You don’t have a white picket fence with an adorable gate.

The other parts of the American Dream – the house in the suburbs, a minivan, and a big backyard – may also be beyond your reach. You’ve never wanted the joyous husband-wife union, but the two-point-five kids? Yeah, maybe that’s possible. As in the new book “Radical Family,” edited by Margaret Mooney, it’s surely more so than it was in the past.

Once upon a time, if a lesbian wanted to raise a family, she had two basic options: pregnancy or adoption. That is, says Mooney, if she was willing to buck a hetero-centric society that said the former was “selfish, unnatural and radical” and the latter was often just simply not possible or even legal.

Undaunted, and very much wanting kids, many lesbians ignored the rules. They built “chains” of women who handed off sperm from donor to doctor to potential mother. They demanded that fertility clinics allow single women as customers. They wrote pamphlets and publications aimed to help others become pregnant by themselves or with partners. They carefully sought lesbian-friendly obstetricians and nurses.

Over time, lesbians who wanted kids were “emboldened by the feminist movement and the gay and lesbian rights movement” and did what they had to do, omitted facts when needed, traveled abroad when they could, and found workarounds to build a family.

This book tells nine stories of everyday lesbians who succeeded.

Denise Matyka and Margaret McMurray went to Russia to adopt. Martha Dixon Popp and Alix Olson raised their family, in part and for awhile in conjunction with Popp’s husband. Gail Hirn learned from an agriculture publication how to inseminate herself. MC Reisdorf literally stood on her head to get pregnant. Mooney says that, like most lesbian parents then, she became a mother “without any safety nets...”

Such “struggles likely will feel familiar as you read about [the] desire to become parents…” says Mooney. “In short, these families are ordinary and extraordinary all at once.”

In her introduction, editor Margaret Mooney points out that the stories in this book generally take place in the latter part of the last century, but that their relevance is in the struggles that could happen tomorrow. There’s urgency in those words, absolutely, and they’re tinged with fear, but don’t let them keep you from “Radical Family.”

What you’ll see inside these nine tales is mostly happy, mostly triumphant – and mostly Wisconsin-centric, though the variety in dream-fulfillment is wide enough that the book is appropriate anywhere. The determination leaps out of the pages here, and the storytellers don’t hide their struggles, not with former partners, bureaucracy, or with roadblocks. Reading this book is like attending a conference and hearing attendees tell their tales. Bonus: photos and advice for any lesbian thinking of parenthood, single or partnered.

If you’re in search of positive stories from lesbian mothers and the wall-busting they did, or if you’ve lived the same tales, this slim book is a joy to read. For you, “Radical Family” may open some gates.

“Radical Family: Trailblazing Lesbian Moms Tell Their Stories,” edited by Margaret Mooney
c.2025, Wisconsin Historical Society Press $20 150 pages