Kirk Yan says he decided to have children for his Chinese mother more than for himself.
"[Seeing me] have children made my mother feel a bit better," he told the ABC.
"If I didn't have that pressure from my mum, I don't think I would have chosen to have children."
To mark Sydney WorldPride 2023 and Mardi Gras this weekend, the ABC asked queer Chinese Australian families to share their experiences having children in Australia.
Mr Yan, a 39-year-old podiatrist, grew up in Hubei, China, and moved to Sydney when he was 22.
He said his mother had "suffered a lot" in her life and always "tried to save face".
"She imagined hosting a huge wedding for me [in China] when I got married, but when I came out this dream was shattered and it really hurt her," he said.
Same-sex couples in China do not have the same legal rights as heterosexual couples when it comes to marriage, adoption, and other issues.
In 2016, a year after coming out to his mother, Mr Yan decided to have a child through international surrogacy, hoping this would comfort his mother.
The sister of Mr Yan's partner, Rhys Bobridge, offered to donate her eggs and a US surrogate mother gave birth to healthy twins.
Mr Yan said he was grateful the whole process went smoothly.
However, he said his mother still felt remorseful for her grandchildren because she thought they "don't have a mother".
Despite initially being motivated by his mother's desire for him to have children, he said he was "not too different" from any other parent.
His primary concern is making sure he can provide "enough love and support" for his children.
"[Watching them] grow from a baby to being able to walk, talk, jump, and dance around … sometimes the kids just come up to give me a hug and say, 'Dad I love you,'" he said.
"I really love them.
"I get so much affection from my family, so the difficult parts are like nothing."
Shawna Tang, a senior lecturer in Gender Studies at the University of Sydney, said Mr Yan's experience was "quite common".
"There is more pressure on [Chinese] gay men than lesbian women because of Chinese patriarchal atheists and Chinese chauvinism," Dr Tang said.
"Men and sons are expected to reproduce and carry on the family name."
However, she said it was wrong to assume Chinese culture was "particularly homophobic".
"There's so much evidence to show that queer desires, same-sex desires, gender transgressions are variously practised and accepted in Chinese society, [and] there are many positive accounts of Chinese people being out.
"In this case of queer Chinese parents, it is quite complicated when we think about race and sexuality together."
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 2021 census data, more than 2,000 same-sex couples living in Australia were born in mainland China, the third most of any country after the UK and New Zealand.
The Philippines and Malaysia are the other two largest birth countries for same-sex couples, with 1,725 and 1,019 same-sex couples respectively.
The ABS also found 17.3 per cent of same-sex couples in Australia had children.
To Mr Yan's surprise, his children have never had questions about their family makeup.
He believes it is because he and his partner have always "kept an open mind".
"We started telling them early on that some people in this world have two dads and two mums, and some people have one dad and one mum," he said.
"Every family is different.
"Indeed, it doesn't matter if we are mother or father. As long as we give them lots of love and they feel loved, they won't feel that not having a mother is a big problem at all."
However, with the twins starting school this year, Mr Yan does worry they might face bullying because they are half-Chinese and their fathers are gay.
"Their classmates may start talking about things like: 'Hey, how come they have two fathers? Their fathers are gay.' It might impact them.
“As more people come out as gay, transgender, or members of other LGBTQIA+ categories, I hope the education system will become more accepting."
'Not very easy' to find gender-inclusive child care
Education is also a big concern for transgender Chinese Malaysian Australian man Kim Lee.
After his spouse suffered several miscarriages, Mr Lee decided in 2021 to stop undergoing hormone therapy to enable him to try IVF.
In March last year, he gave birth to their baby, Morgan.
He told the ABC some of his families in Malaysia still had not accepted his gender identity.
However, he said his focus now was ensuring Morgan could grow up in a safe and supportive environment.
Mr Lee said a big part of that was finding a provider of gender-inclusive childcare, but that had not been easy.
Some childcare centres put up rainbow flags in tokenistic gestures, but Mr Lee said he wanted to find one that "walked the walk".
"To be honest, there wasn't much that I could get from just doing research alone," he said.
After visiting a number of childcare centres over months, he said they found a couple near their home in Melbourne that seemed to have a genuinely inclusive environment and applied to enrol at one of them.
"As we visited the centre more and more, we started to see a lot of diverse representation of families, including queer parents as well coming in to drop off and pick up their kids," he said.
Mr Lee said he realised this was just the first step in a long journey.
"There is school, there is college, and we don't know what that's going to be like," he said.
He said he and his partner worried how gender inclusive these institutions would be.
"Will there be parents from different diverse backgrounds, not just from a cultural sense, but also from an LGBTQIA+ sense?" he said.
"If you have a non-binary or transgender student, what are we doing to make sure that they have access to toilets and changing rooms that are aligned to their gender identity?
"What are the discrimination policies in relation to bullying, harassment, and so on.
"Those are the things I want to know."
'Caught between rocks'
Cedric Yin-Cheng is the founder and president of the Australia and New Zealand Tongzhi Rainbow Alliance (ANTRA), a non-profit organisation for young LGBTQIA+ communities that speak Mandarin and Cantonese.
Mr Yin-Cheng told the ABC queer Chinese families in Australia were "caught between rocks".
"They can neither be a part of the mainstream gay community nor of the mainstream Chinese culture," he said.
Mr Yin-Cheng said with the number of LGBTQIA+ parents in Australia, increasing supporting for them was an important issue — not just for the queer community but for the entire society.
He said many queer parents he worked with shared Mr Yan and Mr Lee's concerns about discrimination and bullying in education.
"Most schools, whether on their websites or in public materials, do not mention much about their school's strategies and policies for students who are from LGBTQIA+ communities," he said.
He said schools sometimes identified measures in place to support LGBTQIA+ students, but rarely the measures for their parents.
"The most straightforward advice for parents is to ask more," he said.
"When sending children to schools, do ask the school about their policy and whether their own protection measures are appropriate for the child's situation."
According to Dr Tang, queer families may be singled out for "being different" but these situations are often manageable.
"In fact, the research shows that children from queer families are not especially vulnerable to experiencing bullying, victimisation and discrimination than their peers in heterosexual families," she said.
"Children practice some strategies. For example, they may withhold information about their same-sex parents, selectively deciding who to share that information with and when.
"I think these concerns around their (queer parents') children being bullied can be very carefully navigated with support from parents."
The ABC asked the education departments in each state and territory about the support provided to LGBTQIA+ parents and their children.
According to statements from Queensland, South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania, all their schools are providing an inclusive education environment and have resources or funded programs that promote cultural and gender inclusivity.
The federal Department of Education said the online Student Wellbeing Hub provided information and resources for educators, students and parents to assist them to create and maintain safe and supportive school environments.
