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Recently Wanda Sykes (47) and her wife Alex (wed in California, October 2008) joined the growing ranks of gay parents, as these first-time moms celebrated the birth of twins. Sykes has described herself "proud to be a woman, proud to be a black woman and proud to be gay" -- and now she can be proud to be a gay black mom as well.
Though today's California Supreme Court decision qualifies her status as a gay black married mom -- by affirming it for those like her who are already married but by denying the same option to others -- the likelihood is great that that qualification will be undone in the not-so-distant future. The tide has turned, and the flood of images and stories of loving gay families like Wanda's have already begun to redefine her status as part of the status quo.
Firm stats on the number of gay families aren't available -- one recent study put the number of gay parents at between 2 and 8 million -- but clearly they're on the rise, with or without the marriage option. For lack of a better category, the CDC counts births to partnered gay women in the births to "single" moms (39.5% of births in 2007).
While gay women have been parents for ages, in the past they were generally the parents of kids from hetero unions entered before the mom came out. An out gay woman didn't often think of herself as a potential mom until recently, for several reasons:
•because it just didn't seem like an option physically
•because "mom" often wasn't the image many gay women had of themselves
•and because the world was not very receptive to gay families.
But that's changing fast. With the growing openness about gay relationships and the availability of sperm donation and adoption, lesbians can now explore family options as never before. And gay moms are doing fine, at least in part because, like Sykes, many of them start their families later in life. This turns out to be a good thing.
My study of later moms found that delay of kids allows women of all orientations and backgrounds to finish their educations, to mature and settle into relationships more likely to last for the long term, and to establish themselves at work (whether in the limelight or in a cubicle) -- leading to higher lifetime salaries and to more flexible schedules (essential to care-giving parents) than are available to women who start earlier, in our very family unfriendly work environments.
Gay women face the same pressures to establish themselves at work before starting a family as other women. As with their hetero peers, starting later means gay women have established themselves as individuals, with the kind of personal authority that allows them to be clear on what they want for themselves and can make them confident advocates for their kids.
In addition, the gay couples I interviewed pointed out that it takes time to figure out who you are and to go through the coming out process, which makes it even more likely that gay moms will come to motherhood later. In the coming years, as society becomes more welcoming to gay people, that process may move faster.
As with hetero women, delay may also lead later gay moms to infertility -- especially women who seek to start biological families after 40 (this does not apply to the "other mothers" whose partners do the bearing and who in states that don't allow gay marriage often become legal parents through adoption). But the steady rise in the birthrate to moms 35 to 45 over the past three decades and more has continued its rise in the latest data, and many women form families later through adoption and egg donation.
Out gay women become moms for many of the same reasons as straight women, but accident is not one of them. These highly intentional moms are changing our understanding of what family can mean, and their successes inspire more change. In turn, the move toward expanding the availability of marriage to gay couples nationally will secure these families a fairer chance at their own pursuit of the happiness our Declaration of Independence calls an inalienable right.
Follow Elizabeth Gregory on Twitter: www.twitter.com/egregory
When gay marriage was resolved in Canada, it had a positive, freeing impact on the gay couples I know. I now only know one couple who isn't out to everyone and they are in their 70's and have been together over 50 years now. They married in secret so that they could live together when one of the partners needed to be placed in a full care facility that only allows married couples to room together when one of the partners doesn't require care. They were both exceptional teachers and would have been such good parents....
I look forward to the day that same sex marriage is common in every state because when that happens, everyone ends up knowing someone who's gay (usually someone they've known for years) which normalizes the whole process to those so vocally against it.
There's also discussion of bio dads: "When Dr. [James] Dobson...cited research from Kyle Pruett at Yale University to state that children need fathers, Dr. Pruett, author of "Fatherneed: Why Father Care Is as Essential as Mother Care for Your Child," was furious, claiming Dr. Dobson had misrepresented his findings to suggest that children of gay parents would somehow suffer developmentally. ...
"While [Dr. Pruett said] "fathers make unique contributions to children, never do I say in my book that children of gay parents are at risk. Love binds parents and children together, not gender. There are plenty of boys and girls from these families with masculine and feminine role models who turn out just fine." "
Was Pruett's the research you were citing? As you'll see in the rest of the piece, there's lots of debate. Since many families are still young, we won't have definitive answers for a while. But there's no reason to presume that loving families will not raise healthy kids, especially if those families aren't under extra social pressure.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07161/793042-51.stm
There are lots of complexities to famiiy dynamics -- some unstudied, since the phenomena have not been around long yet. Re biological fathers -- are there studies of the effects of lack for donor sperm children? Studies of divorce certainly indicate that it can create penalties for kids--though it's hard to speak generally since horrible marriages also have penalties.
if you're talking about the importance of having two committed, continuously present parents, gay moms may have a better chance than many couples, just because they tend to start families later in life, when they may have a better chance of staying together.
Among heterosexuals (the group with data) the divorce rate declines with age. Exactly to what point isn’t checkable (US no longer collects divorce statistics).
The later moms (gay & straight) I interviewed, who had been partnered before but had no kids in their first union, felt less likely to split in their second, having gained the experience of what NOT to do. Those not married before had waited on purpose to find a long-term partner and felt less likely to change radically than earlier (i.e., they felt they would not divorce). This is purely anecdotal, but interesting.
It will be fascinating to see how the dynamics of gay families end up resembling/differing from hetero families. Certainly there will be virtues to growing up in loving, committed families for all concerned.
Also the comment about horrible marriages is disengenuous. We are talking about generalities...not specifics. Would you tell someone it's ok to smoke, because someone you know didn't get cancer ?