Work, Love & Play

What happens when our ‘Modern Family’ breaks up?

2012-02-16T15:48:00.002+11:00

Guest Blogger: Luke Gahan (pictured)

Luke is a PhD student at the Bouverie Centre, La Trobe University. Luke's PhD research is an extension of the Work, Love, Play project. He is exploring the experiences of same-sex couples who separate after they have had children together.

One doesn’t have to look to hard these days to see same-sex parented families in the media or in popular culture. Happy rainbow families are depicted in popular TV dramas such as ‘Greys Anatomy’ with a family made up of two female doctor mums and a straight plastic surgeon father. Then there’s ‘Brothers and Sisters’ with two gay dads and their adopted child. And how could we forget the comedy hit ‘Modern Family’ with the hysterical gay dad duo Mitchell and Cameron and their adopted daughter Lily.

But what happens if same-sex parents and families breakup? How are their experiences different to opposite-sex families? Since our families are so diverse, so too will be our experiences of separation. The experiences of a bio-mum may be very different to a non-bio-mum; just as it would be for a donor dad compared to a dad via surrogacy. These are the very questions we will be exploring in a new study on separated same-sex parented families.

Same-sex couples and parents are not immune from separation, yet all too often their unique stories go unheard. Campaigns for same-sex marriage and parenting rights focus on happy couple stories. While showing the positive side of same-sex relationships and parenting makes sense in a campaign to gain equal marriage rights, it may inadvertently lead separated parents to feel isolated from friends and community.

As you are aware same-sex parents have not always had equal recognition and in some instances they still don’t. Indeed even in places where laws do protect same-sex parents, culture and attitude often lag behind, leaving some same-sex parents vulnerable or unrecognised as a parent – both before and after separation. Recent legal changes in Australia have ensured that same-sex couples are treated in a similar way to opposite-sex couples in the family court system. Yet there has been no research on whether these legal processes are working for, or are indeed appropriate for same-sex couples.

While the amendments to federal law in 2008 were extensive and a monumental step towards equal recognition of same-sex couples and their families, it did not make provisions to recognise the often radically complex makeup of same-sex parented families. Same-sex parented families can often include more than two parents and therefore several couples. Currently neither federal nor Victorian law allows for the equal legal recognition of more than two legal parents. The only option available to such families is to get a court parenting order for each parent not on the birth certificate. However, even with court parenting orders these complex yet very ‘modern family’ situations get even more complex following separation. The ways in which families and parents experience and cope with this is will be explored in our study.

One example where separation for same-sex parented families can potentially become complicated is with post separation shared parenting. Under the recent Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibility) Act 2006 (Cth), courts with family law jurisdiction in Australia now have a responsibility to consider making orders for children to spend equal or substantial time with each legal parent, where such arrangements are in the children’s best interest and reasonably practicable. This change introduced a legal presumption of equal shared parental responsibility into Australia. The reforms were responding to concerns by parents, especially fathers, but also to a range of studies that indicated many children were expressing a wish to see more of their ‘other parent’. The shared parenting presumption can be incredibly difficult in families with just two parents – what happens in situations where there are three or four parents? How does the presumption of ‘shared care’ work if there are more than two households involved? Do the parents divide the week up amongst all households or does the court usually only award shared care to two parents – and if so, why and who did they choose? Our study hopes to gain an insight into how these new laws are affecting same-sex parented families.

Previous research has shown same-sex couples and parents tend to posses egalitarian relationship and parenting styles. How this transpires after separation is unclear. However, given the findings that the most successful and positive shared care arrangements are those where both parents had active involvement in their children’s care pre-separation the egalitarian nature of same-sex couples may give them an advantage for success when attempting post-separation shared care. Through this study we will gain a better understanding of same-sex parenting post separation and will explore whether relationships remain egalitarian and lead to greater success with shared care of children.

So what would happen if Dr. Robbins and Dr. Torres separated in ‘Grey’s Anatomy’? Would they share their daughter? What about the father, you know the plastic surgeon Dr. Sloan...would he be involved in shared care? And how would ‘Modern Family’ cope if Cameron and Mitchell broke up? Perhaps you already know....Perhaps this has already happened to you. Well now is your chance to have your unique separation stories heard and understood!

We will be conducting interviews with separated same-sex parents during 2012 in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Participants must have had at least one child while within a same-sex relationship which has now ended, but they do not necessarily have to still be parenting or have custody of their child. We are keen to hear from people who have been though the family court system as well as those who made their own separation arrangements. Interviews will take between one and two hours and will be held at a time convenient to you.

If you are interested in sharing your experiences of separation and being involved in this study please contact Luke at the Bouverie Centre on (03) 9385 5137 or email him here.

At your service: talk to us!

2012-02-08T12:58:00.001+11:00

At the end of last year, my colleague Henry and I held some focus groups with service providers who work with new and prospective parents: maternal child health nurses, general counsellors, family mediators, psychologists, IVF counsellors, family therapists, midwives, educators, and others working in this general field.

We wanted to know what sort of information they would like to see in resources designed to support them to improve service delivery for same-sex parented families. The workers in this group had a range of experience. Some had met just a few same-sex parented families in their professional lives. Others had met many.

I personally found the insight offered by these people to be incredibly thoughtful and complex. I had expected much more basic discussion about the need for rainbow stickers on the doorframe. But, as it turned out, people in these groups were highly tuned into the psychology and emotions of new parenting and had many thoughts about their work with same-sex parents. So I wanted to share some of what they told us.

In one session, a counsellor recounted her observations of the lesbian mothers she had met. She said, most people don’t really understand how becoming a mother might be different for lesbian mothers to heterosexual mothers. People see that lesbians might face extra discrimination, but beyond that they assume it is pretty much the same. While this isn’t an unwarranted assumption, because a lot is pretty much the same, there are some issues specific to lesbians that aren’t always acknowledged.

For example, this counsellor has met many lesbian mothers who find it incredibly confronting to admit or accept that they are having problems parenting – that they are finding it difficult or not feeling right, that they aren't happy or not enjoying their children. She explains this as the flip side of an unplanned pregnancy. A pregnancy that is highly planned, desperately desired, and potentially years in the making often brings with it pressure for the experience to be perfect. Unplanned pregnancies of course bring their own particular brand of stress. But people who have unplanned pregnancies might expect to find it hard, or not enjoy every moment or to be living in chaos for a while. People who have had to go to extraordinary lengths to become pregnant can feel like they are letting everybody down if they then become depressed or just find it difficult being a new mother.

This same counsellor also spoke about the way in which new parenthood can ‘ambush’ people emotionally. It’s not uncommon for an unanticipated well of emotion to topple new parents – the world suddenly becomes much more delicate with the awareness that life now has potential to bite, and bite hard, should anything happen to your child. Also people often come to re-live their own childhood and family experiences through parenting. This counsellor has observed many lesbian parents (and I am sure the same could hold for gay fathers too, although this woman works specifically with mothers), struggling with a fresh knot of grief about their own family relationships or coming out experience when they become mothers. Issues of acceptance and place within their family of origin were now much more intense.

People in the group also spoke about the role of the non-birth mother in lesbian relationships. Some nurses observed that it was often difficult for them, as nurses coming into the home, to understand the dynamics of lesbian couples, when those couples are also in the midst of working out their new roles as parents.

For heterosexual couples, the role of the father is much more culturally defined, even if it is an unfamiliar or awkward place for men in those early days of parenting. One nurse explained that many nurses feel awkward working with two mothers. They are conscious of not wanting to assume the non-birth mother will take on a fathering role, but equally they are not always sure of how to involve her.

Another nurse spoke about how she has noticed – but not quite known how to speak about – the often subtle and subconscious ways in which lesbian couples negotiate their parenting relationships. She has seen some couples who work extraordinarily well in partnership as two women, each highly intuitive about the other’s needs. But she has also seen couples struggle. In some cases, she has observed struggles over power and control, where one of the mothers (not necessarily the birth mother) emerges holding all the baby cards – with a greater sense of control over all things child-related in the household. She has also observed some women lapsing into insecurity, being unable to establish a sense of purpose and place in their baby's or family life. These are not necessarily issues specific to lesbians, but many nurses and counsellors are not familiar with these circumstances and find it harder to engage with lesbian couples about parenting and relationship issues than they might with a heterosexual mother.

Another counsellor spoke about how she has met lesbian non-birth mothers who experience a sense of grief about not having carried their child. This is difficult for some women to express as they are often conflicted about feeling sadness at a time that is supposed to be joyful. They feel they are not being supportive of their partner if they admit to a sense of personal loss with the birth of the baby.

I don’t have space here to explore all the points that were raised in these focus groups. We will publish something later this year, so watch this space. Some other issues raised were: how to engage gay fathers who have children via surrogacy in maternal child health services, how to engage gay fathers in ‘mother’s groups’, how to create appropriate support services for non-birthmothers (beyond joining the ‘dad’s group’), how to assist families to negotiate co-parenting arrangements with donors and so forth.

I found it fascinating, and incredibly heartening, that these nurses and other workers were able to articulate such honest and nuanced observations of the same-sex couples with whom they have worked. They were genuinely concerned about what they could do to help these couples through a stressful life change. They said they would love more information that might help workers who hadn’t met many same-sex families to feel more confident in talking to families, even simple resources about what questions to ask, what terms to use with two parents of the same gender and so forth. But they were also keen on information that explores some of the more complex issues of same-sex parenting and relationships.

So now parents, we want you!

For the next stage of this research we are keen to speak to parents. We are hosting a focus group for same-sex attracted parents (who are in a couple or single) to speak about their experiences with the mainstream service sector and what resources they would like to see produced for both parents and service providers.

If you live in Melbourne and might be available to talk to us, we a hosting a lunchtime focus group:

Wednesday 7th March

12.15pm

Lunch will be provided

Children are welcome (we have toys)

The Bouverie Centre

8 Gardiner st, Brunswick, Melbourne

If you would like to attend, please RSVP to Henry at h.vondoussa@latrobe.edu.au

or call Jen on 9385 5131 (leave a message if I don’t answer!).

We realise that this timeslot will not be a good one for people who work, or people’s who have children with midday sleep requirements. So if you can’t make this time but are still keen to be involved, please get in touch anyway as we will try and arrange another time and/or some phone interviews as well.

Hope we get to talk soon

Matilda's Project: the power of storytelling

2011-12-05T12:26:00.001+11:00

Matilda's Project: a play about family diversity

There is a video that has been doing the viral rounds on facebook and email lately. You might have seen it. It's called, “Two Lesbians Raised a Baby and This is What They Got.”

The video is of a clean-cut, sensible looking lad, Zach Wahl, speaking at the hearing of a bill to ban marriage for same-sex couples in Iowa, USA. Zach was raised with lesbian mothers and makes a touching appeal for people to recognise the normality and ‘goodness’ of his family life. I have to confess to a brief teary moment listening to this. I would be very proud to be one of this kid’s Moms.

However, the second time I watched it, I felt a bit irritated by its blatant appeal to ‘normal’. Why can’t people accept us even if we don’t fit this image of whitebread ‘normality’? If my son spends his teenage years sporting gothic-black eyeliner and reading Sylvia Plath (as I suspect he well might) can he still stand up and make an appeal for how great his family is? This is not to undermine the importance or impact of Zach’s speech (it’s a beautiful speech). But I think we need to remember our families and our kids – especially our kids –are great in all their diversity.

All that being said, it's a great thing that Zach’s video has gone viral. Apparently when it was posted on Facebook, it generated over 1,000,000 ‘likes’ or ‘shares’ within 24 hours. Dana Rudolph, who writes the Mombian blog (check it out if you haven’t already), makes a good point about why this video is so powerful. It tells a story. She writes, “Storytelling lies at the heart of the human experience. It is something we expose our children to almost from birth, and cuts across time and cultures. Never underestimate the staying power—or the transformative power—of a good story.”

Stories generate emotional connection between people and 'issues' in a way that facts, figures and arguments will never do. We often forget about the role of emotion in political action. It is the implicit subtext to almost all political argument. At the end of the day, it is often the appeal to emotion, rather than rational argument, that changes minds (hearts?)… and policies.

But stories are also simply great tools for exploring human experience. People read reflections of their own lives and the world they inhabit. Stories help people make sense of their place in the world and the weird, wacky, confusing processes that keep society ticking over.

This is why it is so important that children see their own lives, at least to some extent, reflected in the stories they read, see and hear.

It is with this in mind that I would like to give huge plug to Matilda’s Project.

Matilda's Project is a new Australian theatre production written by Danny Gibbins and directed by Yma Zammit-Ross that will debut as part of the Midsumma festival 2012 in Melbourne, Australia.

Matilda's grade one teacher has set the class a project; to present about their families. Constantly bombarded with stereotypical images in books and media about what a family should look like, she is nervous about seeming different to her peers.

Written, acted, directed and produced by qualified primary and high school teachers, the play aims to break through the stereotypes and present a more balanced perspective of what constitutes a family.

Through the sharing of books and stories, games, songs and art the audience is treated to a light-hearted and interactive experience that promotes inclusion.

The play features the delightful, original children's music of Alice Garrick. Books, cds and other resources promoting a variety of family forms for children will be available for purchase at the show along with drinks and snacks.

The production will be staged at the Learning Centre at CERES in Brunswick, from January 25th - 29th at 2:30pm. Tickets $15 full, $8 children 3-12, under 3 free.

Tickets on sale via Midsumma.
Sorry this is a Melbourne-only event for now. But I am sure you can lobby the producers if you would like to see a production of it in your town (especially if you have some spare cash on hand to fund it to come to your town!!).

Public displays of affection: the rest will follow

2011-10-12T12:48:00.006+11:00

Recently about town I have spotted posters advertising hand-holding. Specifically, gay hand-holding. They are simple black and white bill-posters which offer no sense that the folk who produced them (the unidentified, guerrilla hand-holding campaigners) had a budget. They could have been made on a photocopier. Just a silhouette of two men holding hands and the slogan ‘why hide it?’ Women are told to do it anywhere. The rest will follow.

The first time I came across this poster I stopped for a little stare, wondering where I stood with its slogan. Political message wrapped up in a cute little action plan. Hold hands. Be out and proud. Challenge the world. Nice in theory, fine in Brunswick street, possibly dangerous in other spaces. Or at least uncomfortable.

That same day I went to a gig at the Corner Hotel in Melbourne. It was a great gig. Quirky band. Crowd full of young guys wearing tight jeans, cardigans and thick glasses (who I quickly typecast as ‘geeky-chic’). Standing in front of me was a man who didn’t really fit the geeky-chic mode. He was a bit older, a bit cooler and, dare I day, a bit sleazier. He was accompanied by his preppy, and I suspect slightly intoxicated, young girlfriend. These two spent the ENTIRE night tongue-locked. At first it was sweet. They seemed to be enjoying themselves. And each other. He leaned over, she reached up on tippy toes to put her arms around his neck. Every so often she’d take a kissing break to gaze solemnly into his eyes. An hour later this behaviour was disturbing. I was finding it gross and regressed to 1989. School dance. Awkward hands. Too much saliva. Several other audience members had become similarly distracted and were giggling like teenagers.

So on this day, I had many thoughts running around my head about public displays of affection. PDAs.

I think I can honestly say that even if I were heterosexual I would not engage in an extended public pashing session. Especially in an environment like the pub on a Sunday night. Apart from anything else, it’s just tacky. But I would like to reserve my right to do this, should I ever be so inclined. And I am not sure that, as a lesbian, I do have quite the same “right” (in the cultural, not legal, sense) as a heterosexual person to kiss in public. Not for a whole hour anyway.

The thing with PDAs is that most gay people rarely enter into them without thought. Even in the gayest of gay friendly neighbourhoods it’s not often that I would casually pick up my girlfriend’s hand without a hint of self consciousness or a passing thought for who is around. This, of course, is not going to kill me. Of all the difficult things in the world, being guarded about my PDAs does not rate highly for me—although it may do for others. But it is a sign of a broader sense of guardedness about expressing myself that I think many gay men and lesbians feel.

Someone asked me the other day if I worry about my son being bullied at school because he has lesbian mothers and a gay dad. My answer was no. I don’t worry much about this. I think schoolyard taunts can be positively addressed and there are many progressive, inner city schools that will be comfortable places for my son. But I do worry about him being guarded. I worry that he will inevitably grow up with a self-conscious filter, where he has to think selectively about how to explain his life or his family. It’s not a big deal in the scheme of things. But this sort of guardedness over a long period of time can be stressful.

I don’t have an easy solution to this. I think my son will grow up with a certain level of guardedness about his family. And he needs this to keep him safe. But at the same time, I hope I can teach him to be brave in the world. Often it’s ok to challenge people by being upfront and taking some risks. Conservatism— staying inside the box, going with the flow, being ‘normal’— is without doubt more comfortable. But I hope I can teach my son to value a more radical life.

So I think my response to the cute, pro-hand-holding posters is that they are great. Hold hands. Demand your right to PDAs. Challenge the world a little bit. But stay safe. (And avoid tacky PDAs in inappropriate places).

For a great post on the (in)visibility of lesbian mothers, check out this link to the Mombian blog.

Gay marriage, fatherlessness: not one and the same

2011-09-06T15:20:00.003+10:00

In celebration of Father’s Day, The Australian ran two pieces that took a stab at gay marriage, bizzarely linking it with the problem of fatherlessness in general and custody rights of divorced fathers.

Angela Shannahan (‘Children Suffer Under Political Correctness’) and Jeremy Sammut (‘Women’s Rights Push Dad’s Aside’) both refer to a recent NSW court ruling, that I have written about previously, in which a father was removed from his daughter’s birth certificate to enable her two mothers to be listed. They cite this case as evidence that society is increasingly ignoring the importance of fathers in children’s lives. They also suggest that gay marriage will inevitably lead to tragic situations such as this where children are denied access to their father.

Their arguments, however, miss several important points about this case. Firstly, the child had a close parental bond with both of her mothers as well as her father. It would have been a tragedy for her to lose her bond with the mother she had always known and loved, just as much as it would have been a tragedy for her to lose her bond with her father. (Which, it is worth noting, is not a fait acompli in this case. The father still has a parenting order granting him legal parenting rights). It was in the best interests of this child to have all her parental figures acknowledged.

Secondly, the non-biological mother in this case felt she needed to be on the birth certificate so she could demonstrate her legal right to make parenting decisions for her child. It is certainly in the best interests of any child that the parent who is caring for them has the right to make decisions about medical treatment, schooling and so forth.

Unfortunately, in order for the non-biological mother in this case to attain the parental security that came with being listed on a birth certificate, the child’s father had to be removed from it. This was a wholly inadequate outcome because it didn’t appropriately reflect the true makeup of this child’s family. Even the judge in this case, NSW District Court Judge Stephen Walmsley, expressed discomfort with his decision and argued that birth certificates should have provisions for more than two parents. Sadly, the most likely outcome of a case like this is heightened insecurity and conflict between the parents – the worst possible situation for this child.

Citing this case as an argument against gay marriage is nonsensical. The circumstances and laws that defined this case occurred without legal marriage being an option for gay men and lesbians in Australia. It arose because family life is complex and formal legal documents such as birth certificates generally don’t accommodate complexity very well.

I disagree with Jeremy Sammut that lesbian and gay rights activists have no concern for the father in this case. There are many men in Australia who have become fathers via donor parenting with lesbian couples or single women. Many of these fathers are gay men themselves who take their fatherhood role very seriously. Most likely, these men are also advocates of gay marriage because they understand that the paramount concern of lesbian and gay rights advocates is the social and legal recognition of family and relationship diversity. Families do not fit one, neat model. They never have. Recognising this is in the best interests of every child.

I capture the family

2011-08-30T12:01:00.001+10:00

I thought I had a personal policy of ignoring crazy conservatives. It drives me nuts that someone like Andrew Bolt gets so much attention for his illogical rantings. Not to mention Fred Nile, Alan Jones, Pauline Hanson or anyone else guaranteed to provide a controversial comment or two on request. But I have discovered it’s actually quite difficult to stick to this policy when writing about ‘gay issues’; even more so when writing about ‘gay FAMILY issues’. Just look at my last few posts. Who is featured? Bob Katter. Miranda Devine. Barnaby Joyce. Joh Bjelke-Peterson.

Why is it that every time an issue relating to marriage or families emerges on the political horizon, the extreme right are given so much airplay? Is it simply an effort to achieved balanced journalism? Or do loopy opinions just sell more papers? Or perhaps conservatives tend to have louder voices and deeper pockets?

Part of the problem is that the extreme right – and the Christian right – have been so successful in capturing ‘family values’ as their own. 'Family values’ is really a euphemism for white, Christian, heterosexual supremacy. Yet it seems that public figures who claim the protection of ‘family values’ as their raison d'être are consulted on EVERYTHING related to love, relationships and sex. For some crazy reason, self-identified defenders of the family are afforded expert status on matters relating to the private lives of gay people they have never met, lesbian mothers they have not once spoken to and transgendered folk who they chose to ignore. (Not to mention women who chose to have an abortion).

So why doesn’t the political left stake their own claim on ‘family values’?

In reality I think the left are defenders of families, and of people in families. Protection of the environment is about protecting quality of life, particularly for children who are going to be around for longer than us. Securing fair wages and access to healthcare is about enabling people to care for themselves and their families. Resisting a neoliberal agenda, which values work and money over everything else, including the time and space to just hang out with one’s family, is an act in ‘defence of the family’. The argument that families can be who or what you make them— that consensual, safe and loving relationships are what make families (irrespective of gender)—is a pro-family argument. It’s just that these issues tend not to be flown under the ‘family values’ flag.

The stranglehold of the right on the whole notion of ‘family values’ means people on the left tend to distance themselves from the term. Unfortunately this also means the crazy right are given more time and space than they deserve to rant on about “gay issues”.

The family closet: Bob Katter and his brother

2011-08-24T12:12:00.002+10:00

Bob Katter is the new Sir Joh. A right wing nutter, most famous for his ludicrous conservative commentary. He is like Pauline Hanson or Wilson Tuckey on a good day, giving voice to the extreme conservatism which makes irresistible fodder for send up.

In some ways a person like Katter is less politically dangerous than savvier politicians -- those who publicly present as more moderate but are actually quite difficult to pin-down and challenge. At least Katter is often dismissed as just plain loopy.

But loopy or not, Katter has some pretty hurtful things to say about gay men and lesbians. Last week he made headlines for vitriolically encouraging people to "laugh at” and "ridicule" the concept of gay marriage. He also announced his campaign to reclaim the word ‘gay’; a perfectly “healthy adjective” that has become captive to the gay lobby. (Ok, that last bit was a bit ridiculous and funny as well as offensive.)

So it is interesting that this morning nearly every newspaper in the country seems to be carrying pictures of Carl Katter. Carl Katter is Bob Katter’s brother. And Carl is gay. On national TV last night, Carl commented on Katter’s expressed views about homosexuality, saying, ''It's hurtful, it's dangerous, it's damaging and it's really inappropriate”. He also said that should he meet the right man, he would like to get married, although Katter would be an expected no-show at the wedding.

So what is it about Bob Katter having a gay brother that excites the media? Part of me thinks it is just a fine opportunity to lampoon him. In one of Katter’s infamous quotes he stated that he would ''walk to Bourke backwards if the poof population of North Queensland is any more than 0.001 per cent''. Haha! Got you there Bob! That 0.001 percent was eating his cornflakes at your breakfast table.

But there is also something powerful about a family member of a public homophobe outing themselves. It reminds the world that no matter how much distance someone tries to create between themself and the scourge of gay humanity, every family has its closet.

In 2003, Monica Hingston, an open lesbian and a nun who had been in a lesbian relationship for close to 20 years, wrote an open letter to her cousin, Sydney Archbishop George Pell. In this letter she responded to Pell's comments that homosexuality was "corrupt, debased, vicious, vile, wicked, degenerate". She spoke of her life with her partner and how, together, they dedicated themselves to the care of others and the service of god, just as Pell himself claims to be doing. Her words were not unlike those of many other critics of Pell. But they were made more moving, and commanded more attention, because she was part of his family. Indeed she began her letter by writing, “I want to put my concerns to you, George, as one who is family (albeit somewhat removed) and as one who, given your vocation, has chosen to commit yourself to the wellbeing of others”.

Because she was family, Hingston could challenge the idea that there is an ocean of difference between an upstanding Archbishop like George Pell and a “debased, corrupt” lesbian such as herself. Afterall, they are linked by blood. The family closet is a powerful thing.

Now we are three: donors, mothers and birth certificates

2011-08-19T10:19:00.002+10:00

In a landmark case heard in the NSW courts earlier this week, a Sydney man has had his name removed from his child’s birth certificate to enable the child’s two mothers to be listed. The case is the first to test the 2008 amendments to the Status of Children Act, which allow a birth mother and her lesbian de facto partner to be legally registered as their child’s two parents. In this case, the child had been born prior to 2008, and the birth mother and donor had been listed on the birth certificate. However the two mothers separated in 2006, leading the birth mother’s ex-partner to petition for her name to be added to the birth certificate. She felt that this was the best way to protect her rights as a parent.

This case highlights the inadequacy of existing mechanisms to document parental relationships. Even the judge, NSW District Court Judge Stephen Walmsley, expressed discomfort with his decision and argued that birth certificates should have provisions for more than two parents.

This of course raises a more philosophical question about the role of birth certificates in history and society. Are they intended to document biological lineage or are they intended as working documents which individuals and families use to demonstrate legal guardianship of children? I have often wondered about this. My son’s birth certificate doesn’t list the name of his biological father, although this is noted on the donor registry kept by the Victorian department of Birth’s, Deaths and Marriages. If someone, somewhere in the future were tracing the history of my son’s father’s family, would my son be lost from this lineage? But equally, if non-biological mothers or fathers are not included on birth certificates, their children are similarly lost from their family history. So perhaps I just answered my own question; guardianship in an everyday sense, lineage and historical records are really one and the same.

What actually strikes me as most tragic about this case however is the level of insecurity it seems to have created for the parents – all of them. While the donor has consent orders through the Family Court for fortnightly visits with the child, he has reported that he has not seen his daughter in several months. Possibly this is inevitable when a child has three parents who live separately. Children can’t realistically live between three homes, it would drive them crazy. So who gets preference here? The biological mother, the non-biological mother, the donor (who in this case it seems has played a father role in the child's life)? Perhaps what is really needed is not greater legal provisions to protect the rights of more than two parents, but greater support to assist families like these to develop a functional relationship between all parents and to find ways for all of them to maintain meaningful relationships with their child, even when the pattern of these relationships might have changed from their original expectations.

People say the darndest things...

2011-08-18T10:57:00.000+10:00

In her weekly column for the Sun Herald last week Miranda Devine somehow managed to link Penny Wong’s baby with the London Riots. How did she get there?
Penny Wong and her partner are having a baby = supporters of same-sex marriage are happy for her and wonder if Wong and partner would like to marry = gay marriage will undermine the traditional nuclear family, the “last bastion of bourgeois morality” = fatherless families = “You only had to see the burning streets of London last week to see the manifestation of a fatherless society”.

Get it? Perfectly logical equation.

It made me think of some other bizarre associations people in public places have made.

In 2006, former Federal Member of Parliament, Danna Vale used an eloquent leap of logic to connect the ‘race-debate’ in Australia with the RU486 abortion pill. She claimed Australia would become a Muslim nation within 50 years because we (‘we white-faced-Christians’) are aborting ourselves out of history. I suspect this comment may have been a little off-the-cuff and she probably paid for it with a temporarily eggy face. But with logic like this you gotta wonder why she was elected to the team of people who RUN THE COUNTRY!

Senator Barnaby Joyce is of course always ripe for a corker. He recently explained that he is against gay marriage because it would adversely affect his four daughters. Says Barnaby, "We know that the best protection for those girls is that they get themselves into a secure relationship with a loving husband, and I want that to happen for them. I don't want any legislator to take that right away from me."

So I accept this logic is perhaps slightly more stable than Danna Vale’s. But it is still a bit wobbly. No-one is suggesting Barnaby’s daughters can’t get married are they? As Alyssa Betts wrote in the NT Times yesterday, “It is not known if he was trying to say his daughters were all lesbians, or if, instead, their prospective male partners would rather marry men if given the option.”

Making families: co-parenting

2011-06-20T16:37:00.016+10:00

You can't understand what it feels like to be a parent until you have a child.

I hate it when people say that.

Some years back, before I had children, I took my young nephew to a cry baby session at the cinema. Amid the chaos of that session -- the lights never go down and little people squawk under your seat -- I was struck by a certain air of certainty or confidence among the mothers (there were no fathers there that day). I don’t quite know how to describe what that ‘air’ was. At the time I think I saw it as smugness (of similar vein to Bridget Jones’ discomfort when dining with all those the smug-married folk). But in hindsight I think I was picking up on that sense of being needed that comes into your life with a new baby. This gorgeous little bundle creates attention wherever it goes and you are the centre of that bundle’s world – you created it and it is you that this baby needs to survive. As a new parent, you suddenly have a very legitimate place in the world. The world loves babies and their makers, and for a while you get to bask in that love. Smugness is not the right word (too patronising). But there is a little sense of righteousness that hovers over some new parents.

I think people who don’t have children CAN actually understand what it is like to be a parent. We have all suffered lack of sleep, we all understand the pleasure and pain of caring for someone else. We all know love and insecurity. So I still kinda hate it when people assume you can’t actually know what it feels like to be parent until you are one.

But I also think it is almost impossible really to anticipate how you will actually feel about your baby and yourself as a parent before that baby is born. And it’s for this reason that co-parenting relationships can be incredibly complex beasts.

Lesbians and gay men are leading the way into a brave new world of ‘co-parenting-with-friends’ type arrangements. Lesbian couples or single women are increasingly teaming up with gay couples or single men to conceive children. Arrangements for raising these children vary from shared custody (50/50) though to the father playing an ‘uncle’ type role in the child’s life. Many of these children have a ’team’ of adults in their life to love and care for them. Many have just two parents, but often two parents who have never been romantically or sexually connected.

The idea (or the ideal perhaps) of co-parenting makes a lot of sense to me. Teaming up with a friend or friends to make babies seems like it has the potential to create a situation where parents and children will have access to a vastly bigger pot of resources and support than a single parent, or even a couple, have access to on their own. It also seems like co-parenting gives people the opportunity to think through parenting arrangements in a way that lays all potential problems on the table before a child is born – I am sure most heterosexual couples don’t reflect on their parenting arrangement in such detail.

I know people who have wonderful co-parenting arrangements, couples who share custody and responsibility for their children with barely a hiccup. The occasional tense discussion arises – when to toilet train, what school to enrol in – but in between this, they have dinners together, they holiday together, their photo albums are full of happy-snaps with little-Timmy, little-Jessie, Mum, Dad and Daddy all smiling. Meanwhile shared custody means all parents get both time to themselves and time with the child. Happy families!

But I also know people who have had co-parenting disasters; disasters that have ended up in fifty-thousand dollar court battles, devastated parents and children being raised with this hostility. In one case I know of, a single gay man entered into a co-parenting arrangement with a lesbian couple. The agreement was that he was to be known as the child’s father. He would have some limited access with the baby, with a view to having more access as the child grew older. When the baby was born, however, the mothers refused all access. They wanted nothing to do with the father and refused to allow him to visit. This man has subsequently only met his child once in 12-months. There was no hint that this might happen before the child was born and certainly, to my knowledge, none of the child’s three parents entered into this arrangement with the intent of being deceptive. As far as I can tell, the mothers in this story simply had no idea how they would feel once that child was born. Babies generate an animalistic need in parents to protect, to wrap them in cotton wool and hang on. Anything that interrupts your capacity to do this as a parent can be intensely threatening – it can be devastating. I think this was a scenario where the father felt like a threat to those mothers, and where the emotions of new parenthood made it impossible for them to negotiate the co-parenting arrangement that seemed so easy before the baby was born.

There are other difficult co-parenting situations I have heard of: fathers who fall in love with the baby more than they thought they would and want more time, mothers who get annoyed with their co-parents because they don’t engage with the children as much as they promised they would. Some situations create easily resolveable tensions, others cause intolerable pain.

Legally, there are very few provisions to guide co-parenting agreements. Written documents prepared before a child is born (or even after) can be used in court to indicate what the co-parents intended when they set out on their co-parenting journey. But these will never be iron-clad agreements, and nor should they be. The Family Court operates on the basis of the ‘best interests of the child’ (some might argue it doesn’t always end up this way, but that is the guiding principle). A co-parenting agreement made before a child is born is not necessarily going to be the best agreement for that child six weeks or six months or six years after he or she is born.

I am not really sure what the moral of this story is. Co-parenting in itself is not a new thing (various forms of co-parenting, in the sense of it ‘takes a village to raise a child’, have been around for centuries). But co-parenting, in the way it is more and more commonly being practiced by the LGBT community, is a whole new world of parenting. It has the potential to be wonderful. But it can also be incredibly complex and harsh. Either way it is something we need to talk more about. People who are in co-parenting arrangements, and people who are looking to enter into them, need information and support and possibly inspiration and role-models to guide their journey. There is a lot to be learned from both the joyous and the ugly stories of co-parenting.

For an interesting and humourous take on one gay man's journey into co-parenting, read this blog: coparent search .Parenthood may not be the most prestigious club in the world, but its members do have exclusive access to certain life experiences. When that first baby arrives, you come to understand what people mean when they say parenting is relentless. You come to understand that ‘no time to yourself’ actually means that for the most part you don’t even get to go to the toilet by yourself. And for the first time (unless you are an insomniac or shift worker) you learn that four hours in a row makes for a damn fine night’s sleep. But most importantly, you get to experience the fierceness of emotion, in all its forms, that comes with loving and caring for a child. Love, pain, insecurity, desperation, joy and worry.

When there are more than two: polyamory and polyparenting

2011-05-16T15:08:00.007+10:00

Victorians celebrated a few years ago when it became legal to put two female parents on a child’s birth certificate. Finally, the state had come to recognise that family relationships come in diverse forms. The catch of course in this is that it only allowed a little bit of diversity. A dad and a mum is great, a mum and a mum is okay, but we still say no to two dads and certainly no to more than two parents.

This excludes a growing number of families in the LGBT community who are raising children as part of co-parenting arrangements – a lesbian couple co-parenting with a gay couple, a single woman co-parenting with gay dads, a lesbian couple co-parenting with a single man. In any of these situations there are more than two adults who play an active, parental role in their child’s life and who have responsibility – emotionally, practically, financially – for that child’s wellbeing. But the idea of more than two parents challenges the fundamental ideal of the nuclear family.

Arguably, the world has come a long way towards accepting complex parental arrangements as separation, divorce and re-partnering have made step and blended families increasingly common. It is not unusual for children of heterosexual parents to have more than two parents – mum and dad with a couple of step-parents in the mix. Society has legal and policy structures in place to accommodate the negotiation of these complex family relationships, and there is a growing body of research that acknowledges not only the difficulties that come with living in these families, but also the potential benefits. Judith Stacey, for example, is an American sociologist who talks about the ways in which ‘post-divorce extended families’ (the ones that manage to function with minimal conflict at least) can create extended avenues of support and care for both parents and children.

So we are pretty on board with the idea of more than two parents who don't live together and who may or may not like each other.What is proving much more challenging for ‘society’ (and I use this term broadly and loosely to denote mainstream social and cultural values), however, is the idea of a family in which there are three or more parents who live together in a loving, sexual relationship.

Polyamorous families are probably a small(ish) group of families in Australia, but I’d be willing to bet there are more poly-relationships out there than most people realise, and many people in poly-relationships have kids.

Polyamory, in its strict definition, is a term that describes many (poly) loves (amore). It refers to people who love more than one person at the same time, or who are in a sexual relationship with more than one person at a time. People in poly-relationships, or who consider themselves to be polyamorous, are often keen to emphasise the emotional nature of poly-relationships. Polyamory is different to ‘swinging’ or having multiple sex partners or an open relationship. It is about having loving, emotional and sexual relationships with more than one person. I did a little internet search on polyamory, and come upon the PolyOz site, which is an information and resource website for people in poly-relationships in Australia. PolyOz describes the scope of the term polyamory as this:

No single written definition of "polyamory" has universal acceptance. It is generally agreed that polyamory involves multiple consensual, loving relationships (or openness to such), but beyond that the term is as ambiguous as the word love itself. Some object to the idea that one must currently be participating in multiple relationships to be considered polyamorous. Others would consider their relational outlook polyamorous, regardless of whether they happen to be single or in an exclusive relationship at the time. A relationship is more likely to be called "polyamorous" if at least one relationship is long-term, involves some sort of commitment (e.g. a formal ceremony), and involves shared living arrangements and/or finances, but none of these criteria are necessary or definitive.

When it comes to family situations, poly-families can be equally diverse in scope. I know or know of a number of poly-families. In one family, there are three parents, two women and one man. Each woman has had a biological child with this man and all three raise the children together. All three identify as bisexual and are all each others’ sexual partners. In another family with three parents, there is a man and two women who live together and raise children together, but the women are not in a sexual relationship with each other. They consider themselves heterosexual and are in a sexual relationship with the man only. But the women still consider each other to be family. Similarly, I know of another family where a woman lives with her husband and her female partner. She and her husband have two children together. The husband and the female partner do not have a sexual relationship. But the three of them live together and parent the children together. Undoubtedly there are more families out there with more than three parents: couples who parent together in a four-parent situation, couples who have other lovers that move in and out of the family, single parents who have poly-relationships and a range of other ways of doing family.

On one level I see poly-families as truly radical. These families live their lives in a way that radically challenges heterosexual family norms. They challenge our construction of marriage and monogamy and the nature of family and parental relationships. They encourage us to think about jealousy and commitment and love in radical new ways. And they live their lives in a way that acknowledges human emotional and sexual connection comes in a diversity of forms and that the monogamous, nuclear family unit (even the homo-nuclear family unit) is but one of these forms.

The interesting thing though, is that polyamory is only really radical in a modern context. Polyamory has been around for as long as love and sex has been around and there are certain situations in which polyamorous relationships are inherently conservative – the most obvious example perhaps being the practice of polygamy in certain religious contexts, where allowing men to take multiple wives can be highly disempowering for women (although I would not want to assume this is always the case with polygamy).

But in the Modern West, we are taught that monogamous sexual relationships are the ‘ideal’ relationships and we live our lives in such a way that can mean we feel quite insecure (emotionally, practically, sexually) at the thought of our sexual partner having other lovers. In this context, it is radical for people to enter into relationships that challenge these ideas. (This is not to suggest that poly-relationships are better or worse or more or less enlightened than monogamous ones, just to say that poly-relationships by their nature confront a lot of social ideology about what relationships and families ‘should’ be because they sit outside the ideal).

In recent years, we have seen much greater openness about same-sex parented families and greater support for kids with LGBT parents. But I wonder if this has also created greater scope for the recognition of poly-families? Or perhaps recognition of gender diversity in relationships doesn’t actually extend to the recognition of different relationship types?

Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli is an Australian researcher and writer who has done a lot of work on the way in which poly-families negotiate school settings. In a 2006 piece on polyparenting published in the Lesbian and Gay psychology Review (now called the Psychology of Sexualities Review), she argues that poly-families still fall between the cracks of the heteronormative nuclear family model and the increasing visibility of gay and lesbian families. Bisexuality and polyamory often face resistance from within both the mainstream and the LGBT community and there is certainly no legal recognition of poly-families. However, the limited research that is available on poly-families has acknowledged that there are many emotional positives for children grown up in a family situation where there is a lot of parental support and open discussion about love and relationships.

Understanding and recognising poly-families is an important part of acknowledging family diversity. And this is something that we need to be mindful of as researchers, writers or readers with an interest in lesbian and gay families. The experience of poly-families is different to the experience of lesbian families or gay families and the agenda for social change may be different, but polyfamilies shouldn’t fall between the cracks because ultimately we all benefit from a greater awareness of family diversity in all its mess and glory.

Lesbian and gay parents in the news...

2011-04-28T16:58:00.003+10:00

Every so often I type the terms ‘lesbian mothers’, ‘gay fathers’. 'same-sex parents' (or variations on this theme) into Google News to see what pops up. I tell myself this is about keeping abreast of all things happening in the world of same-sex parenting (an occupational necessity), but in truth it is also a fairly useful procrastination technique for a slow afternoon.

What is interesting, however, is that something ALWAYS pops up. We make news folks! For better or worse, same-sex families have a continual presence in the worlds’ media. So I thought I would share with you my top five picks (the good, the bad and the ugly … and the slightly bizarre) from today’s Google News.

Firstly, the Good:

Former Belmont coach and partner welcome new baby, the Tennessean
Wendy Holleman, partner of former Belmont soccer coach Lisa Howe, has delivered the couples’ first child, a little girl. I am guessing these women may not be familiar to most readers (I have never heard of them), but Lisa Howe must be a high profile public figure in Tennessee as it was her attorney who made a public announcement of the baby’s arrival. Apparently Howe was sacked from her position at Belmont University last year when she announced that she and her partner were expecting a baby (and presumably she also 'outed' herself at this point). Although she never returned to her position, the University has subsequently revised its codes around sexuality-based discrimination. Howe will be honored later this year with a Justice Award by the National Center for Lesbian Rights. Go girl!

Catholic adoption agency loses gay adoption fight, the Guardian
In the UK, a Catholic adoption agency has been told it must consider gay and lesbian couples as prospective parents. This ruling is the outcome of a two-year battle in which the Catholic adoption agency appealed to be excluded from laws that ban discrimination against gay men and lesbians. Supporters of this appeal claimed that donations to the agency (presumably from well meaning Catholics) would dry up if it was forced to accept homosexuals as prospective parents. This argument was dismissed by the Charity Tribunal which presided over the case.

Then we have the bad:

Gay adoptive dads lose birth-certificate appeal, the Washington Times
A recent ruling by the US Court of Appeals says the state of Louisiana does not have to include two fathers on the birth certificate of the little boy whom they adopted. In Louisiana, only married couples can jointly adopt a child. The state's registrar of births refused to issue a birth certificate with two men’s names on it because that would violate state law. The legal case centred on whether or not states have to enforce the laws of other states. It all seems to be based on quite complex legal arguments, but for better or worse this ruling may mean the issue of adoption by same-sex couples hits U.S. Supreme Court sometime in the near future.

Now for the the downright ugly:
Pastor linked to girl missing in custody fight, Sydney Morning Herald
Tennessee made the news twice today it seems. A Tennessee-based pastor has been charged with aiding in the international parental kidnapping of a little girl. The girl has been at the centre of a long custody battle between her two mothers, a former lesbian couple who separated after one became an evangelical Christian and denounced the other's 'homosexual lifestyle'. As you can imagine the questions this case raises about sexuality and religion, ensured it received widescale public attention in the US. The couple was involved in a seven-year custody battle, during which time the child’s biological mother was granted primary custody, with her other mother deemed to be the child’s legal parent with substantial visitation rights. The child’s biological mother, however, is now a ‘born again’ Baptist and refused to comply with the visitation orders as she didn’t want to expose her child to ‘the homosexual lifestyle’. As a result she lost primary custody, but has subsequently disappeared with the child. A Baptist Pastor has been accused of assisting the woman’s passage to Nicaragua. Ugly and very very sad.

And finally, the slightly bizarre….
'The gay males get upset': New York maternity store offers new mothers 10 per cent discount... but only if they're lesbians, The Daily Mail
Breastfeeding and baby store, Boing Boing, in Brooklyn, New York City, is offering lesbian couples a 'hardship' discount of 10% off all items in store. The store owner, who is not a lesbian, reportedly claims that, “My heart goes out to lesbian moms. Women still only make 77 cents on the dollar, compared to men. Financially, women have a much harder time of it”. Unfortunately some men have been offended by the exclusive discount. But this has not upset the store owner too much given the hardship discount has proved itself to be an awfully good promotion tool. The store is receiving media attention you just couldn't buy and apparently lesbian couples love it. The owner claims that customers do not have to prove their sexuality, but she is strict on her definition of ‘lesbian’, a little bit of “experimenting in college” doesn't count.

And that's the news today.

Keeping it clean: housework’s gender divide

2011-02-25T10:51:00.005+11:00

The following piece appeared in the National Times on 21 February 2011.

As the television series Mad Men apparently spawns a new desire among women to wear aprons over gowns, lippy smothered ear to ear, while vacuuming the floor – a new study suggests it is lesbian couples that have modernised the meaning of housework.

For the past two years, I have been involved in the Work, Love, Play study at La Trobe University. We have surveyed lesbian parents about their everyday family lives and how they organise their household tasks. Who does the dishes? Who takes out the garbage? Who puts the kids to bed?

We were essentially interested in whether same-sex couples organise their households differently to heterosexual couples, particularly once children are in the mix.

Our findings are that lesbian couples are more likely to report a fairly equal division of labour in their household, compared to their heterosexual counterparts. On the whole, lesbian mothers are less inclined to feel like they shoulder more of the housework or parenting responsibilities than their partner.

This is not to suggest lesbian couples are better on the home front than heterosexual couples. In fact, sexuality is, in many ways, a minor plot line in this story. Gender is the main topic of interest here.

The common thread was that women in lesbian relationships were doing what millions of heterosexual women do everyday – simultaneously managing the competing demands of work and family. Not only was there a more egalitarian sharing of household tasks, lesbian couples were much more likely than heterosexual couples to manage their work and family demands by both working part time.

Part-time work and motherhood go hand in hand. Once kids come along, part-time work enables women to maintain an income and, if they're lucky, a foot on the career ladder, while also caring for children.

The difference for lesbians is that there are two women in the household doing this.

Perhaps this poses a strong argument that a "wife" instead of a "husband" may make the dishes a less daunting task to tackle, but it doesn't lead to a simple conclusion like "all men are lazy". When it comes to housework, even men who describe themselves as pro-feminist and aspire to equity within their households don't always manage the laundry.

There are probably several reasons for this — some political, some just practical. The culture of workplaces can be unsupportive towards men seeking to work less so they can spend more time with their children. Often it is just more efficient for one person, rather than two, to manage the household and delineate tasks on a needs basis. But on top of this, I suspect traditional gender roles often have more hold over us than we realise.

I doubt lesbians are any less socialised as "women" than heterosexual women — the fact that lesbian couples tend to share household tasks equally suggests they are doing exactly what is expected of women. But for same-sex couples, falling back on gender expectations regarding housework is not really an option. There is little room for unspoken assumptions about who is better at what.

Unfortunately, there were not enough men involved in the study to draw conclusions on how gay fathers organise their households. This would perhaps have offered the most revealing look at gender. Presumably gay couples manage to keep their floors vacuumed, but it would be interesting to know more about how two men negotiate workplace demands in between caring for kids.

Many heterosexual couples reverse the traditional roles, so that the man cares for the kids while his wife works full time. There are probably more still where the couple shares these tasks equally. But, on the whole, research shows that gender is usually the key factor in determining who works, who stays home, who does the dishes and who mows the lawn.

The expectations society places on us as women or men — particularly living in a relationship with children — mean the freedom to negotiate who does what is loaded with assumptions.

Being in a relationship where gender assumptions are not an option means same-sex couples have opportunities to negotiate a different way of being. Housework is not a gender-based job description, it's just done.

Dr Jennifer Power is a research fellow at La Trobe University's Bouverie Centre, which focuses on family research and family therapy.

Previous posts on the topic of housework and household division of labour can be found here and here.

Two Dads from Sydney

2010-12-16T10:58:00.003+11:00

Two Sydney dads have become the first gay couple to legally adopt children in NSW, following September’s changes to the State’s Adoption Act.

Today’s Sydney Morning Herald reports that Mr Smith and Mr Jones (yes, you are correct in presuming these are not their real names) last week became the legal parents of their two foster children, William aged 9 and Jane aged 5, whom they had already been parenting for a number of years.

The Judge presiding over the case published a statement in which he stated that although the community would ''grapple for some time with the novelty of same-sex couple adoptions'', such applications did not require a different or overly cautious approach from the courts. He went on to say that the court was not concerned with ideological debate surrounding lesbian and gay parenting, only what was best for the children. In his view, Mr Smith and Mr Jones were ''unquestionably capable of parenting these two children''.

The recent changes to the NSW adoption act mean that the definition of a ‘couple’ for adoption purposes is now ‘two persons’, rather than a man and a woman, making same-sex couples eligible to become adoptive parents. MPs were allowed a conscience vote on this issue and the bill narrowly passed through the lower house, 46 votes to 44. This change brought NSW into line with the ACT and WA on allowing same-sex couples to adopt.

Something often overlooked in the adoption debate is the fact that same-sex couples, just like Mr Smith and Mr Jones, are already parenting children. In Victoria, lesbian and gay couples can be assigned a ‘permanent care order’ for their foster children, effectively meaning that the child is legally and permanently part of their family. Yet these same parents do not have the right to adopt children (which would of course also mean that their foster children could be legally and permanently part of the family). The state, by allowing same-sex couples to be foster parents, already acknowledges the capacity of gay men and lesbians to parent children (including the most vulnerable children). Yet rights to ‘adoption’, much like marriage, are held back. Presumably this is an effort to assure conservative MPs and voters that the government doesn’t actually support ideologically the things it actually kinda does support in practice.

To be or not to be: gay marriage

2010-11-16T13:42:00.004+11:00

The issue of gay marriage is in the news again and it seems to be gathering momentum like never before in Australia. Newly elected Greens MP, Adam Bandt, yesterday introduced a motion to Parliament calling on MPs to gauge their constituent’s views on the issue of marriage equality. Interesting strategy on Bandt’s behalf. He has not raised a motion calling for legalisation of gay marriage (presumably, and probably correctly, gauging that the Government is not feeling secure enough right now to allow that to pass). Yet he is keen to keep the issue in the minds of parliamentarians and is clearly taking a punt that many of them will discover their constituents are actually quite supportive of gay marriage.

However, there will be some who don’t discover this.

Poll after poll shows a majority of the Australian public supports gay marriage. However, a recent Roy Morgan poll indicates that opinions on homosexuality vary quite dramatically across the country. Not surprisingly, inner-city electorates hold the most positive attitudes toward homosexuality, while negative attitudes tend to be congregated in rural areas (predominantly in Queensland with smatterings across the other states) as well as some outer-suburban, working class suburbs. Seven of these electorates are marginal seats for either Labor or the Coalition. Could gay marriage be an issue that makes or breaks a Government? (For an interesting discussion on this topic see Mark Davis’ piece in yesterday’s National Times )

As always, I am astounded by the level of vitriol this issue prompts in some commentators (particularly the religious nutters who like to comment at the end of newspaper opinion pieces. Why are people so threatened? They aren’t even invited to the wedding.) The issue of children features prominently in this. It seems people who have never known any lesbian or gay parents, or their children, can’t imagine how same-sex parented families operate. For them, homosexuality equals sex and debauchery. Putting children in this picture, they argue, is not only unnatural but cruel. They don’t see a normal life. They don’t see happy children sitting around the breakfast table, the morning rush to school, Saturday morning cartoons.

So what’s the solution to this? How do you change the images in people’s minds?

In 2008, when the Victorian Parliament was debating a series of reforms regarding lesbian’s access to fertility services, the Rainbow Families Council ran a fantastic campaign that involved organising their members to set up meetings with State MPs, to give these politicians an opportunity to meet their families. When the Bill was passed, several of these MPs mentioned that actually having a chance to meet gay and lesbian parents and to see that their children were happy and healthy was what swayed their mind in this debate.

I was reminded of this at a conference recently where Green Senator Rachel Siewert spoke about the importance of advocacy groups meeting with politicians. She urged people to tell their stories, to give politicians personal glimpses into the lives of people they would otherwise never meet. She mentioned that this type of advocacy did not happen nearly as much as one might think. Activists sometimes forget the power of a personal story. Yet personal stories can at times influence politicians’ opinions more profoundly than anything else.

I think there is a complexity of social and cultural factors that converge to create the images of homosexuality that people hold in their minds. But, in terms of generating social and political change in the shorter term, visibility and leadership are so important. We don’t need to change everyone’s mind. In part, history will take care of that. But we do need to influence leaders. In a conscience vote, which any Bill on gay marriage will almost certainly be, politicians are likely to be influenced by both pragmatic issues (the potential impact of their vote at the next election) and their philosophical stance. Either way, when these debates hit parliament, doors open. Backbenchers have more power to influence the decision than they might with other issues and most MPs will be keen, at least at some level, to hear from people (particularly people in their electorate). Nothing is better than a personal story.

Australian Marriage Equality have some tips for contacting your local MP on their website.

The Work, Love, Play study got a little mention in the Herald Sun today in Susie O’Brien’s op-ed piece on gay marriage. Check it out here.

Not the only gay in the village

2010-10-27T15:14:00.001+11:00

In June this year the first child ever born through IVF in Australia turned 30. In this same month, the NSW Parliament debated whether to allow lesbian and gay couples to adopt children; journalists clamoured to ask the new Prime Minister to clarify her stance on gay marriage; and the media revealed findings from a high profile US study: children of lesbian parents grow up well adjusted. Like it or loathe it, the past few decades have ushered in a whole new social landscape for Australian families. Within this, lesbian and gay parents have achieved unprecedented levels of visibility. But for all that visibility, what is life really like for these parents and their children?

There are pockets in inner city areas where lesbian and gay parenting is pretty normalised and there is a lot of support available. There are 'Rainbow' playgroups where kids and adults find like minded friends, it is not hard to find services that openly promote themselves as gay friendly and most schools have pretty good anti-homophobia programs. Living in the inner city, however, isn't an option or a preference for many people – even gay people.

I am involved in some research at La Trobe University looking at the experiences of lesbian and gay parents. Surprisingly, of the 450 families who took part in our study, close to 60% did not live in the inner city. Instead, these families lived in the outer suburbs or regional/rural areas of Australia.

There is a lot of idyllic imagery associated with rural life. The pace is slow, towns feel safe and community bonds are strong and genuine. But the flip side of this can be a lack of anonymity and diversity that makes it hard for people to be 'different' in small towns. Sadly, a lot of what we hear about gay life in rural Australia relates to the high rate of suicide among young men who can't bear the shame or pain of 'coming out' to their small community.

The experiences of people in our study were thankfully not this extreme. On the whole, people reported feeling well connected to their local communities. For them, the biggest challenges of parenting related not to homophobia but to managing toddler tantrums, paying the mortgage or calming teenage mood swings.

However, the gay and lesbian parents in our study were cautious about exposing their family life. They were much less likely than those who lived in the inner city to be open about their sexuality or family life to health service providers – their own doctors or their children's. Even among social and recreational groups, people were less likely to reveal their sexuality or talk about their relationships. Children of lesbian or gay parents living in rural/regional areas were also much more likely to have experienced homophobic related bullying or discrimination at school.

On top of this, although most people in the study said they had strong support from their extended families, people living in rural/regional areas, unlike those in the inner city, often did not have support from other gay or lesbian families and their children were less likely to know other children from similar families.

None of this means that life is terrible for gay or lesbian parents living in small towns. In fact, when we asked people what were the best things about their family life, people wrote beautiful words about their happy and close families. But I think this study does point to a real lack of visibility and support for lesbian and gay parented families in non-metropolitan areas. It's important that people feel they can be open with service providers, particularly their doctors, and children from all families have a right to feel safe at school. If this is not the case at present, then work needs to be done educating schools, service providers and the local community about the diversity of family life that no doubt exists in their towns.

I would be willing to bet that most people living in rural or regional Australia have not (knowingly) met many lesbian or gay parents. Unfortunately, media reporting doesn't always paint the rosiest picture of these families. Despite a lot of public support for gay and lesbian families, there is also a lot of criticism. And it can be harsh. It takes guts to be gay sometimes, especially in small towns. A show of support within local communities, even simple gestures like a display in a doctor's waiting room of posters or stickers acknowledging gay families, can make a huge difference to the lives of gay men and lesbians and their children.

Prop 8 unpropped

2010-08-05T12:21:00.005+10:00

The Californian court yesterday ruled that Proposition 8 (the California Marriage Protection Act) violates constitutional rights to equal protection and due process. In other words, the ban on same-sex marriage in California has been overturned.

In November 2008, Proposition 8 (*affectionately* referred to as Prop 8) was introduced via a ballot proposition raised as part of the November 2008 State elections. The “proposition” was to change the Californian Constitution to add a new section to Article I, that would read: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognised in California.”

Campaigning around the introduction of Prop 8 was massive, with each side spending something in the range of US$40 million. In the end, the election came down in favour of Prop 8 and the constitutional amendment was enacted.

When this all happened, same-sex marriage was legal in California. This had been the case since16 June 2008 following a ruling, based on equal protection arguments, by the Supreme Court of California. Prop 8 was a response to this ruling.

Following the introduction of Prop 8, same-sex couples who had been legally married between June and November of 2008 were left in a bit of legal limbo. However, a 2009 case ruled that Prop 8 should have a grandfather clause, which effectively meant the marriages of these couples were still recognised, but that no more same-sex couples could get married in California.

In the trial that concluded yesterday (Perry v. Schwarzenegger), two same sex-couples had sued the Californian Government (led by one Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger) on the grounds that Prop 8 violates their federal constitutional rights. And it seems that they have won!

In a 136-page ruling, District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker said that California “has no interest in differentiating between same-sex and opposite-sex unions”. Walker referred to a raft of evidence that had been presented in the trial to support his conclusion that there is not a rational or moral basis for excluding lesbians or gay men from marriage. He said that, “The moral and religious views form only the basis for a belief that same-sex couples are different from opposite-sex couples.” Thankfully in the eyes of US law “different” is not supposed to mean unequal.

Discussion of children had been a prominent feature of Perry v. Schwarzenegger with proponents of Prop 8 arguing same-sex marriage would violate the rights of children to be raised by both a mother and father. Prop 8 opponents, however, presented witnesses who gave evidence from a number of studies that show children raised by gay and lesbian parents fare just as well as any other children.

However, yesterday’s ruling doesn’t mean same-sex couples can rush to the registry office. The judge has temporarily stayed his order to allow supporters of Prop 8 to file appeals (which they have vowed to do) which could possibly lead to a long-term stay on the judgment.

So watch this space. If the case reaches the US Supreme Court it could have implications for same-sex marriage rights across the entire country. Depending how a Supreme Court judgment turned, it could set a precedent for banning same-sex marriage (that would be a disaster and potentially take decades to overturn) or it could create a precedent against which people could claim all bans on gay marriage are unconstitutional. Interesting times.
If you want to read more, there’s a good little piece in Newsweek online.

On your conscience

2010-07-05T14:11:00.003+10:00

The NSW Parliament has been allowed a conscience vote on the issue of adoption rights for same-sex couples. Independent MP Clover Moore introduced a private members Bill in late June, arguing it was about time the government came to accept that same-sex couples deserve equality in all laws relating to parenting and adoption.

NSW Premier, Kristina Keneally offered her personal "in-principle support" for the Bill, but said MPs would be allowed a conscience vote on the matter because of, “very deeply held, divergent views on this issue, and adoption by same-sex couples is a sensitive issue for the community."

There doesn’t seem to be any hard and fast rules around what determines an issue to be a matter for parliamentarian’s conscience rather than a matter of government policy. Traditionally, parliamentary conscience votes are reserved for some of those tricky issues relating to life, death and humanity (abortion, euthanasia, stem cell research, IVF) along with anything else considered, as far as I can tell, potentially divisive on religious grounds (pretty much anything to do with legalising marijuana or giving rights to gay men and lesbians). Interestingly, however, this has not always been the case. Until the 1930s in Australia, all parties allowed their members a conscience vote (then called ‘free votes’) on issues of trade protection. I am not sure why that was considered an issue worthy of free votes back then; trade is certainly considered pretty central to the platform of any political party these days. I imagine a conscience vote is now most often used when political parties want to avoid immutable divisions within their own ranks (as in when MPs' religious beliefs conflict with their party's 'line').

I am in two minds about conscience voting. On the one hand, allowing a conscience vote on an issue seems falsely to suggest that these are ‘private’ or ‘personal’ issues – much like domestic violence was once considered an issue too personal for public intervention. It sets up a false division between what is ‘personal’ for politicians and what is part of their political decision making. It also masks the fact that issues such as gay and lesbian rights, abortion, euthanasia and illicit drugs are highly political – contentious yes, but certainly contested in a political arena. Any vote taken on the floor of parliament is political, no matter what you call it. The outcome of all parliamentary Bills has implications for a whole range of community members, not just individual MPs. In many ways, I would prefer parties were upfront about these issues before an election rather than letting MPs pull out their personal conscience once they are already in parliament.

On the other hand, sometimes conscience votes can be great. When politicians are given free range to make a decision many of them go to great lengths to investigate the issue. They talk to people, they do research, they make an effort to understand how their constituents feel. When the conservative Howard government had control of both the upper and lower houses of Federal Parliament, some of the greatest shows of democracy came in the form of conscience votes. Liberal MPs strategically used conscience voting to challenge some of their own party policies, such as when Petro Georgiou (unsuccessfully as it turned out) argued that mandatory detention of asylum seekers should be considered a matter of conscience and put to a conscience vote as a strategy to ensure his Bill had a hope of passing.

In the case of same-sex adoption, it is possible that a conscience vote gives this Bill its greatest chance of being passed, fingers crossed that it does. Hopefully it also means that NSW MPs are currently doing a lot of thinking about same-sex partner rights and maybe even meeting one or two lesbian or gay parents to help hone their conscience! The vote should be held within the next month, so I’ll keep you posted.

Relax, the kids are OK!

2010-07-02T15:43:00.006+10:00

In case you missed it, the latest findings from the USA National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS) have recently been released into the media.

The NLLFS is a longitudinal study of a group of lesbian mothers and their families. All of the mothers conceived their children via donor insemination in the 1980s. The children are now in their twenties.

The latest data from the study were published in the Journal of Paediatrics on June 7. The findings indicate that not only do the children involved in this study fair just as well as their heterosexual-parented peers, in some aspects they do better.

The media pounced on this story. They loved it and headlines emerged all over the world: The Kids are OK!

I am with them on this one. I love this story too. Good news stories about same-sex parenting, with a bit of good research to back them up, are rare. So this is great. While I feel a little bit unsure about the 'who's a better parent than the other person?' angle, I appreciate that the media need an 'angle'. And for the most part, the stories were really positive and gave a lot of airplay to a fantastic piece of research.

I think about 12 people sent me an email with a link to an article on this study, so I kept a bit of a running tally on headline themes (there is nothing scientific about this analysis):

Firstly we learn that lesbians' kids do better socially, are well adjusted and, in some cases, they are actually happy. Fair enough. There are a lot of people out there who do worry that kids with lesbian parents might be teased, alienated, isolated or insecure. But we can all relax, the kids are doin' fine: Kids with lesbian parents do better in social activities (Global Times);Children Raised By Lesbian Parents Are Well Adjusted (Medical News Today); Lesbian Parents Have Very Well-Adjusted Kids, study finds (LA Times online); Kids With Lesbian Parents Do Just Fine (Medicine.net); The Kids Are Just Fine (The Nation); Children of lesbian parents do better than their peers (New Scientist); Lesbian families 'have happy children' (BBC); Lesbian parents raise healthy, happy kids sans father (New World News).

Secondly, we learn that lesbians' kids do better in school. Huh? I understand that this was a significant finding of the study, so it is interesting to report. And I appreciate that there might be a link between alienated, isolated kids and poor grades (good to know neither of these issues are of concern). But I find the use of this as a leading headline a bit bizarre. Were the general public really worried about how well the children of lesbians were doing in their maths tests?: Children of lesbian couples do well in school (Reuters); Lesbians' kids better in social, academic competence (USA Today); Study Shows that Children of Lesbian Couples Succeed (SheWired.com).

Inevitably, there were a few headlines reassuring fathers that they still have a role to play: Two Mums Better than Dad? (Sydney Morning Herald); Science can't prove fathers matter. That doesn't mean we don't. (The Washington Post); Study on lesbian moms says plenty about dads too: When it comes down to it, kids succeed when parents — homosexual or heterosexual — take an active role in their lives (Chicago Tribune).

And finally, we can rest, assured that children of lesbians are simply better behaved. Phew!! : Kids of lesbians have fewer behavioral problems, study suggests (CNN); Children of lesbian couples are better behaved (Blisstree.com); Lesbians' Children Are Better Behaved, Study Finds (Politics Today).

On another note, I just wanted to make a little mention of Johanna Sigurdardottir, the Prime Minister of Iceland who legally married her long term partner this month. Sigurdardottir is the first openly lesbian or gay Prime Minister in the World and is now the first head of any government to marry their same sex partner. I hope she has good politics, beacuse if I was Icelandic I would be voting for her!

Where did I really come from?

2010-06-01T16:28:00.008+10:00

When my son was quite new I was fortunate enough to find a ‘baby group’ for lesbian and gay parents. The group was just for little kids and babies who weren’t quite old enough for the rough and tumble of playgroup. Every week I’d wrap my baby in his ‘hug-a-bub’ sling and trundle down on the bus to baby group. It was fun!

There were no dads in the group at this stage and the mums would talk about all sorts of things that are probably pretty common topics in mothers’ groups – sleep, pooh, milk, sleep, boobs, settling, sleep. But one topic seemed to recur in a way that I think is probably unique to a lesbian mothers' group. How did you conceive your baby?

Some people had hilarious tales of surreal moments exchanging “The Jar” with a known donor. Others had war stories of miscarriages and IVF cycles that spanned years. Either way it was endlessly intriguing to hear about people’s different experiences. (Not surprisingly the mothers in my ‘straight’ mothers’ group found it similarly intriguing to hear how my son was conceived when the topic came up).

But there were a few women in the lesbian mothers’ group who were very quiet about their childrens' ‘conception’ stories, feeling the topic was private. One woman explained that she wanted to protect her older child – who was old enough to retell the story to her friends but perhaps not old enough to understand the implications of this – from any unnecessary attention gained from being ‘different’ to the other kids.

This was an interesting point and one that led me to bite my tongue on my own story for a while. But it also led me to wonder how many kids of heterosexual parents have a conception story? Do I have a conception story?

When I was born, my sister was only 18-months old. So, given my parent’s had a young baby at the time, I imagine my conception story isn’t particularly wild. (But honestly … too much information!!) My family like to joke that my sister was conceived in the back of the Kombi Van while my parents were travelling. We have no conclusive evidence to support this, but it certainly counts as a possible conception story. Still, the details of how this conception actually took place are not part of the story. They linger in the background of course. Everyone *knows* what went on in the Kombi Van. But clearly this sort of detail is not the stuff of family legends.

But for kids who weren’t conceived through sex, whether or not they are kids of LGBT parents, their ‘conception’ story is not just about where it happened so much as how the sperm managed to meet the egg in the first place. This makes it a whole lot more complicated.

How do you tell your kids this story? Do you tell them at all? And, if you do, what exactly do you tell them?

I did a quick “Google” search on this topic and surprisingly found a lot. It is a topic that parents with children born through IVF have been grappling with for a number of years now. While I couldn’t find any resources for people who had used home insemination with a known donor (I am sure they are out there, I just didn’t look hard enough), there was plenty of information around for people who had used donor insemination through a clinic. Following are a few interesting resources:

The organisation ICSI, International Consumer Support for Infertility, has a brochure on their website which details all sorts of resources for parents and their kids who have been conceived through IVF. The list of kids’ books they recommend sounds pretty cute with titles like, “I’m a Little Frostie” and “Where did I really come from”.

The Donor Conception Network also has some interesting materials on their website, including the transcript of a focus group discussion that they held with young people who had been conceived through donor conception. In this interview they ask the kids what language they think parents should use to tell their kids about how they were conceived. Seventeen year old Sam says, “I just think that they should just use big, science words as early as possible just start, just have them grow up with the scientific terms from an early age, even if they don't understand them at first, then they will always be used to them.”

My very favourite resource, however, is a comic-style book written by Melbourne based artist and graphic novelist, Kath D. "Here I am" tells the story of how Rowie’s mums meet and make their family. Kath has the full comic on her website and you can also order a hardcopy for AUD$5 plus postage. All the pictures in this post are from "Here I am".

I’d love to hear more from people about their thoughts on this issue or how they told their kids.

Today is the 5th Annual Blogging for LGBT Families Day. What a great idea! I love a good blog. The best ones, I find, seem to take you on a bit of a journey through argument and opinion into easygoing chit chat followed by a quick tour of the author’s family album. If you are up for a good read, you can find a list of all contributors to this Blogging Day here.

Going it alone: single parenting and lesbian mothers

2010-05-11T14:47:00.003+10:00

Last Sunday’s edition of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald had an interesting piece on single women who had chosen to have children alone using IVF and/or anonymous sperm donation. It was an interesting article that spoke about a growing trend among heterosexual women in Australia to ‘go it alone’ in the parenting stakes if they find themselves still single when the tick of their biological clock starts to slow.

The mothers interviewed for the article were all in their late 30s or early 40s. The discussion was framed in terms of these women being single parents by choice. That choice, however, was clearly between single parenting or no parenting, not between single parenting or parenting as part of a couple. It was taken as given that parenting as part of a couple would have been the ideal way to enter into parenting for these women if their circumstances had been different. Of course! Aside from the financial, practical and emotional support than comes from parenting as part of a couple (not to suggest that single parents are necessarily wanting in these areas!), why would a healthy, fertile, heterosexual woman chose to conceive using anonymous sperm if she had a willing and able potential father at home?

But this does leave me wondering about a few things. Firstly, I wonder how many women there are out there who have really chosen to be single parents (ie. weighed up their options and decided single parenting beats parenting in a couple for them)?

Secondly, I wonder if it is an easier (subjective term I know, but stay with me) choice for lesbians to become single parents than it is for heterosexual women?

I am sure that the dream of meeting a partner with whom one can settle down and have kids is held strongly by many non-heterosexual women, as much as it is by many heterosexual women. But for lesbians, the dream of parenthood already comes with the added complication of finding a potential donor/father, irrespective of whether they are in a relationship. It makes me think that if one of the emotional hurdles on the path toward single parenthood for heterosexual women is bypassing the dream of finding a husband and father for one’s children, lesbians might have already scaled that fence.

Along with this, there is a bit of a ‘culture’ – if you can call it that – among the LGBTI community of finding ways to become a parent through donor arrangements or anonymous sperm, because this is what many gay men and lesbians do when they want to become parents. So for people already connected to the LGBTI community, there are information resources and networks available for prospective parents that focus on ‘alternative’ ways of conceiving a child – most of which don’t generally require people to be in a sexual relationship. Heterosexual people don’t necessarily have those resources within their communities.

In the Work, Love, Play study about 10% of female respondents had conceived a child while they were single. I don’t know how this figure compares to the population of heterosexual women in Australia, but I would be interested to find out if non-heterosexual women are more likely to be single parents by choice. Does anyone know?

A few interesting websites:

Solo Mums by Choice Australia

'D.I.Y Mums' transcipt of 60 Minutes Story

Knock yourself up

New laws for UK dads

2010-04-01T10:10:00.000+11:00

As of next week (April 6th), laws in the UK will be changed to permit two men to be named as parents on a child's birth certificate when that child has been born through a surrogacy arrangement. This change is part of a range of measures that were implemented through the 2008 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act.

Current legislation allows heterosexual, married couples to obtain a parental order enabling them both to appear on the birth certificate of a child born through surrogacy. But this option is not available to unmarried or same-sex couples. Currently, the surrogate mother has to be named on the birth certificate and, if she is married, her husband is legally considered to be the father. Same-sex couples can apply to adopt the child, allowing them both to be legally recognised as parents. However, this process is lengthy and costly. The new system will ensure legal recognition of parenthood is made much simpler for gay dads.

Read more about these changes on the UK Guardian website.
The Guardian also has a great profile piece on gay dads. Check it out here.

Happy feet

2010-03-17T12:56:00.005+11:00

My partner took this picture of my left foot next to my son’s. He has my feet. They are little carbon copies of every bloat and bulge in my toes. Even though I have never had much time for my feet, I love that he has these copies. Looking at his feet is a tugging reminder that we are connected.

But this quality of sameness and looking alike is complex in my family. My son and I look alike because of shared genes. Funnily enough, my son also looks like my partner. This is despite the fact that they do not share genes. Although sometimes I think he looks like her because they do not share genes.

My skin is a pale shade of freckly Irish white. My eyes are green and my hair is brown. My partner is not white. Her skin is dark and her hair is thick and black. When we decided to have children we deliberately sought a donor/father who was of the same racial and ethnic background as my partner.

In part, this was so we could have a baby who looks like both of us. When my partner carries our son down the street the world presumes he is (biologically) hers. Likewise when I carry him, they presume he is (biologically) mine. When we are together people sometimes ask who the ‘mother’ is. Looking like both of us makes our son’s biology less relevant. It doesn’t matter who the biological mother is because he looks like both of us. But at the same time, it also makes biology very relevant.

Creating a baby that looks like both of us seemed to be one strategy to use biology as a way of overcoming the dominance of biology in mainstream conceptions of family. In same-sex families, the non-biological parent often has to work at being considered a ‘real’ parent in the eyes of the ‘world-at-large’ – despite it being so patently clear that if you spend your days and nights caring for a child you are absolutely a parent. Having a child who looks like both of us perhaps means we can both feel less concerned about who considers us a ‘real’ parent (not that we were overtly concerned about this, it was just an issue hovering around below the surface).

But biology is a complex thing. It is not just about who looks like whom.

When we put out ‘feelers’ looking for our son’s father/donor, we were approached by a guy who seemed lovely and perfect. But he was of a different cultural background to that of my partner. He pointed out that he was also not-white so the skin tone we were looking for in the baby would be about the same. We said thankyou but no. Because the thing is, along with a skin-tone, there is a culture and a history connected to biology.

My son’s father is of the same cultural and ethnic background to that of my partner. This means my son looks like her, but also has a biological connection to her country and to her history. It sometimes seems superficial to say it, but our son wouldn’t have this connection in the same way if he was blond with blue eyes. For my partner, sharing biology also means sharing her culture with him. She did not grow up in Australia. Her history lies in a different part of the world.

In my mind this whole notion opens a Pandora’s box of interesting questions I don’t have time to think about, the role that biology plays in cultural or national identity being one. But mostly, it raises the question of, what role biology does play in our family?

If my partner carries our second baby with the same father, this baby will have no genetic makeup shared with me. But we live here, in Australia. So that baby will be living in my country and living a part of my culture. So therefore she or he will share something with me by the circumstance of where we live.

I can’t figure out if all this means that biology doesn’t matter at all or if biology matters very much. My partner and I have used biology to create connections to us both. We didn’t make decisions on the premise that biology doesn’t matter. We made decisions about how to create our family on the premise that, for better or worse, biology matters a lot: in society, culturally and, as a result, to us personally. But on a day to day level we are both mothers and we care for our child and love our child regardless of biological connection. Biology doesn’t matter.

I have friends who were adopted and friends who parent children to whom they have no biological connection and it seems to matter little in their families. Funnily enough, two of my close friends both share many physical features with their adopted families, from hair colour to eye shape to the way they talk (which does make me wonder if the way we look is a lot more malleable than we tend to believe). In another family I know, all the kids look alike despite no having biological ties to each other, although I can tell it would make no difference to their family life if they did not look alike.

Biology does not make a parent. Love, care and changing pooey nappies at 2am makes a parent. It’s unfortunate that biological ties tend to be considered the basis of kinship because in reality families are a lot more complex and fragile than what is depicted on old family trees. But I don’t think this quite equates to saying biology is irrelevant to the way we live and the decisions we make. In some ways, it is the reason we are all here. But what it does mean exactly, is something I can’t quite pinpoint. I’d be really interested to hear what other people think about this.

Growing old with style ... and care

2010-03-17T11:28:00.001+11:00

Most talk about families on this blog is focused on kids. But of course family also includes older people – our own parents and grandparents, not to mention ourselves as we grow older. The University of Queensland has embarked on a study of older lesbian and gay people’s care networks and they are currently looking for people aged 60 years or more who would be interested in being interviewed. I have pasted some more info below:

A new study, funded by the University of Queensland, is looking at the ways paid and unpaid carers come together to provide support to older lesbian and gay people.

While much of the discussion in the LGBT community has focused on the provision of LGBT-specific residential and retirement homes, the reality is that for most older LGBT people – as with other older Australians – care will be delivered through networks of community-based providers, including unpaid carers. However, care-giving is typically understood as a family activity undertaken by opposite-sex partners and adult children. There is relatively little understanding of non-traditional care-giving relationships and dynamics, such as the care provided by friends and how friends move from social support to caring roles. In the QAHC survey, LGBT people reported that they expected to gain emotional, physical and financial support from a wide range of parties, including same-sex partners, LGBT friends, heterosexual friends, community agencies and, to a lesser degree, siblings, extended family members and adult children.

This new study, led by Mark Hughes and Sue Kentlyn, is looking at the diversity of the care networks of lesbian and gay people aged 60 and over, and how care providers respond to these persons’ sexual identity. The research involves interviews with the older lesbian or gay person, as well as their paid and unpaid carers.

Interested in being interviewed for the study?

Are you aged 60 years or over?

Do you identify as gay or lesbian?

Do you receive care or emotional support from other people in relation to a health need or disability?

If so, please contact:

Mark Hughes T: 0405 386 976, E: m.hughes5@uq.edu.au

Sue Kentlyn T: 3379 7273, E: dryad@internode.on.net

Describing diversity

2010-02-19T12:32:00.000+11:00

I have been trying, for a few days now, to create some way of neatly describing the diversity of Work, Love, Play participants’ families. There is a cautionary tale in this I am sure (about not trying to put people in neatly labelled boxes) because it is doing my head in. Yesterday, I went through each of the 445 participants in the study case by case and wrote down how each of their children had been conceived, when they were conceived in terms of their parents’ relationship and how people described their family structure. Individual stories looked a bit like this:

Family One: Child one aged 5 born via IVF with known donor when mother was single: child 2 aged 3 born via home insemination with known donor (different donor to child number 1) while mother was in relationship with current same-sex partner. Both children see their donor infrequently, but both know them as ‘Daddy’.

Family Two: Three children born to Mother One during a previous heterosexual relationship. Two children born to Mother Two in a previous heterosexual relationship. Mother One meets Mother Two and they form a relationship and so now have five children living with them. Mother Two co-parents with her ex-husband and Mother One. Mother One’s children no longer have contact with her father.

Family Three: Child one born to Father One in a previous heterosexual relationship. Father One now lives alone but co-parents Child One with his ex-heterosexual partner, his ex-heterosexual partner’s new heterosexual partner, and Father One’s new same-sex partner who is thinking of moving in with Father One sometime soon.

Family Four: Child One born to the sister of Mother One but now lives full time with Mother One and Mother One’s same-sex partner, who we shall call Mother Two. Mother One, Mother Two and Mother One’s sister all co-parent Child One. Child Two was carried by Mother Two and conceived during Mother One and Mother Two’s relationship via artificial insemination with an unknown donor.

Family Five: Child One and Two both conceived via commercial surrogacy in the USA while Father One and Two were in a relationship. Both fathers co-parent equally and Child One and Child Two see their grandparents, who live close by, every second day.

I realise there is something vaguely offensive about reducing the complexity of family lives to a short paragraph, let alone trying to put these paragraphs into neat categories. But the effort of trying to do this certainly brings home the point that same-sex parented families are a diverse lot. Although the majority of families in the Work, Love, Play study could fit into a nuclear-ish mould (two primary parents caring for children conceived within the relationship), there are many variations within this: families where one partner is the biological parent of all the children, families where both partner’s have carried or conceived a child, families where one mother has carried the children using her partner’s eggs, families where the children have a known donor/father involved with in lives (and those who don’t and those who have different donor/fathers for each child), families who have one child and families who have five.

There are also many families with complex co-parenting arrangements. These include people who have enacted co-parenting agreements before the birth of a child, as in cases where lesbian couples and gay men have teamed up to make babies. There are also many people who co-parent with ex-partners (both same-sex and opposite-sex ex-partners). For some families, those ex-partners now live with new partners who are also involved in co-parenting the children.

Such complexity no doubt exists in families across all groups and cultures. Indeed, even the whitebread Brady Bunch kids grew up in a family extended by step-kids and step-parents and all the variations of family that come with that. In some cultures kinship structures mean families, by definition, include many more than two adults in the care of children. Same-sex attracted parents obviously add an extra layer to this by challenging traditional ideas about parental gender roles.

If it is not too corny to say, I think this diversity should be celebrated. There is a vast difference between the way family is often ‘imagined’ in the public eye and the reality of family lives and it is nice to be reminded of this.

Perfect the next...

2010-02-12T09:50:00.001+11:00

Just further to yesterday’s post, the Queensland Government has passed the Bill allowing gay couples and single parents to have children through surrogacy in the state of Queensland.

Two Labor MPs, Margaret Keech and Michael Choi, crossed the floor citing a clash between their personal conscience and values that would allow a child to be separated from their birth mother to be raised by two parents of the same gender. Nevertheless, the Bill passed with 48 votes to 40.

Parliamentary rules prevented the Liberal/National Party’s alternative Bill to be voted on because it was too similar to the Government's. The opposition instead moved amendments to the Government's Bill (to exclude gay couples and single parents) but these were also defeated.

Go Queensland!!

Golly, all this talk about Bills has left me with the theme song to Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men in my head …

Beautiful one day...

2010-02-11T10:36:00.004+11:00

For those who have missed it in the news, Queensland politicians are at it again. There are two bills before the QLD state Parliament at present. The first, put forward by Premier Anna Bligh, would legalise altruistic surrogacy in QLD (which is currently punishable by a $10,000 fine or three years imprisonment). The second, put forward by the opposition Liberal/National Party, would ensure surrogacy rights apply only to infertile heterosexual couples, not single people or same-sex couples.

Not surprisingly, Parliamentary and public debate on the bills has become tangled up in the old 'it's not natural for gay people to have children' rhetoric. The Christian Right has raised its head, with Family Council of Queensland president Alan Baker calling the Bill a 'trojan horse' for the 'normalisation' of same-sex parenting. There have been a few other memorable moments in the discussion, led the way by this outpouring from Liberal/National MP Ray Hopper

"Just look at the first five years of a child's life when you've got two mothers. How do you take them to a public toilet when you go on a so-called family outing? They'll have to go to the ladies' toilet won't they? You're not going to let a little boy go in the male toilet – you haven't even thought of it." (Mr Ray Hopper, 2010)

Seriously? This is the caliber of person entrusted to make a conscience vote on behalf of the good people of Queensland?
I wonder if the QLD Government would consider five years paid paternity leave for fathers of male children?This would avoid the unfortunate situation of their heterosexual mother being alone with them in the shopping mall should that child need to do a wee.

John Birmingham wrote an apt response in today's Sydney Morning Herald and National Times:

Now, before we all hop into Ray, he does have a few very valid concerns. What would happen, he asks, if two lesbian mummies had to take their little boy to the toilets at the shopping mall? They couldn't go into his toilet. He couldn't come into theirs. OMFG! It's the end of civilisation as we know it, dogs and cats openly sleeping together, a rain of horny toads, donkeys and horses eating puppies. Chaos and madness, people. Chaos and madness.

Check out Stephen Page's Australian Gay and Lesbian Law Blog for more of the legal ins and outs of the bills.

What changed with our family?

2010-02-02T15:37:00.000+11:00

The fourth conference of the Victorian Rainbow Families Council will be held in Melbourne on 13th February. We will be presenting a paper from the Work, Love, Play study at this conference that looks at how people’s relationships with their families changed when they became parents.

This is quite a fascinating topic, not least because we managed to get enough information to fill a whole presentation from one simple question asked in our online survey (conducted in 2008):

In what way did your relationship with your family and your partner’s family change when you became a parent?

The question was open ended, so people just typed whatever they wanted into the response box. And type they did! We received amazingly rich and detailed answers to this little question.

There were 231 valid responses to this question from people who conceived at least one of their children while they were in their current or previous same-sex relationship. (There were also several hundred responses from single parents and people who had children in previous heterosexual relationships, which we will look at in more detail in the future.)

There were two main 'themes' in response to this question that really stood out. Firstly, a lot of people found that becoming a parent brought them closer to their families (parents, siblings, aunts, uncles) and secondly, a lot of people felt that becoming a parent validated their relationship in the eyes of their families – having children meant they become ‘parents’, ‘a committed couple’, a ‘family’ rather than just the gay or lesbian child of the family.

On the negative side, there were a number of people who lost relationships with their families when they had a child. Some people spoke of choosing to cease contact with their parents rather than expose their own children to their family’s rejection or homophobia. Others spoke of being disowned by their families.

I thought I’d share a selection of people’s responses as they are incredibly engaging:

"We probably talk more and see each other more often now that we have children as all my brothers and sisters have children too. My parents and my partner's parents of course love grandchildren so see them as often as they can. I don't think either of us are treated any differently than before we had children." (lesbian mother).

"My relationship with my own parents became more adult-to-adult, rather than a child-to-adult relationship. I also see them more frequently now. With my partner's family - I have become closer to her mother and brother and aunts/uncles/cousins but extremely distant from her father who has never acknowledged our daughter." (lesbian mother)

"My partner's family are born again Christians and when we got pregnant we sat them down and said 'accept who we are in a non disapproving way or bog off' not quite like that but similar - we could put up with their disapproval but I couldn't let them be with my kids – they came through like troupers and we have never looked back!" (lesbian mother)

"It was very tough at first, they were very hostile on both sides, ie, my gran and partners mum. We felt like we had to prove that we could be parents before anyone could accept. A huge amount of homophobia around the process." (lesbian mother)

"My family: I now belong to the straight club. For some reason my straight family feel that I am legitimised by having a child and suddenly feel they can be closer to me. My partners: stronger connection than usual which is very strong already." (gay father)

"Despite the length of our relationship (10+ years) I think the birth of our daughter and the realisation that she is OUR child made our relationship more permanent to our parents. I think maybe it 'normalised' us in a way to our families." (lesbian mother)

"It moved us from being 'Gay' to being 'parents' and changed our identities in their eyes. It was also a more comfortable space for us to occupy because we're less interested in being identified as 'gay' then as individuals or family." (gay father)

We plan to publish more on this topic in future papers, but feel free to contact me if you would like more details of our Rainbow Families Council conference paper.

Jen

Mums and mums, dads and dads, mums and dads, mums, dads and the rest...

2010-01-25T11:34:00.003+11:00

The latest edition of the Journal of Marriage and Family (Volume 72) is largely dedicated to discussion of a recent meta-analysis of studies that have looked at the impact of parental gender on children.

The issue of single-gender parents and, more commonly, ‘fatherlessness’ is of ongoing interest to researchers and politicians in a climate where conservative (and sometimes not so conservative) commentators like to regularly remind the public that children who grow up without fathers are at risk of all sorts of social and emotional deficiencies. Single heterosexual mothers certainly bear their fair share of the brunt of this criticism. But the most heated vitriol is directed toward lesbian mothers who intentionally conceive children outside of a married, heterosexual union. (And, of course, the idea of gay men raising children without mothers sends most conservatives into conniptions, although gay-male parenthood currently has a lower profile than lesbian parenting.)

Despite this, almost all research on child-outcomes indicates that children raised by lesbians and gay men have equal or in some cases better social, emotional and cognitive outcomes than children raised by heterosexual parents. This latest study, How Does the Gender of Parents Matter?, by American researchers Timothy Biblarz and Judith Stacey, re-confirms this.

Biblarz and Stacey reviewed 33 studies of two-parent families and 48 studies of single parent families. They were interested in disentangling the impact on children of parental gender versus the impact of the number of parents (ie. single parents vs couples). Hence the inclusion criteria for studies they reviewed was quite tight. All of the studies of two-parent families compared heterosexual couples with same-sex couples. The single-parent studies compared male single-parents to female single-parents. In other words, studies which compared heterosexual families to ‘fatherless families’ by grouping single mothers and lesbian mothers together were excluded.

I suspect there are few lesbian or gay parents who would be surprised at the results of this study. Even in cases where kids do experience some teasing at school due to their parents' sexuality (and no studies can confirm if they experience more teasing than other kids), the kids of lesbians and gay men generally turn out absolutely fine. Better than fine in many cases. Biblarz and Stacey make this conclusion writing,

Research on planned lesbian parenting demonstrates that the impact of this form of “radical fatherlessness” on children is far from radical, not always fatherless, and arguably more beneficial than not.

Some other findings were:
• Boys parented by lesbians displayed less chauvinism than boys parented by heterosexual couples (seems to make sense)

• Gay fathers report taking on child caring roles more akin to traditional motherhood than traditional fatherhood (probably not surprising in families where they have primary responsibility for children)

• Girls parented by two-mothers aspired to more ‘feminine’ occupational aspirations and less ‘masculine’ occupations than those parented by opposite-sex parents (interesting)

• More lesbian parents than infertile heterosexual parents, who conceived children via donor insemination, told their children how they were conceived (very interesting and probably worthy of more research).

The volume of the Journal of Marriage and Family in which Biblarz and Stacey’s paper appears also has a range of other papers that critically discuss the method and findings of this study and is worth a read.

Happy Australia Day!

Work, Love, Play needs more people!

2010-01-21T10:24:00.002+11:00

The Work, Love, Play study is seeking more GLBTI parents to be part of our research project.

The first survey (2008) was completed by over 450 people, of which around 350 people stated they were happy for us to invite them to be part of future studies.This was a fantastic response. However, some groups are currently under-represented in the study and we would like to boost numbers in these areas if possible.

Not surprisingly, the majority of responses to the 2008 survey were from lesbians who live in inner-city areas. Victoria, QLD and NSW were also well represented. People we would like to hear more from are:

gay dads of all descriptions
men and women who live in rural and regional areas
men and women who live in the Northern Territory, Western Australia, South Australia or the ACT
gay dads from Tasmania
gay dads from New Zealand

If you know any same-sex parents (who are part of a couple or GLBTI single parents) and who fit any of the above categories please forward this message to them.

That being said, we welcome more responses from anyone. So inner-city lesbian parents are still more than welcome to fill in the survey.

The only thing we ask is that just one parent per family fills in the survey. So if you or your partner have already done it, please don’t do it again!

They can fill in the survey online at http://www.thissurvey.com/work-love-play

Prop 8 has its day

2010-01-15T11:18:00.004+11:00

It seems to be largely absent from the Australian media, but the trial in a lawsuit seeking to overturn California's Proposition 8 began on the 11th of January in the US District Court in San Francisco.

Proposition 8 (also known as the California Marriage Protection Act) was a constitutional amendment passed at the California State elections in November 2008. The measure added a new provision to the constitution stipulating that, “ Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

Proposition 8 overturned a previous ruling by the California Supreme Court which decreed that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, and in turn threatened to annul existing same-sex marriages (Ellen and Portia being perhaps the most famous example of couples in this situation).

The 2008 campaigns for and against Proposition 8 were huge, allegedly attracting $39.9 million and $43.3 million respectively in donations. Outside of the presidential contest, this made it the highest-funded political campaign that year. Since Proposition 8 was passed, millions more have been spent in campaigns and law suits.

In a previous trial related to Proposition 8 – Strauss v. Horton (2009) – the court upheld Proposition 8, but allowed existing same-sex marriages to stand (under the Grandfather clause principle).

In the trial currently underway (Perry v. Schwarzenegger), two same sex-couples are suing the enforcers of Proposition 8 (namely the California Governmentm aka Arni and co.) on grounds that the gay marriage ban violates their federal constitutional rights. The case is of national significance in the US as it may establish the groundwork for an appeal to the US Supreme Court.

Not surprisingly, the US media is all over the case. I won’t even being to try to summarise the ‘Google News’ hits that appear when you type “Proposition 8 trial” into the search box, but give it a go if you are interested.

I did want to share with you a little funny (Careful with the Turkey Baster) from the Prop 8 trail that was noted on Lesbian Parenting Blogsite Mombian (a great site to subscribe to):

Defense lawyer Nicole Moss asked plaintiffs’ expert Letitia Peplau, a UCLA professor, whether gay couples could “accidentally” have children out of wedlock. She replied, “If your question is whether two lesbians can, accidentally, spontaneously, impregnate each other, not to my knowledge.”

There is other interesting commentary on the Prop 8 trial on the Mombian site as well. You can also read more about the trial on the blogsite of veteran gay media reporter Rex Wockner.

The latest

2010-01-14T11:15:00.002+11:00

The NSW Government has decided against allowing lesbian and gay couples the right to adopt, despite a six-month parliamentary inquiry finding it would be in the best interests of children to allow it. This is also despite single people (including gay men and lesbians) being able to adopt in NSW and many gay and lesbian couples already fostering children. Read more news on this issue here and here.

The NSW Government feels that the issue is too complex and politically sensitive to move forward with and that the community is not ready for gay adoption to be allowed. This seems a little bit weak given that Sydney is the apparent "gay mecca" of Australia. Lesbians and gay men have adoption rights in the ACT, Western Australia and Tasmania; skies have not fallen and, to the best of my knowledge, neither have governments as a result of this.

The NSW Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby has of course vowed to carry on their campaign around adoption rights in NSW.

Stephen Page has a good post on his Australian Gay and Lesbian Law Blog about this.

What happened over Christmas?

2010-01-11T11:48:00.002+11:00

A lot, it seems, happened over Christmas if you live in Victoria, Australia. On January 1st, 2010 (or in reality the first business day of the year, 4th January) the Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment (ART) Act 2008 came into effect. This means a number of things for same-sex families.

Firstly, two mothers can now register as parents on a birth certificate. Forms have been changed so all new babies can register their two mums. But it also applies retrospectively so any child with only one parent listed on their birth certificate can now take both their mums for a visit to Births, Deaths and Marriages to have this changed. While I haven’t investigated this for myself yet, by all accounts the staff at BDM (that’s Birth’s, Deaths and Marriages for anyone whose mind was heading elsewhere with this acronym) have been well-trained and are friendly towards same-sex couples.

Friends of mine from Canberra (who have been able to register two Mums on a birth certificate for a while now – welcome to the party Victoria!!), have told me that receiving their child’s birth certificate with both their names on it was an unexpectedly emotional moment for them. I can understand this. There aren’t many places where same-sex couples are formally acknowledged by the powers-that-be, so it is not surprising that bland, legalistic documents can occasionally generate a teary or two. When my partner was granted Australian residency on the basis of our ‘interdependent partnership’ we received a piece of paper with a government letterhead that actually included the word spouse in the text. This moment occurred at the height of John Howard’s conservative, senate-majority reign and in the context of Australia’s ongoing rejection of same-sex marriage. On so many levels, both political and personal, reading that simple, black and white piece of paper was an immensely significant moment (causing my partner to run around the house like a mad thing).

Unfortunately the new arrangements for birth certificates does not apply to gay dads nor does it allow a child to have more than two parents, so multiple parent co-parenting arrangements are not included. Adoption by same sex couples is also still banned.

However, the laws regarding IVF have changed for the better. Victorian lesbians and single women can now access IVF technology (Yay!!) if they pass the criminal record check (Huh?). All couples and singles (straight or gay) wanting to go through IVF must now undertake a full criminal record check. **This aspect of the law was clearly put in place to deal with the hoards of criminals who have been clamouring to access IVF in Victoria for some time now and recognises the fact that people with a history of violent crimes are generally infertile.** Sarcasm aside, obviously this requirement is intended to protect children from abuse, which is a good thing. But given the huge amount of resources required to complete these checks (both IVF clinics and the authorities who conduct criminal checks are likely to struggle to keep up), it seems there might be better ways to spend time and money protecting children. I don't think I am being overly cynical to wonder if this is a slightly tokenistic concession to right-wing politicians.

Jen

Finding the balance

2009-12-22T12:02:00.006+11:00

Just further to my previous post (see Who’s doing the dishes? 3 December 2009), I thought I’d write a bit more on the topic of division of labour in same-sex parented households. In the Work, Love, Play study we asked people to describe how they divide their paid work and household/childcare responsibilities in the way that they do and why they do it this way.

We asked these questions for a number of reasons, but one thing we were interested in was whether or not the ‘biological’ parent (particularly the biological mother in lesbian partnerships) was more likely to be the full time carer of the house and children than her partner.

This question is of interest partly because it is just interesting, but also because our data is set up in a way that allows us to look at the findings with reference to other large studies of heterosexual couples, where the mother usually (although certainly not always these days) takes primary responsibility for the kids and the vacuuming. Asking people to give us some details about why their family organises household and work responsibilities in the way that they do provides insight into the reasons why there are differences between opposite-sex and same-sex couples (if indeed there are differences, which it seems that there are but I will talk more about that another day).

What was really evident in people’s ‘why we do it this way’ responses was that couples made decisions about their work/family balance (including the desire expressed by almost everyone to maximise time with their children) based on pragmatism, personal preference or circumstance rather than biology.* In some cases, couples arrange their working and family lives around the fact that one partner enjoys work more or is more career driven than the other. In other cases, one partner earns more so it makes more sense for that person to work full time. In many cases, both parents work part time so they can both spend as much time with the kids as possible. As couples’ circumstances change over time (as income levels change, someone gets a great job opportunity, children grow older and so forth) so do their working and family arrangements. Some couples take it in turns to be the full time ‘paid’ worker and full time home worker. The following quotes from two lesbian mothers describe well how it all works in a number of families (and once again I will issue an apology to gay dads for focusing mainly on lesbians; we plan to write something just on dads in 2010 so please stay tuned):

My partner returned to work this year because of a great job opening and because more that five years out of a profession severely hinders a return. I took the year off to be with our kids and because we could afford it. Both our children were breast fed and my partner certainly wanted to be at home with them whereas I was content to continue with full time work. We've simply swapped places this year and are both happy in this new arrangement (Lesbian mother).

[Our arrangement] has varied over the seven years that we have been parents, no year being the same. We made a commitment that from the birth of the first child we would not ever both work full-time, and that the children would not attend child-care until they were at least 18 months old, and that two days child-care per week would be the most they would ever have. We also made a commitment that it made no difference who the biological or non-biological parent was...so we have varied who has been home and who has been at work. Sometimes both of us have been at home. Currently my partner works full-time and I work part-time and care for the children, last year it was the opposite (Lesbian mother).

A number of lesbian couples who have younger children mentioned that they arrange their household to accommodate breastfeeding. However, this does not necessarily mean that these couples fall neatly into ‘housewife’ and ‘breadwinner’ roles based on biological imperatives. Breastfeeding becomes part of the myriad of tasks and responsibilities these families coordinate everyday and everything is negotiated.

I am on two years maternity leave and take care of our son while my partner works full time. This will change shortly when she has our second son and I return to work full time and she takes over child care duties. I am still breastfeeding our 19 month old and will continue to do so as long as possible. Once my partner has the next child she plans to breastfeed for as long as possible so I will return to full time work. We hope not to have to put our children into organised child care - if we can survive on the one wage (Lesbian mother).

I work flexible hours, part time, up to 23 hours a week. My partner is on maternity leave. Our oldest two children go to childcare while I work. My partner stays home with our youngest. We are both breastfeeding! I like working and enjoy my work. I returned to some minimal work when our son was 11 months. My partner will probably start some part-time work in January when our daughter is 16 months or so. I will probably always work a bit more than her because I like working more, am more career driven and earn more than she does (Lesbian mother)

Writing this now, it seems so obvious that people organise their households in this way. Of course you would make these decisions on the basis of what you both enjoy and what you can afford! But we know from decades of research on heterosexual couples that this is not how most families do it. As I have written before, gender is usually the main factor that determines who in the family wins the bread and who wins the house and kids. The expectations society places on us as women and men – particularly when we are women and men in a relationship and with children – mean not everyone has the freedom to negotiate who does what. It might seem like an oxymoron to speak about freedom and housework in one sentence, but for same-sex couples it seems there is some freedom in not being mainstream.

Seasons greetings to you all!

Jen

*These are preliminary findings only, please contact the author before quoting or referencing these findings

One for the kids...

2009-12-10T16:21:00.003+11:00

Not all of us have children old enough or young enough to appreciate story books. But for those of you who do have story-book-aged children and those of you who love a good yarn with pictures yourself, I thought I would post the occasional review of books for kids, with a particular focus on those written for kids of GLBT parents.

ABC A Family Alphabet Book by Bobbie Combs covers the ABC of everyday family events from playing baseball (it is American) to eating ice-cream, playing at the park and going to sleep. With colourful and humorous illustrations by Desiree Keane and Brian Rappa (great surname), the book features families with two mums and two dads of all different sizes, shapes and colours. My son is not quite old enough to do much more than stare at the pictures and suck the edge of the pages, but by all accounts the book tastes good as well. Published by Two Lives Publishing (2001) the book is easily available for purchase online and at a number of queer bookshops across Australia.

Incidentally, if you are interested in books for children a great place to start is a site I came across called BookDads. BookDads is run by two dads who started the site to help other fathers find books which portray positive images of fathers. The ‘about us’ section of the site says: “We all know it’s a mom’s world out there. Our son has two dads, so when he first joined our family we were concerned that he wouldn’t have enough women in his life. Instead, we found ourselves surrounded by women … Suddenly, we were dads in a mom’s world … [More] often than not, we found ourselves reading books to our son that always talked about moms but rarely mentioned dads. BookDads grew out of our search for books to share with our son that emphasized fathers and the importance of fatherhood in children’s lives."

If anyone has books or reviews they would like to share, feel free to drop me a line.

Jen

Fostering the Queer Politics of Cupcakes...

2009-12-08T12:14:00.005+11:00

I have a friend who makes seriously good cupcakes. At our last playgroup gathering I was seriously distracted by a three-tiered platter delicately adorned with baby-blue iced cupcakes. So I began this post equally distracted by the problem of how to weave mention of said cupcakes into a discussion about queer parenting. My first thought was to ponder the question of whether or not one can call themself a feminist whilst making pink cup cakes? (The answer of course being a resounding yes!) But really, a better topic is GLBT foster parents. Because, along with her fabulous baking skills, this friend and her partner are wonderful mothers to three foster children.

Most foster-care agencies in Australia actively target members of lesbian and gay communities to become carers. There is a major shortage of foster carers in Australia and agencies have clued into the fact that a lot of gay men and lesbians would love the opportunity to bring children into their lives. It is not uncommon these days to see advertisements from foster care agencies in the gay and lesbian street press seeking both couples and singles to become carers.

Adoption, however, is a different issue. Although ‘the law’ accepts that same-sex couples can provide permanent foster care for some of the most damaged and needy children, they are not legally allowed to adopt. While it is possible that one parent in a same-sex couple could adopt as a single parent, this would deny the other parent any legal guardianship. Read more about this here and here.

There are also some foster agencies obstinately clinging to their *right* to discriminate on the grounds of sexuality. Just last month, Wesley Dalmar Child and Family Care (part of the Wesley Mission) won a case against a gay couple who had appealed to the NSW Administrative Decisions Tribunal after being rejected as foster carers. The Sydney Star Observer notes that “Wesley Dalmar admitted discriminating against the couple but believed they had done so lawfully.” (whatever that means?!?)

In his usual logical fashion, Archbishop George Pell felt compelled to comment on the case stating, “It is important to protect people from unjust discrimination, but it is ridiculous to claim discrimination every time we show a preference for some people over others.”

Fortunately, any Australian with a brain stopped listening to George Pell in the ‘80s and most foster care agencies accept that same-sex couples make good parents – even those sponsored by religious charities. See for example Good Shepherd Youth and Family Services in Victoria.

For more reading on the topic:

The NSW Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby is currently running a campaign to support the right for lesbians and gay men to adopt children.

Damien Riggs has written an interesting article on heterosexism in the foster care system. He argues that rather than being seen as ‘just like’ heterosexual parents, the unique contributions that GLBT parents offer children should be recognised.

In Melbourne, there is a group specifically set up to support lesbian and gay foster carers. The Lesbian and Gay Carer Support Group operates autonomously with assistance provided by the Foster Care Association of Victoria (FCAV) in partnership with Good Shepherd Youth & Family Service.

Cupcake Gal's blog about the best cupcake recipes ever.

Jen

A new twist on old family ties

2009-12-07T14:37:00.005+11:00

At the risk of sullying the integrity of this blog with salacious gossip, I thought I would keep everyone abreast of the latest famous person to officially ‘come-out’. This one is really for the 30-somethings who grew up swooning over Michael J Fox (aka Alex Keaton) in American sitcom Family Ties, with a very special note of recognition for those women who were secretly – or perhaps not so secretly – swooning over Alex’s ‘Mom’.

Meredith Baxter, who played Elyse Keaton (aka Alex’s Mom) on the program, has told journalist Matt Lauer on the NBC (US) Today Show that, “It’s no secret that I’m gay, but it has been to the greater world. The reason I’m here [on the show] is because I’m saying, yes, I’m a lesbian”. Read more on samesame.com.au

Family Ties screened for seven years between 1982 and 1989. The show represented the epitome of heterosexual family bliss – slightly-hippy parents dealing with an array of everyday problems generated by their conservative but loveable teenagers. Personally, I can still sing the theme song word-for-word (I bet we’ve been together for a million years …). So it is a nice twist that an actress firmly associated with American family values and all things nice now feels comfortable to reveal publicity that her less-heterosexual family life in the real world is just as happy.

Baxter has five children from her pervious marriages, all of whom are reported to be very supportive of their mother and her partner, Nancy Locke.

In another nice twist, when I googled "Family Ties", the website for The Family Ties Project came up. This is a UK based, P-Flag like project for parents who have GLBT children.

Jen

Who’s doing the dishes?

2009-12-03T10:33:00.004+11:00

In a recent article in New York Times Magazine, columnist Lisa Belkin, delved into the topic of the gender-based expectations and stereotypes we impart to our kids. Referring to the work of Abbie Goldberg, an assistant professor in the department of psychology at Clark University, she suggests that the way in which lesbian parents tend to divide household tasks – equitably, and not on the basis of gender – might be a good influence on their children. For instance, recent research has shown that girls raised by lesbians may be more likely to aspire to traditional male-dominated professions (although this could in part be the influence of feminist parents irrespective of their sexuality). Belkin writes:

Heterosexual couples might want to pay attention to these results. While the gay-marriage debate is playing out on the public stage, a more private debate is taking place in kitchens and bedrooms over who does what in a heterosexual marriage (takes out the trash, spends more time with the kids, feels free to head out with their friends for a beer). The philosophical underpinnings of both conversations — gay marriage and equality in parenting — are similar, in that both focus on equality for adults (in the case of heterosexuals, mostly wives). But even if parents who seek parity do so for their own sanity and in pursuit of their own ideals, might it not also be better for their children? Yes, if less conventional, more tolerant children are your goal. Because if the children of gays and lesbians are different, it is presumably related to the way they were raised — by parents with a view of domestic roles that differs from most of their heterosexual peers.

It’s an interesting point and more and more research is suggesting that lesbian and gay couples do tend to divide household tasks more equitably than their heterosexual counterparts. In some instances this means taking it in turns to pay the housecleaner. But in general it means that same-sex couples don’t fall into the traditional gender trap of one parent (dare I suggest the mother) taking on most of the household labour, while the other feels hard done by taking out the rubbish once a week. Ok, that’s a bit of a stereotype (!) But it is no secret that in heterosexual marriages, the bulk of domestic responsibility still falls to the woman, even when she and her husband are both working full time(for money). If you need more evidence to this fact, take a browse through of any number of blogs written by women about motherhood or marriage. The topic of ‘how do I get my husband/partner/boyfriend to help me more?’ is not an infrequent guest on their pages.

But I don’t think this amounts to a simplistic, ‘blokes should just learn to pull their weight in the kitchen’ argument. Even men who would describe themselves as very much pro-feminist and who aspire to spend more time with their children and create an equitable division of labour within their households don’t always manage this. There are undoubtedly some structural issues here; workplaces can tend to be unsupportive of men who seek to work less in order to spend time with their kids or do more dishes. But at the end of the day it is like gender socialisation just pulls us back into line, no matter how enlightened or critical we are of that line.

So it makes sense on an intuitive level that two women or two men living together in a relationship would do things differently. In lesbian relationships (and I am talking about lesbians more than gay men simply because there is more research out there on lesbian parents) there are two women doing what women in today’s society are expected to do; taking responsibility for both domestic chores and household income. Who does what job has to be negotiated. This includes who has the babies.

It seems to me that the experiences of same-sex couples gives us some clues about how gender operates in the world more generally. Gender socialisation is not some amorphous, abstract idea that no-one cares about expect first-year university students (although they may care more than most). It is really the fundamental expectations and assumptions that structure our everyday life (all the little things we do or don’t do without even thinking) and certainly a huge part of how our relationships play out at the day-to-day level. Of course our kids pick up on this.

Food for thought anyway … once someone has made the dinner.

Jen

Does marriage matter?

2009-11-30T11:58:00.006+11:00

This past Saturday was a National Day of Action for same-sex marriage in Australia. Thousands of people rallied across the country in support of legislative change to allow lesbian and gay couples to be legally married.

In Melbourne, ralliers marched up Collins street to the Marriage Registry Office at Parliament House. With its grandiose architecture and numerous churches this part of town is a common hang-out for those celebrating heterosexual marriage (or those just wanting to set up some wedding snaps with a fancy background). One couple seemed a bit bemused as they exited the church to the tunes of ‘hey hey, ho ho, homophobia has to go’ … Not quite the wedding march. Still they seemed pretty happy to lend their support to the cause and the bride cheerily compared wedding-rings with a couple of gay boys.

There was a smattering of kids and prams involved. But only a smattering … Not to suggest that GLBT couples (or singles) with kids don’t support same-sex marriage. More likely, it is a reflection of the fact that marching up the street waving a banner while pushing a pram with a toddler hanging off your leg is really tiring.

We asked participants in the Work, Love, Play study a few questions about marriage and commitment ceremonies. This was of interest to us with regards to the extent to which legal recognition of relationships creates greater social and legal support for same-sex parents and their children. Also, we were interested in whether couples who have some form of legal and/or public recognition of their relationship feel more confident as parents.

As with most issues, this topic raises more questions than we have scope to answer in our study. Does legal recognition of same-sex relationships create greater stability or happiness within a relationship? Would same-sex couples be likely choose marriage (if it were legal) as a way of ensuring a legal relationship between non-biological parents and their kids? Does parental marriage really make a difference to family life?

From the few simple questions we did ask, however, we found that only a small percentage of the 445 study participants had undertaken some form of commitment ceremony (legally recognised or otherwise) or signed some documents. There were:

• 32 (7%) who had undertaken a private commitment ceremony (without friends or family present)*

• 48 (11%) who had undertaken a public commitment ceremony*

• 13 (3%) who had legally registered their relationship in an area where this was permitted*

• 16 (4%) who had undertaken a legal civil union in an area where this was permitted*

• 10 (2%) who were legally married in a country where this was permitted*

We also asked people if the current legal status (or lack of status) of homosexual relationships in the area in which they live made them feel vulnerable in their relationship. Just over one third (36%, n=161) agreed or strongly agreed that it did*.

The Work, Love, Play study will continue for the next five years. So we will have an opportunity to follow up with people living in States and Territories where lesbian and gay civil unions or marriage have become legal to see if they have taken up the marriage option and the impact this has had on their relationship or family life. So please watch this space for more discussion on this quite fascinating topic.

In the meantime, let us know what you think. What does marriage mean for same-sex couples who have kids?

*NOTE: These are preliminary findings only. Do not quote these figures without consent of the author.

On being or not being better than the rest

2009-11-24T15:08:00.000+11:00

Stephen Scott, the research director of the UK-based National Academy for Parenting Practitioners, recently announced that lesbians make better parents than a man and a woman. Scott was speaking at the launch of a new report into factors influencing the development of character written by independent think tank Demos.

Media reports indicate that Scott’s rationale for this argument was that children with two female parents tend to be more aspirational than those with opposite-sex parents, although there are few details on what he really means by this.

Not surprisingly these comments sent the UK media and Christian Right into a spin. There was confusion around whether Scott was speaking about new research or just speaking about what he has learned from previous research or personal practice. As it turns out, the report he was actually launching has very little to do with lesbian parents. I am not sure they are mentioned at all.

Still, the whole palaver begs the question, is it ever useful for researchers to proclaim one ‘type’ of parent is better than another? Is it a good thing that a respected family researcher has publicly ‘outed’ the idea that lesbians could be seen as better parents than heterosexual couples? Or does this just turn parenting into a competition?

I don’t really have answers to these questions, but would be interested to hear what others think.

Jen

Clip-art: you've come a long way baby ... maybe?

2009-11-24T13:54:00.003+11:00

When searching for images with which to decorate this site, I typed the word 'gay' into the Microsoft Office online clipart search engine. Twenty-eight images appeared, seven of which depicted same-sex couples with children. The researcher in me started counting:

• female couples: 4

• male couples: 3

• non-caucasians: 1

• semi-decent artwork: possibly 2 but mostly 0

It should be said that all of these images are reasonably ambiguous. To a heterosexist eye they could easily appear to be 'mother, daughter and granddaughter' or 'Male Friend One congratulating Male Friend Two on his son's soccer prowess'. But they do come up under the category of ‘gay’, so at least someone at Microsoft has decided they must be same-sex parents.

Are clip-art images a good way to measure representation? Most likely NO. But it is interesting nonetheless.

Jen

Welcome

2009-11-24T11:03:00.003+11:00

Welcome to the Work, Love and Play Blog!

This blogsite is dedicated to discussion about the politics and culture of same-sex parented families.

The blog has been created by the research team who are running the Work, Love and Play study. Work, Love and Play is a longitudinal study looking at the experiences of families parented by same-sex attracted (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex) couples and sole-parents. The study started in 2008 and we have funding to keep it running until 2014. So far over 450 families from Australia and New Zealand have been involved in the study.

The study is being run by the Bouverie Centre at LaTrobe University, with involvement from researchers at the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, the Division of Health Studies (Counselling & Psychological Health) at LaTrobe University, Relationships Australia, Melbourne University Department of General Practice and Deakin University School of Nursing.

The study is being funded by the Australian Research Council, Relationships Australia (national and Victorian branch), Vic Health (the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation) and ACON (formerly the AIDS Council of NSW) with generous in-kind support from Gay and Lesbian Health Victoria and the Queensland Association for Healthy Communities.

The aim of the study is not to try to demonstrate whether or not the children of same-sex attracted parents have equal outcomes to other children. We feel like this work has been done. Instead, the focus of our study is the way in which same-sex families operate on a day to day level. Some questions we are interested in, among many others, are:

• How do same-sex couples with children organise their work and household responsibilities?

• What childcare options have same-sex parented families chosen?

• Do same-sex attracted sole-parents find support within the GLBTI community as parents?

• Are same-sex attracted parents connected to community networks and their extended families?

• Do same-sex attracted parents feel supported by community, welfare and health services?

We feel that questions such as these will help us better understand factors that support resilience in families parented by same-sex attracted couples and individuals. We also plan to use the findings from this study to provide some education and support to health and community services in working with same-sex parented families.

If you are reading this you may have been involved in this study in some way or have an interest in the study findings. We would love for you to stay in touch with us via this blog (if you are the sort of person who likes to read blogs!).

The purpose of the blog is partly to keep readers up to date with the study and our findings. But also to be a forum for discussion about political, social and cultural issues concerning same-sex parented families. We will post information about relevant current affairs, upcoming events and conferences and general ideas and commentary about issues relevant to same-sex attracted parents.

More formal information about the study (including publications of our findings) can be found on the Bouverie Centre website.

Cheers,

Jennifer Power
Principal Researcher on the project
Email me here