Ciannait Khan | Staff Writer
With the marriage equality referendum coming up, same-sex parenting is a topical issue. If we hadn’t heard the arguments for and against gay couples adopting children before, we’re certainly hearing them now and will continue to over the next couple of months. With this being said, if a child is going to a home where they feel loved and cared for, then what should the sex of the couple matter? Regardless, for the adoption process to start, the assistance of a Jacksonville family law attorney, for example, may come in handy. If the couple can give the child a better life than before, then gender shouldn’t be an issue.
One recent Irish Times article opposing adoption by gay parents carries the title “Love is Not Enough”, and claims within it that “not being raised by your Mam or Dad constitutes a loss”. Even advocates of same-sex parenting often imply that being adopted by gay parents is not as “ideal” as being raised by your biological mother and father. Gay adoption is often argued for on the basis of simply being preferable to an even less desirable alternative, such as being constantly ferried from one foster home to the next. It can also be legally complex so I’ve heard so having legal expertise on your side if you’re looking to same sex adoption as an option for your family. My friend has told me it helped her and her partner out.
A lot of the research on gay and lesbian parenting would indicate that those children do very well, and that’s been linked back to the fact that often these parents have to go the extra mile to become parents.
A recent thread on Boards.ie attracted some media attention when a 30-year-old Irish man agreed to answer any questions about his life being raised by two mothers. The questions ranged from trivial matters such as what he called his mothers to more personal ones, such as how his parentage has affected his own sexuality or whether he felt he suffered from a lack of male presence. While the purpose of the Q&A was no doubt to debunk myths about being raised by gay parents, not one poster on the thread suggested at any point that there might be actually be something good about being raised by two mothers. All that anybody was concerned about was whether he “missed out” or “suffered”.
This begs an important question about non-traditional family models and how we view them today. While our society has recently become much more accepting of non-nuclear families, it is still generally thought that being raised by married, biological parents is the best way to grow up. I want to challenge this belief and suggest that we frame the issue in a new light. By assuming that the traditional family structure is the superior model to which all others must measure up, we overlook the potential advantages of non-traditional families. We must be cautious about taking that which is the norm as a standard, and assuming that anything that diverges from that standard to be a bad thing.
Having a diverse pool of experiences is good for society as a whole, but there might also be benefits for the individual children who grow up in non-traditional families. I spoke with Elizabeth Nixon, a lecturer in developmental psychology, who pointed to some interesting observations on the matter. Concerning single-parent families, she says “sometimes children in those families have to take on a little more responsibility, and some people have suggested that this might foster things like autonomy, independence, and certain levels of confidence because they have opportunities to do things that children in two-parent families might not have”. She also notes that “a lot of the research on gay and lesbian parenting would indicate that those children do very well, and that’s been linked back to the fact that often these parents have to go the extra mile to become parents, and so they’re very highly committed to their parenting role”. For some same-sex couples, their one goal could be to become parents and to raise a child full of love. Even though many people may not agree with this, things similar to this resource on surrogacy for gay couples can give these couples a glimmer of hope of becoming parents. And it should be welcomed by communities.
Rather than seeing the nuclear family as exemplary, we should consider that there is likely to be both advantages and disadvantages to every family structure imaginable.
From a personal standpoint, I have always felt that there were many benefits to growing up with parents who were separated. Two homes gives you two perspectives on life and, in my experience, the dialectic between the two helps you to develop your own opinions on what’s right and what’s wrong. There’s also the possibility of expanding your support network through step-parents and step-families. But these potential “pluses” are rarely, if ever, acknowledged. In general there is only negativity surrounding non-traditional families, with terminology such as “illegitimate child” and “broken family” still commonly used. The stereotype of the evil step-parent is pervasive, and divorce remains one of the biggest sources of conflict in film, television and literature.
Rather than seeing the nuclear family as exemplary, we should consider that there is likely to be both advantages and disadvantages to every family structure imaginable. Continuing to view gay parents, single parents, and other similar similar structures as somehow less than ideal only perpetuates the stigma surrounding them. Not only does this make the lives of the children more difficult in a direct sense, it also creates a vicious circle in which these children may do less well not as a result of their parent(s) being insufficient, but because of the distorted image that society has of that kind of family.
Elizabeth Nixon advises a certain degree of caution, given that non-traditional structures may still be relatively new which makes it difficult to say anything for certain about them. However, the conditions which children require to thrive such as love, care, nurturance and discipline seem to have little to do with gender or biology. Furthermore, she notes that there has recently been a shift in how research on child development is carried out. When research on this topic began in the 1950s, “the nuclear family was held up as the gold standard and everything else was perceived to be deficient in some way, so the expectation was that these children wouldn’t do as well”. But things are changing, and recent approaches tend to look more at what goes on within families. “Rather than looking at the label of the family, research is more concerned with understanding the processes, the kind of parenting that parents engage in and the quality of relationships”.
Continuing to view gay parents, single parents, and other similar similar structures as somehow less than ideal only perpetuates the stigma surrounding them.
Opposition to gay parents adopting children might be low within the college community, but there is still room for readjusting our thinking on these families and others like them. Just because something is the norm doesn’t mean it is the best, and assuming this can lead to unnecessary stigmatization of anybody whose circumstances are slightly different. This is especially important to realise when there can, in fact, be advantages to alternative family structures. After all, no family is perfect, and the sooner we realise this the better.
