person, the available options for becoming a parent really depend on your circumstances. At the time, it was illegal for same-sex couples to foster or adopt in New South Wales, so that was ruled out immediately. Thankfully, that law has now been changed so that LGBTQ+ people can foster and adopt children in need. We considered a co-parenting arrangement with some friends, but nothing presented itself there.

We then looked into surrogacy, which is when a surrogate carries and gives birth to a child on behalf of another person or couple. The hardest part of surrogacy is finding a surrogate; the process is quite complex. In Australia, surrogacy can only be altruistic, meaning surrogates can’t be paid but can be compensated for medical costs and loss of income. Domestic surrogacy was, and still is, limited by the number of surrogates in Australia. That led us to look at international surrogacy, and we had a surrogacy agency support us through that.

We used a donated egg transferred through IVF. When Stella, our eldest, was due, we travelled internationally to be there for her birth, which was amazing. As any parent knows, seeing your baby for the first time is an incredibly special moment and the start of an amazing new chapter in our lives.

Once we got back to Australia, it felt like we were able to start our lives as a family.



There are always challenges for any new parent, particularly if you’re the primary caregiver — sleepless nights, sick babies. What I love most about being a dad is watching my children grow up, learn new skills, and develop new abilities, and watching them, hopefully, become awesome humans.

We choose to live in inner-city Sydney in a very inclusive area, and we’ve had an excellent, accepting experience of being gay dads. But I know that there are a lot of people that don’t live in this kind of area, don’t have the same level of acceptance, and don’t feel comfortable walking down the street holding their partner’s hand, for example, or being out at school as queer parents. There certainly is a lot of discrimination from some parts of mainstream society still.

When Stella was born, I joined the Gay Dads group, a social group in Sydney. Around the time my second daughter was born in 2015, a few of the dads and a few of the mums from the lesbian mums group used to meet up. We thought we could do more to support the community if we came together, formed a united organisation, and created one community. As a result, we started Rainbow Families ten years ago.

One of the ways we support, connect, and empower LGBTQ+ parents and their kids is through supporting intended parents on their parenting journey while exploring their options. Each year we run a Making Rainbow Families Seminar, which covers topics like fostering, adoption, surrogacy, legal considerations for LGBTQ+ parents, IVF, and more. It’s a lovely way for people to come together, be with the community, and learn about the different options available to them as queer people. We run Australia’s only LGBTQ+ antenatal class, a new parents’ group, playgroups, resilience camps, and parenting support classes.

We also advocate to remove discrimination that our families face. The census is one issue that we are working on to remove the barriers to counting our families. The census only counts same-sex parents that are in a couple. If you’re a single LGBTQ+ parent, you are invisible. If you’re a trans parent or a queer parent, you’re really falling through the cracks. That has a flow-on effect in terms of available funding for organisations to support LGBTQ+ parents.

We’ve also been working on the Religious Discrimination Bill to make sure that our families are safe and able to access services with confidence that we’ll be included.

I think about becoming a parent as a queer person as a race. If you really, really want it, and if you think that being a parent is going to make you happy, you need to work very hard to make it a reality. You must run as fast and as hard as you can to get to the end goal. Many don’t finish the race, but for the ones that do, it’s a lovely family life that you are able to create for yourself. But it’s not an easy process to get there.

I’d recommend connecting with organisations who are there to support you and people who have been through it before. Once you have a baby, Rainbow Families is a great resource for people to come and be with the community.

Other than my children, my biggest achievement has been helping steer Rainbow Families into what is now a national charity. I love seeing new queer parents being connected to their community and supported by other families like theirs. There's so much to be gained by meeting other queer families and building social networks where you feel safe and completely accepted for who you are, regardless of what the make up of your family is.

It's filled my cup to see how much we have grown and how many people have been supported because of an idea that started between a few of us parents at playgroup, ten years ago. 

It's exciting to think what the impact of Rainbow Families will be now that we've expanded our reach across the country. Good times ahead for our families!