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Last updated on August 27th, 2023
A growing number of TV shows, both animated and live-action, are presenting families headed by same-sex parents. In time for Mother’s Day, here’s a look at 10 cartoons featuring characters with two Moms.
Clarence
“Clarence,” a series which ran from 2014 to 2018 on Cartoon Network, featured the protagonist’s best friend, Jeff Randell, and his two mothers, EJ and Sue Randell (voiced by Lea DeLaria and Tig Notaro).
Clifford the Big Red Dog (2019 series)
The 2019 reboot of the PBS series “Clifford the Big Red Dog” features one character, Samantha, with two Moms, Dr. and Mrs. Mulberry (voiced by Julie Lemieux and Maggie Cassella respectively). Dr. Mulberry is Birdwell Island’s veterinarian.
DC Super Hero Girls
In the 2019 series reboot, Jessica Cruz (Green Lantern) has two mothers, Siobhan and Angela Cruz.
Doc McStuffins
The long-running Disney Junior (and Disney+) series features a doll family consisting of two women (Edie and Thea) and their children, Brendan and Gertie. The episode “Toy Hospital: The Emergency Plan” sees the family learn how to plan for safety during an earthquake.
Thea is voiced by comedian Wanda Sykes (who herself is a lesbian).
Dykes to Watch Out For
The long-running comic strip by Alison Bechdel features Clarice Clifford and Toni Ortiz, an environmental lawyer and CPA respectively. Over the course of the strip, the two become a couple and eventually raised a son, Raffi. Toni and Clarice also had (over the years) a commitment ceremony, a civil union in Vermont, and an actual marriage (though not recognized by their unnamed state; this took place before same-sex marriage was legalized across the US in 2015). Ironically, despite all of these ceremonies, the couple eventually split up.
Firebuds
Another Disney Junior/Disney+ TV show, “Firebuds” features talking rescue vehicles who coexist with and work alongside humans—think “Cars” meets “Paw Patrol.” (Also, one character is voiced by Lou Diamond Phillips?) One of the characters in the series, Violet, has two Moms.
Apparently, this is the first Disney Junior show to feature main characters with same sex parents.
Lightyear
The 2022 Pixar movie “Lightyear” (with vague ties to the “Toy Story” franchise/character Buzz Lightyear) featured two women as a couple, and eventually parents.
This film, while it underperformed, drew the particular ire of conservatives (well, more so than most of the other examples on this page), as part of anti-LGBTQ-driven accusations of Disney being “woke.”
The Magic School Bus
Keesha Franklin, a main character in “The Magic School Bus” franchise, saw an appearance of her grandmother in a parent’s day-themed episode of the original series. However, in the Netflix revival series “The Magic School Bus Rides Again,” the first season episode “Pigs in the Wind” sees a non-speaking appearance by Keesha’s two mothers. A “meet the cast” companion book for the show clarifies they’re Keesha’s parents, which the episode didn’t directly state.
Peppa Pig
The long-running British animated series about the popular talking pig and her family/friends introduced a same sex couple in a 2022 episode. (The show’s been running since 2004.) Penny Polar Bear, a classmate of Peppa, mentions having two mothers: “one mummy is a doctor and one mummy cooks spaghetti.”
Wonder Woman
The last several decades of “Wonder Woman” comics have shown that the Amazons of Diana’s home of Themyscira (aka Paradise Island) have relationships with each other. Since the 2010s, this extends to Diana’s own mother, Queen Hippolyta. Some modern stories and spin-off media show Hippolyta in a relationship with Philippus, a Black woman who usually serves as an Amazon general and Hippolyta’s chief advisor. As such, Diana views Philippus as a stepmother. Hippolyta and Philippus are shown raising a young Diana in the young adult graphic novel “Diana, Princess of the Amazons” and its sequel, “Diana and Nubia: Princesses of the Amazons.”
