Infocus: with photographer Mia McDonald
Images by Jessica Prescott
“As a queer parent, you have to come out AGAIN AND AGAIN, to the school principal, to your kids best friend’s parents, to the Centrelink office, to the doctor walking into your birthing suite. ”
Mia Mala McDonald is a photographer, published author, mother to Sidney (6) and Lucinda (10 months) and partner to Steph.
She gives voice to her queer community through the images and words published in her recent work Once Upon A Lullaby, a portrait of Australian families, a book that should be on every family's shelves. Pages of emotive portraiture snapped from every season of parenthood, Mia’s distinctive artistic photographic style tells us narratives that help us better grasp human behaviour and what it means to be parents.
Her book reminds us that parenthood is rich, not linear, and diverse, and the “nuclear family” is overwhelmingly over-publicised in mainstream media. Adoption, surrogacy, single parenting, IVF, the book echos that parenthood is really at the core of it, a labour of the soul.
To want, raise and love our children takes profound courage. Please do yourself a favour and get a copy. You won’t regret it.
Tell us about your immediate family. Who are they?
My family under this roof is myself and my partner Steph and our kids Sidney and Lucinda, but we’re so intrinsically tied to others outside of this space that this simple description of family doesn’t feel just. It takes a village to create our version of chaos. Steph's parents are endlessly helping us navigate the ridiculous near impossible system of trying to work and parent. Steph’s mum has looked after Sidney a day a week since she was 3 months old. We are also incredibly close to our donor and his partner (our donut family as Sid would say). Their fridge is covered with photos of our kids and their own families are a big part of our life - we didn't really plan, this happened very naturally, but we’re stoked for our kids to have some many families to lean on - Christmas is basically a month-long festival.
During the last few years, my idea of family has dramatically shifted, my dad died in 2021 and my mum who was the anchor of the family, died in March last year from a painfully long illness. I am suddenly the female elder of the family and still working out what this means. The gap in our family is monumental, a quiet crevice that no one knows how to fill. Whilst this change is hard to bare, it has forced new family dynamics and very enriched relationships with my brother and sister. There is a shift in power, we hosted Christmas for the first time this year and it kinda felt liberating and deeply sad at the same time.
Tell us what the journey of finding a donor looks like.
We kinda only had one person in mind from the start, It was all very casual, I think Steph asked him over the phone and he was like - “can I just ask my partner and get back to you” 10 mins later they called and said “yep, lets rock.” He was a great friend of Steph and I have had the privilege of getting to know him so much more since we had the kids. I treasure them both. We’re deeply connected to him and his partner, we’re intrinsically close and there really aren't words to explain it. He is funny, kind, honest, loving and sentimental. We see them a lot. We go away on holidays together, they take the kids on adventures, they put up with our chaos, we constantly give them our germs, gastro bugs, nits, haha! They respect our role as the parents of our kids but also authentically invested in our kids and they are very much our family.
Do you consider yourself a feminist?
Our family unit is political, without intending to be really. Just our existence questions the hetronormative/patriarchal dominance. There is a word we use sometimes “Het lag” think Jet Lag but when you're just so worn out from the hetero world. We’re reminded every day that our families are not the ‘norm’, by the family toilets (icons always a dad, mum, kid), the reader's Sid gets sent home from school, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Bluey, every kids TV show, Medical forms, it can get exhausting at times. Whilst our family is made up of 4 humans with vulvas, I don't think we all sit within that binary, I mean Lulu is only 10 months so hard to know tbh.
Three words to describe your birth.
Long, explosive, human.
The process of writing the book is quite a journey. How long have you worked on this? What were some of your biggest roadblocks that you experienced during the process .
I started the project in 2017 around the time of the marriage plebiscite. Sidney was about one and Steph and I had kicked into both working back as freelancers and sharing the domestic load. I don't think I would have started the project if I knew it would end up taking 5 years, like everyone our life turned upside down due to Covid and the implications, my work as a portrait photographer came to an abrupt end. The day of the first lockdown I had 35 shoots were cancelled, basically my whole year deleted and the project stopped dead. We were looking into an abyss and I really panicked about how we would pay our rent. I saw a career counsellor and asked her to transfer my 15 years of working as a creative and educator into a resume that would land me an “essential” job, I was lucky to land a role at an Aboriginal health service and then moved into a management role at WIRE, a service providing education around Family violence and gender equality, it was so strange working full time in such an unfamiliar sector, I learnt a lot about myself and other industries and perspectives during this time and pretty grateful for the experience. I was working full time and restrictions basically culminated in me not being able to take a photo for around two years so this stalled the project substantially.
I am now happy to be back working as a freelance photographer and the experiences I had during those years have really had a great impact on my work. I shoot better, I love my job so much more, I appreciate every time I get to be out with my camera.
Did you write this because you knew the book was bigger than you?
Jeez, I'm not sure. I am a classic Aries who often jumps in before thinking, I just had an urge to meet other queer families, share their stories. When you’re in a hetero-normative relationship, you’re just accepted, that’s the norm. As a queer parent, you have to come out AGAIN AND AGAIN, to the school principal, to your kid’s best friend’s parents, to the Centrelink office, to the doctor walking into your birthing suite. The labour of that storytelling is exhausting sometimes. So I wanted to explore and share stories of different family units under the queer umbrella to take the load of them and us as a community.
A parent from Sids school recently sent me a photo of her 6 year old daughter, sitting in bed reading the book by herself, from cover to cove - she had done this 15 nights in a row. This little kid was so intrigued and interested and asked a lot of questions about the different family dynamics. What she saw in the book was a revelation for her little brain, it shifted her perspective. I love this, this who it's for.
I noticed many families spanned states - did you have to travel much to make this happen?
I had made a promise to myself to try and include as many different stories as I could, I was contacted and made contact with over 800 Queer families from across the country. Place and space uniquely shape our experiences and how our community functions around and with us. I grew up in Daylesford, an outwardly very queer-friendly space but living there in the 80’s the playground taunts and insults were still being called “gay”. Australia is still a pretty racist and homophobic place; a lesbian couple in Fitzroy are going to have a different experience to a non-binary family in Broken Hill, I wanted to try and share stories from a really broad area but due to budget restraints I was anchored to the East coast. It's a shame really, I have some wonderful families I am still in contact with in Alice Springs, Darwin and Cairns so maybe one day if I can find some decent funding streams.
What does the word community mean to you?
Engagement, accessibility, leaving your house.
Did you prepare for postpartum or mainly the birth? How did that shift with the coming of your second?’
I was lucky to be at the home birth of my brother and sister, birth and parenting wasn’t something daunting or foreign to me. It is something that happens hundreds of times a second, very human, regardless of the approach. I didn't mythologise or romanticise it, just got on with the job of pushing our giant 4.9kg baby out. That was a surprise, Sid was massive. Steph is still shellshocked I think - I am in total denial about how massive it was! We had a private midwife Jan Ireland, an iconic midwife. She was a funny, straight shooter, often playing cards on her phone, forgot my name, I liked her style so much. I do recall biting her on the shoulder.
Our journey for our second daughter Lucinda was tricky, we tried for a year for me to get pregnant and then it was discovered I had a not-friendly giant fibroid on my uterus, I ended up having a miscarriage and soon after a hysterectomy which was a horrific shock and one I am still coming to terms with. I enjoyed being pregnant, loved it, so to lose that possibility was heartbreaking and really broke me. I was like, hang on a minute, my mum had my sister at 45 at home. This should be easy for me?!? Luckily we had another uterus in the household and Steph took on the giant task. Lulu was born via C-section. Steph’s pregnancy journey was a tricky and vomitous one that she didn't realise she was ever going to have, but she did it and the final outcome is Lulu and we realise how lucky we are to have her. After searching, we were so happy to find continuity of care from Jess Permezel, who is an incredible midwife and queer birth educator and really understood our needs, they helped Steph so much. We have a unique perspective of both being the birth partner, and its a special place to be.
Describe what the four corners of your walls looked like in those first two months as a family of four.
We decided to not breastfeed Lucinda for many reasons both emotionally and physically, so after a few weeks Steph started working casually again and we shared caring for Lulu 50/50, This wasn't a forced decision, and Steph was feeling pretty elated to simply not be vomiting anymore, but looking back I wish Steph had more time to be slow and steady, I regret not allowing more time and space for her recovery. I naturally enjoy being with babies and thrive in those long domestic days so was certainly despo to be at home with Lulu, and Steph was enjoying reclaiming her identity through her work after lockdowns and a full on pregnancy. I am very grateful for having the space and time for us to be able to both spend so much quality time with our kids, it feels like a privilege at times. We parent from our instincts and our own experiences,I see a lot of parents feeling so much pressure to be great at everything - work, parenting, renos, screen time, camping, life in general. I just don't think we can nail everything all at the same time, something is always going to be compromised and we need to collectively lean into the diabolic shitfight that is life. The other day a waiter gently let me know that Lulu had done a giant poo in her pram and it was dripping on the floor - you gotta laugh right? I don't look to others for examples or read books, parenting is so incredibly natural and our human instincts are often very much right for our personal situations.
What an ideal weekend looks like.
We have a vibrant and busy life, we both are pretty excited to see music, art, road trips, kids parties. Our weekends are often a combination of family time, easy friend hangs and a bit of gardening and lots of laundry. I tend to try and pack a lot into our weekend but Steph is great and managing my expectations with a reality check. Sometimes, with two tired kids all we can manage is a bike ride to the market for pancakes and the rest of the weekend is watching tv or mooching around the house. I will always try and squish something ridiculous but fun in like Ice skating but I am getting better and relaxing into the reality of parenting limitations.
Follow Mia’s Journey here: