Home Fronts: Controversies in Nontraditional Parenting - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1555835325 ISBN 13: 9781555835323

Publisher: Alyson Books, 2000

Synopsis

Jess Wells has invited a host of alternative family advocates to go beyond the rosy picture of perfect health and happy families and explore the truths about gay and lesbian parenting that are not easy to face. Suzie Bright discusses the navet that lesbians have brought to their parenting; James Johnstone recounts the trials and tribulations of being a donor dad, and Rachel Pepper charges lesbians with villainizing the biological mother in custody cases; The result is a hard-hitting, controversial critique of the state of gay and lesbian parenting.

Jess Wells is the author of eight books, including the Lambda Literary Award finalist Lesbians Raising Sons, the novels, The Price of Passion and After Shocks, and several volumes of short stories. She and her son live in San Francisco.

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Review

In her introduction to this timely and brave collection of essays, Jess Wells argues that queer parenting is well enough established that we can stand back as a community and offer a little constructive self-criticism. "Only after we secure a minimal amount of social stature," writes Wells, "are we able to realize that we've been painting a good face on our parenting and refusing to discuss our own mistakes because we've had to ward off the cultural assumption that we are all bad parents." The main controversy seems to be the rights and feelings of the nonbiological mother in a lesbian family. In the opening essay, "The Essential Outsider," Aimee Gelnaw describes the pain of exclusion from the principal mother-child bond, especially while a baby is still breast-feeding. In her interview with Kate Kendell, director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Sarah Schulman talks about that scourge of gay parenting, the biological mom who attempts to deny custody or visitation of a child to the nonbiological mom. One of these "lesbian villains" speaks out as well, under an assumed name, recounting her horror story of an abusive, manipulative partner to explain why she has denied her former partner access to their child. And at the close of the volume, Rachel Pepper discloses her reluctance to consider her partner a "mother" to her daughter Frances, and her resistance to second-parent adoption. Other issues include biracial families, transracial adoption, and the savage prejudices against transgendered parents. This bracing book should be read by every gay or lesbian parent (or those considering parenting), as well as the health care workers and therapists who counsel them. --Regina Marler

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

All in the Family by James C. Johnstone

You are in your early 20s. It's Christmas. You have bussed it from the safe preserve of a downtown gay ghetto to have dinner with your family. Besides your mom and dad, your elder sister and her redneck homophobic husband, their two-year-old son, your younger brother, and his mousy bride, and a visiting aunt and uncle or two, are gathered in your parents' shag-carpeted, split-level, very suburban hetero home to do the family thing: to have a nice Christmas dinner together.

For the last hour or so you've been playing horsey with your nephew to take his mind off the gleaming presents piled high under the gaily decorated spruce tree. The house smells of turkey, gravy, stuffing, spruce boughs, and bayberry candles. It's five minutes to dinner and your sister wants to talk to you. In private.

You slip away from the family under the watchful eye of her hateful husband, whose big furry hands now hover protectively on your nephew's shoulders, restraining him. You follow your sister to your old bedroom, wondering what this is all about. She clears her throat but doesn't look you in the eye. This is serious. In less than two minutes she blurts it all out. That she and, let's call him Brutus, have had a talk and reached a decision: that they are uncomfortable with you touching their son, your nephew. That it would be the best for all concerned if you stay away from him from now on.

There it is. The bomb has dropped, and you've been blasted speechless. Your sister finally meets your gaze, for a split second, and with a weak smile says, "I think mom's calling us for dinner. Let's head back to the party," oblivious to the impact of the bomb she has dropped, the depth of the damage done. You are too stunned to respond. You go back to the party and have dinner with the family. Your sister and brother-in-law don't look at you. You avoid looking at your nephew. You skip dessert, leave early, say you have to catch a bus, and head out to another party. You forget to take your presents.

From that moment on you cut yourself off from any contact with your only nephew. From that moment on, you never speak to your sister. From that moment on, you decide you don't have a sister; you never had one. And from that moment on you can never touch children again, let alone be around them without feeling self-conscious, watched, dirty, and dangerous.

This is a true story. It happened to my partner. Well, my ex-partner and current housemate, my friend Keith.

Nineteen years have passed since this family gathering took place. Brother and sister haven't spoken to each other since then. The times when Keith's family has a holiday gathering, it is always in two sessions; gay brother and estranged sister are never invited to the same party. Gay uncle and nephew haven't seen each other since that fateful night. This nephew, who my ex's father has said often enough for it probably to be true, displays the same reserved, gentle character, the same book reader's lack of interest in sports or hunting (until he's forced into it by his homo-hating father) that Keith displayed when he was a teenager. They supposedly look alike, and he's probably gay. If he is, he has endured 21 in the protective talons of a father who swears he'd "fucking strangle the faggot" if he found out any son of his was a fairy. So much for fatherhood and family values.

Luckily, not all straight sisters and brothers are like my ex's. All is not doom and gloom on the family front. For every mean and narrow-minded bigot in our lives, there are straight family members whose matter-of-fact acceptance, open-mindedness, generosity of heart, bottom-line blood-is-thicker-than-water--"You're family, damn it!"-attitude go a long way to make up for the damage done by the fear and ignorance of homophobes in our midst.

I am lucky. My straight brother was supportive of me during my difficult coming-out process. (Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer father. You get the picture.) In fact, we are closer now since I've come out-and our lives have diverged-than we were growing up. Better still, my brother married a woman with a gay sister.

Seven years ago, my brother and sister-in-law had a baby boy. It had been a difficult pregnancy. My sister-in-law has Crohn's Disease. The day after my nephew was born, my ex and I went to visit her at the hospital. We were two gay men in the sanctum sanctorum of heterosexual pride and privilege: the maternity ward. My sister-in-law, still puffy and bloated from complications endured during the last weeks of her pregnancy, lay propped up in bed cradling a quivering bundle. My nephew was making the cutest little squeaking sounds.

"Do you want to hold him?"

Frankly, I was a little scared. I hesitated, then gingerly and clumsily gathered up the flannel-swaddled baby. It was an awesome moment. Tears filled my eyes. At the same time, I was deathly afraid I was holding him wrong, that I might be hurting him, or that I'd drop him.

I held him for a few minutes. The baby squeaked and fussed in my embrace. I looked at Keith, who looked back at me and the baby with a mix of wonder, longing, and hesitation. I remembered the story of that family Christmas of long ago.

About this edition

• Publisher: Alyson Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1555835325
• ISBN 13: 9781555835323
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240
• Editor: Wells Jess