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My Two Dads or Helen Has two mummies? Which same-sex parenting arrangement seems better?

  
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
16:17 / 10.10.02
Because we don;t have nearly enough ill-informed ranting in the Head Shop, here's an absolute peach.

Elsewhere a thread was begun about NickelOdeon showing a program about same-sex parenting. One of the questions arising from this discussion was whether a same-sex parenting arrangement involving two women or two men would be "better" for the child.

Now, we may think that this would depend to a very great extent on the parenting skills of individuals. But if you have already started from the principle that straight couples are pretty much inevitably a better bet than same-sex couples, then the jockeying for position can commence in earnest.

So, two daddies or two mummies? Or even two mummies and a daddy? What is the ideal queer parenting setup? Give reasons.
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
16:59 / 10.10.02
I quite like the family suggestion that Iain Banks has in that essay about the Culture that someone linked to last month, one kid, one or two parents, lots of 'Uncles','Aunts' and cousins

I think Haus may want someone to say something like 'if we'd found the 'ideal' for parenting we'd all be using it by now' but my psychic powers have been tuned to Jazz FM all day...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
17:21 / 10.10.02
Right. Those who have posted so far who may be faintly surprised that their posts are being deleted - thank you for playing.

Did you see the "give reasons" at the end of the first post? Do you know why that's there? It's because it has not yet become as painfully clear as it really should be that this topic is in the Head Shop.

If you'd like to try again, please do so. Lada's idea of the extended family might be worth looking at - why *should* parenting duties be centralised? Is it about clarity of roles, or about possession?
 
 
Shortfatdyke
19:06 / 10.10.02
This is difficult to answer because of the lesbians I've known who've had children, two have been single women and two have been in a relationship. The two single women had lots of people around who were involved in bringing up the children to some degree - it was almost a matter of 'choosing' a family - lots of lesbians and gay men who wanted to be involved and who were wanted by the mother to be around, giving input. The lesbian couple I know were very much more like the usual family unit (the father/donor was never mentioned) and the child had a lot of love as far as I could see but the couple have now broken up and is rather being pulled this way and that in a dispute over access. Heartbreaking for all concerned.

To me, the 'chosen' family, making child rearing a communal thing, sounds absolutely ideal. I admit to being totally uninterested in my own neice, I've only met her about three times in as many years - my brother would certainly be better off choosing an outsider (in terms of blood relations) as an aunt.

You can't make a blanket statement that lesbians or gay men will make better parents - it's down to the individuals. That's blindingly obvious. Isn't it?
 
 
BioDynamo
16:04 / 11.10.02

The set-up in my extended family: my mum set up a (lesbian) friend of hers with my uncle (gay), who donated sperm and acts as "somewhat absent father" (he lives in Sweden with his current boyfriend, the mother in Finland) of two lovely boys, Jonatan and Samuel, my cousins. Shit, I forget their age, Jonatan must be around 10 by now. Insemination was done under "home circumstances". My uncle, whenever he visits Finland, spends a lot of time with the kids, and has also taken them to camps for queer parents and their kids in Sweden. They seem to be getting along very well, both parents and kids. The mother is a single mother in all meanings of the word, but she knew she would be, and is doing all right. So the kids have two gay parents of different sexes.

Then my aunt (lesbian) decided she wanted another child, so she made a similar arrangement with my uncle's ex-boyfriend (gay) who is from Colombia, and was living in Sweden at the time. The result is my greatest cousin ever, Felix, a totally hyper-energetic latino-dancing hip-hop-kid who is, what, six years old now? He's being raised by his mother and her housemate (lesbian). I have no idea if they are lovers, but they're both great butch S/M-people, and exellent mothers. The Colombian father is much more absent, but Felix has been to see his southern relatives at least once, and developed an enormous macho ego as a result.
Who are better? Umm.. definitely one mother, one mother's female housemate, absent South american father, father's ex-boyfriend who visits a lot and also happens to be your uncle, one older brother from mum's marriage before she came out, and lots of supportive family.

In general, the more the merrier. Family: extended mix, please.

Reasons and reasonings: distribution of tasks is easier to perform outside traditional heterosexual boundaries., which will tend to end up in stereotypes. So if the sexual identities of those who participate in the child-rearing process are mixed to begin with, there is less risk for stereotypical behaviour. The larger the extended family that participates in the upbringing of the child is, the larger the chance for non-stereotypical behaviour.

Attempting to raise a child with just the help of one other person seems dumb to me, regardless of whether the other person is the same sex as you are. Or not.
 
 
pointless and uncalled for
16:59 / 11.10.02
I'll informed wibbling likely to be deleted but here goes.

By saying which is better isn't that some kind of leaning towards a set stereotypes? I'm fairly certain that I've had my stupid ass kicked from one end of this board to the other for drifting even faintly close to hinting at stereotypes.

That complexity aside I really don't think that you can say one could/would be better than the other. I've met both gay and lesbian couples that want to be parents that frankly I would be mortified to let attempt to raise a child. This isn't a sexuality issue, its a personality issue and while sexuality can be a large part of that personality is won't be a whole.

The issue that stands here is that regardless of how strange your bedfellows (in a multi-level meaning way which includes a brief smirk)ones ability to raise children is determined by far diferent criteria.

If we had the option for ideal parenting candidates thrown into the mix then it's still fifty-fifty for the finish line of not churning out auto-recruits for the trenchcoat mafia. The reasoning behind this is that firstly there is an element of identification with a parent figure and the question doesn't list what equiptment the greasy sprogs will come with. Here in lies one problem as there are a number of gender unique experiences that any child will invariably experience and guidance by same experience is of better value than the textbook crap.

This style of situation no doubt recurs in many forms of parenting obstacles.

Of course there is the consideration of additional confidants but I'm not sure whether to consider them as a valid part of the question and answer.

Given the choice? One of each and a het couple, all six of which are ideal parents.

Before you ask, I can't say what an ideal parent was.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
17:19 / 11.10.02
I've met both gay and lesbian couples that want to be parents that frankly I would be mortified to let attempt to raise a child.

How about straight couples?
 
 
Captain Zoom
17:55 / 11.10.02
I know straight couples who have kids that I'm mortified about.

As the abstract says, it's a moronic question. The question of better parents can't come down to a question of sex, regardless of sexual orientation. It is dependant on, and only on, the parenting ability of the individual or individuals in question.

Women and men, straight or gay, are obviously going to bring different qualities to a parental relationship, solely on the basis of experience growing up as that sex and orientation. I think though that parenting, or rather good parenting, has very little to do with sex, orientation or gender. There are things one should learn and impart as part of the parenting process that have nothing to do with any of those qualities, or perhaps have to do with those qualities regardless of whic you have. The difference between right and wrong (societally speaking, I suppose), the value of compassion and open-mindedness are not things that lesbians, gay men or straights of either sex are better at imparting. It depends on the individual, not their orientation.

There's a book out now in Canada that's been banned by the BC courts that tells a story about a little girl who has two mums. While the story is about that very fact, the two mums in the story act like parents, not lesbians, if one could actually define what a lesbian acts like . To me this question is like asking which is better, caucasian parents or indian parents? If they're bad parents it makes no fucking difference. Nor does it if they're good parents.

Zoom.
 
 
Ganesh
19:21 / 11.10.02
I may, of course, be utterly mistaken, but this thread seems designed to point up the absurdity of such a question (as acknowledged in the abstract - which I've only just noticed). In terms of objective evidence, there seems very little difference (in terms of mental health and degree of social 'adjustedness') between offspring of lesbian and heterosexual couples. There have been very few studies carried out on male same-sex parenting couples, so this particular variant is difficult to evaluate.

Anecdotally (and, perhaps, intuitively), the children of any relationship will be affected by the degree of positive, affirmative emotion (ie. love) within that relationship, as well as its stability. This seems to be a broad finding across the board: in studies of schizophrenic parents, it's generally found that the degree of mental disorder in one parent has a negligible effect on offspring compared with the overall love and stability afforded by the partnership as a whole.

Cheesy as it may sound, the degree of love is important - and it takes many shapes. Love and stability are paramount; all else is mutable.
 
 
Fist of Fun
10:25 / 13.10.02
Difficult to say which is better - 2 male parents or 2 female ones. To date there are very few male couples with children for one very obvious reason - you need a woman to hand over the children or you need to adopt. In the UK it is only in the past 3 (roughly) years that male couples have been allowed to adopt.

Interesting point from my perspective as a lawyer though:
The current President of the Family Division (basically, head judge for all family related law in England and Wales) Dame Butler-Sloss publicly announced a few years ago that when she started out as President she did not believe that single-sex parents were a good idea but changed her mind on seeing the evidence to the contrary!

She did not specify whether she thought all female or all male were better, but the statement was around the time that the first all male couple adoption was allowed - although I am not sure whether it was directed towards that event.
 
 
pointless and uncalled for
11:59 / 13.10.02
Sorry Haus, I thought that it was a given that there are far too many shit het parenting couples. I would have mentioned it if I thought that the matter was in question.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
13:58 / 13.10.02
There's such a thing as an ideal parenting set up?
 
 
pantone 292
19:35 / 13.10.02
Hey why stop at 2 parents? as I recall Marge Piercy came up with an interesting alternative notion of 'family' in Woman on the Edge of Time - basically a family here consists of 3 individuals all of whom are referred to as 'mother' regardless of their gender or sex. All 3 mothers commit to a child but are not necessarily in a relationship with each other [cant quite remember, they might not be allowed to have relationships with other mothers in the same group]. I also mistily recall the children all being grown in factories. But then, after recently reading Geoff Ryman's *The Child Garden*, in which children are raised by viruses, I have gotten confused about what the truth of the matter might be.
 
 
pointless and uncalled for
10:04 / 14.10.02
Should really see if there are any studies on commune format child-rearing.
 
 
No star here laces
16:37 / 14.10.02
I've been reliably informed that it is the lack of a strong and upstanding father figure that makes young men go off the rails and frequent pool halls and houses of easy virtue. It may even be the cause of sexual inversion itself.

Therefore I can confidently say that two fathers is clearly the preferable option - the young lad can hardly want for a decent father figure then, can he?
 
 
No star here laces
16:39 / 14.10.02
However those pedos are all poofs, though, aren't they? So a couple of carpet-munchers would be the better option as they haven't got any relatively oversized cocks to abuse the poor mite with...
 
 
No star here laces
16:39 / 14.10.02
Moronic enough?
 
 
HCE
23:44 / 17.10.02
Here at UCLA, one of the things we look at very closely is the question: of what, precisely, is parenting comprised? Since we do research rather than theory, we cannot go with the things most of us intuitively know to be true, for example, it is good to love your child. We have to break "love" down into observable behaviors that are reliable predictors for things like the development of literacy and social competence. This does not end disputes, for the devil can quote even scripture to suit his purposes, much less statistics. But what our group (and I am only a grant administrator, not a researcher, so I may have completely misunderstood this) has found is that overall, the best parents are those with the highest education and the greatest financial resources. Insofar as men generally reach higher levels of education and make more money, it would stand to reason that gay men make better parents than lesbians.

The reason this is a moronic conclusion to draw is that neither factor alone is predictive of very much, and for any small group (under 100 families), those factors are predictive of basically nothing. What we have found is that it is not uncommon for parents who are well educated, with high incomes, and "love" their children to be lousy caregivers. Love, as opposed to hatred, is a good thing for kids. But love as opposed to experience in child care is not (necessarily). It is entirely possible to be loving and incompetent.

One reason why extended families, of any gender mix, are good for kids is that there is usually somebody available who has experience caring for children. Also, there is more likely to be supervised peer play, which again develops childrens' skill in negotiating social situations.

I do not know of any research that has been done as to whether the gender of the parent makes any difference, nor do I even know whether it is possible to isolate that as a factor, separate from education, income, experience, beliefs, practices, and a whole host of other much more important things.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
00:11 / 18.10.02
I was watching some TV programme about some kids with a lesbian mum and a gay dad who live next door to each other and the child just lives in both homes. It's a good idea to be brought up by two sexes just so that kids can develop an unbiased sense of gender difference. I'm not suggesting they wouldn't learn without it just that it's kinda nice to have a mum and dad. Having four parents seems the best though, when your two mums pissed each other off you could go over and see your two dads... it's practicality at work.
 
  
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