Hello Again

I'm reactivating this blog because lately I've been writing heaps on a couple of e-lists (notably Lesbian Parents Australia: Lesbian_Parents_Australia@yahoogroups.com and Australian Married Gays: ozmarriedgays@yahoogroups.com). I've so enjoyed the dialogue with people of very diverse backgrounds and points of view, and I find that writing helps me to clarify my thiniing.

I don't pretend to have the 'truth' - I don't think there is such a thing - everyone has their own 'truth', and for some, that 'truth' is constantly changing (especially us Geminis!). So I would really value everyone's comments, especially if you disagree with me (as long as you're nice about it) because we can only come to a deeper and richer understanding if we all share our truths with each other.

So here's a selection of my recent postings, and I'll try to keep putting thoughts here regularly and I'll be looking forward with excitement and curiosity to your comments.

First from the lesbian parenting group:

On known versus unknown sperm donors. 20/08/06

If my reading of “Re: Patrick” is correct, the birth mother and her partner initially agreed to the donor having some involvement in Patrick’s life. However, the more he actually did so, the more distressing they found it. They felt that his involvement tended to invalidate them as a family unit, and especially the role of the female co-parent. So they tried to decrease his involvement, and then he took it to the Family Court.

As I read the decision I was very struck by the ‘maleness’ of the Law. The judge was very impressed by how ‘rational’ and ‘reasonable’ the donor was, and was appalled by the emotionality of the birth mother. And of course, as far as the law is concerned, whatever was initially agreed to should be upheld – no matter how much you find on reflection that it’s not working for you. How can any of us know, ahead of time, what it’s going to be like with a new baby, what impact that’s going to have on our relationships, and how we’ll feel about our donor’s participation? Donors, too, can change. I have a friend whose donor agreed to be hands-off, no day-to-day involvement etc, but from the moment he found out she was pregnant, he wanted to dictate where she lived, what she ate, what she did – it was a nightmare. And because she put his name on the birth certificate, the Child Support system insists that he contribute to the child’s upkeep.

Because of the political climate at the moment (with a certain prime minister and his cronies in the religious right) the “best interests of the child” are usually construed as being a right to know and have a relationship with a male parent – irrespective of what has been agreed to beforehand.

On the unknown donor side of the equation, I have heard from lesbian mums in Brisbane that there are only about seven donors who have agreed to donate their sperm to lesbians (yes, they have a choice) so most of the children of lesbian parents conceived from sperm-bank donors are related. Which might cause problems later on. But this may just be an urban myth!

On role models and such. 21/08/06

One of the lesbian mothers told us how her son gravitates to men and seems to be completely fascinated by them.

If we could disconnect it from gender specifically at this point, I think it illustrates one of the more challenging aspects of parenthood. I’ve come to the conclusion that no matter how well-intentioned we are or how hard we try, sometimes we are not the parent our kids need us to be – and sometimes our kids aren’t what we want or need them to be. I was a lousy parent of infants (crying babies send me into a panic attack); very creative and resourceful parent of toddlers; mixed report card on pre-teens; fantastic parent of teens (according to them); still trying to figure out how to parent adults (I reckon this bit is the hardest of the lot!). Just to give you an example, when my son hit Year 11 he goofed off, smoked too much dope, didn’t do much work, and finished year 12 with a pretty dismal OP score. I did my utmost to encourage him, help him, give him the resources he needed – but it’s not in my nature to be authoritarian, I always stressed to my kids that it’s their life, their decision, and they live with the consequences of their choices, so I didn’t force him to do homework etc. Maybe he needed a firmer hand – or maybe he would have rebelled – who knows? But I blame myself a lot for not giving him more ‘guidance’. And as for them – I’m a gender scholar, but neither of my kids are the least bit academic, and my daughter’s not even a feminist!! (I mentioned this at a Feminist Mothers’ discussion group I go to, which promptly sent a couple of the mums into a tailspin. I mean, imagine if a kid raised by lesbians ended up homophobic? Not a pretty thought).

No family can supply enough ‘models’ of all the kinds of behaviours and experiences and ways of being in the world that kids need. Het families supply no models for their queer kids, non-musical families can’t contribute much to their budding virtuosi, Quakers can’t provide much of an example for their kids in the military, etc etc. Which is why, I guess, the old saying arose, “It takes a village to raise a child”. In most tribal societies, some or all of the parents’ brothers and sisters stand in loco parentis to each kid, which is brilliant – no single human being, or even pair, can give all the guidance, attention, skills, affection and time that every child needs. In the concern I see so many lesbian parents expressing about providing appropriate models for their children, I see an acknowledgement of our inadequacies as parents that not many heterosexual families are willing to admit. In actual fact I think lesbian and gay parents on the whole do a brilliant job just because they’re so aware of their limitations, and think and work strenuously to compensate for them.

So this little boy, now, is fascinated by males. At other times he’ll be grooving on people who can teach him stuff he doesn’t see much at home – like maybe chess, or hockey, or geology, or ballet, or whatever. Blokes seem exotic to him now, perhaps later it will be Greeks, or Buddhists, or Police!

On the difference between the ‘public image and the private self’.

I suspect for some of us at least, it’s more likely to be ‘selves’. Our culture tends to promote the view that there’s some essential self, someone who is truly you, inside somewhere, and somehow we have to peel off all the layers of conditioning or artifice or whatever to get down to the core self. I don’t know about you guys, but I say and do things all the time that are completely at odds with my cherished ideas about who I am, so now I think I have multiple selves which are constantly in a state of flux (other Geminis should at least know what I mean!) Sometimes outside factors will influence which self we inhabit (such as family censure or workplace requirements), sometimes it might be what we’re reading or thinking about; I think it’s also influenced by our bodies (I feel more butch when I’m overweight, more fem when I’m slimmer, but then get more butch again when I get fit), and it also varies in the context of our relationships – someone on the list was saying their butch partner kind of pressures them a bit to take more of a fem role and she’s happy to go along with that (for now!). So instead of seeing the ‘public’ image as somehow inauthentic, I’m more inclined to believe now that we can be ourselves in lots of different ways, and the person we are around our family of origin is just as much truly 'us' as the one who sits on the couch at home with their partner.

On parenting styles

. . . some of it is ‘habitus’ (a nice sociological term for the way we are raised, so that some attitudes and behaviours become unconscious for us – we don’t even realise we’re doing them), some of it is the particular style of gender that feels most comfortable for us at this stage of our journey/today/at home, some of it is what we have consciously chosen because we have become convinced that it’s a better way to be. None of the gay boys in my study (nor the lesbians for that matter) had ever seen their dads do indoor chores beyond some cooking or dishwashing – but all had adopted a lifestyle that involves men doing housework. It might feel ‘wrong’ or ‘odd’ – but they do get used to it! Because everything in our society is seen through the lenses of gender (which is not inevitable – it could be different) if our sons see their two mums doing all the housework, they might still make the assumption that such work is more appropriate for females than males (especially when you add in TV, movies, other people’s families). So I guess bottom line is – when you’re deciding on male role models for your sons, make sure they have a vacuum cleaner – and know how to use it!!!

On biolgical ties and their role in making 'family' 29/08/06

A friend was telling me recently that a fellow turned up on her doorstep one day and announced he was her half-brother (her father was a notorious philanderer and gave her long-suffering mother a dose of the clap on more than one occasion). My friend was horrified and pretty much slammed the door in his face. I felt kind of sorry for him; clearly he’d gone to a lot of trouble to track her down. But I think this illustrates a very important point – to some people biological ties are hugely important, and others don’t care about them much at all. Some adopted people move heaven and earth to find their birth mother, and others don’t feel the least curiosity about finding their bio parents. And you can almost guarantee, whatever your feelings are about this, your kids’ will be polar opposites. (One of life’s little ironies). You may want no involvement from your sperm donor; your kid will probably want him to give her away at her wedding!

I think this also illustrates another characteristic of ‘family’ – it often seems to be about defining who is ‘us’ and who is ‘them’, who’s included, who’s excluded, policing the boundaries. I’m sure in evolutionary terms there was a lot of survival value in maintaining a tightly knit kinship group who looked out for each other – still is in developing countries who don’t have a social welfare system like ours (we do love you Centrelink, honest!). I think the poet Robert Frost once remarked, ‘home is the place where, when you have nowhere else to go, they have to take you in’. Bleak, but kind of expresses the survival thing pretty well.

Talking about half-siblings possibly hooking up made me think about the incest taboo. It is almost universal, but not completely. Ancient Egyptian pharaohs usually married their sisters (most often half sisters), and this custom was also common amongst some of the chiefly families of the Pacific Islands. Genetically we know that the more closely related partners are, the more likely that recessive genes will be expressed in their offspring. Darwin married his cousin, and many of their children had serious health problems which he attributed to inbreeding. And of course we all know about the haemophilia that passed from Queen Victoria to most of the royal families of Europe through her multitudinous offspring all marrying their royal cousins. Someone talked about the ‘yuk factor’ in thinking about half siblings partnering, and I know it is a gut reaction for most people, but there’s no logical reason for it. Especially in this era of genetic testing, it’s really no more harmful or ‘unnatural’ than, well, being homosexual for example . . .

Bottom line, I guess, is that we all have different ideas about what family means to us, who we want in our families, how important biological factors play in all of this. But I think it’s important to remember that our children will often have very different ideas and feelings about these things – and that our own feelings may change, especially as we get older. I left home at 18, have never lived in the same city as my parents or my only brother, and had very little time for biological kinship. But since Mum’s death, I’ve got a lot closer to my brother’s family, my cousins, and my aunty – and it feels kinda nice. Conversely some people seem to spend half their lives breaking free from those claustrophobic family connections that stifle their individuality. As someone else said in a post – family can definitely be a two-edged sword.