“Does Molly have a dad?”

It probably wasn’t the first time someone asked the question, and definitely not the last, but it set the precedent for the answers to come.

I was around 5 years old and sat in the back of our Volvo alongside a soccer teammate of mine. She had keenly picked up on the fact that my mom was my sole cheerleader among a sea of dads at every game, and asked the question in the blunt, matter-of-fact way that only kids can.

My mom later told me she had prepared for this moment and wanted to get it right. She didn’t want me to ever feel like there was something missing from my life; our family was just different — not better or worse.

“Do you have a dog at home?” she asked my teammate, glancing at us both in her rearview mirror as she drove.

“Yes,” the girl replied.

“We don’t have a dog, but we have two cats. Do you have cats at home?”

“No,” the perplexed child responded.

“Well it’s kind of the same thing,” my mom said. “Just like we have cats and you have a dog, every family is different.”

The truth was a bit more complicated — I was conceived through a sperm donor. At 38, my career-driven mom decided she wanted to have a child on her own. She joined a group of like-minded women in New York City called “Single Mothers By Choice,” and learned about options for nontraditional parenting. It’s something I’ve known from a young age and never questioned. Kaiser, party of two.

That was all I knew for years — until the