The thing I was failing to clearly point out is that I’m seeing at least three groups getting lumped together -
Children for whom the plan was to raise them in a 2 parent/heterosexual family, and the plan didn’t work out (through divorce or death)
Children of homosexual couples
and 3) Children whose parent always intended to be single parents (Single parent adoption, artificial insemination, and I’m sure there’s a dad or two who fits in this category.)
And I’m not sure that it’s accurate or to use data (anecdotal or otherwise) about one group (usually group 1) and extrapolate it to the other two groups. Maybe it is, but I’m not yet convinced.
I used to be a Big Brother to a boy who lives with his mum and his grandmother. (And I get to see him this weekend again- yay! Moving across country can sometimes really suck.) This kid was normal and well-adjusted because of the loving extended family around him until he started school, and learned about this concept called Dad, which is when I stepped in and started acting as a role model.
His biggest problem was mainly jealousy-- and being young, not knowing how to express it. He knew that other kids had something he was missing, but didn’t really know what it was, even though his cousins have mums and dads. But his attitude really did improve once he got to spend time with me-- even if it was just a couple hours a month.
Does this mean he’d have been better off with a father? Certainly not! Because the available father would have sucked rocks. Would he have been better off with a second (hypothetical) lesbian mum? It certainly wouldn’t have hurt, and definitely wouldn’t have been disgusting.
But this…
…this is just a strawman argument from a guy opposed to homosexual marriage, because the fact is that *no * family operates in a vacuum, and any responsible parent, whether het or homo, is going to do everything possible for their children.
Nuclear families are more common in situations where people have to be highly mobile, such as in nomadic or industrial societies. Extended families or even kinship associations seem to be the preferred mode when there is a high level of social stability. So basically, nuclear families are a product of some kind of instability in social or living conditions.
In normal circumstances, most children would have several role models among their kin, as well as the mother-father relationship. The conditions we live in now make things more difficult for children. Whether they have two mothers or fathers instead of a “traditional” couple has probably very little to do with how children grow up compared to the disadvantage they already have to deal with by living in the relatively unsupportive fractured society that is so common in modern industrialized nations.
The nuclear family is what makes such horrors as child abuse, neglect, and abandonment such a problem now. Those things are much less likely to happen when other relatives live in the same household or when the family is seen as part of a greater social system such as a kinship group or clan.
If you want to be disgusted by something, be disgusted at the veneration of the nuclear family.
I’ve been wondering the same things too for a long time.
I seem to understand that “mother/father figures” are another words for teaching kids masculine and feminine gender roles/norms, so, yeah, what are they? Heterosexuality? Being strong and combative in the workplace if you’re a boy, taking charge of your partner? Wanting someday to have and nurture kids if you’re a girl, not being too headstrong or sexual?
What are those behaviors and traits that somehow only one set of people possess/should possess at a time and that must be transmitted to the kid with the same genitalia set?
Why wouldn’t it be possible to agree on traits good for everyone and then teach all kids those?
Who/what benefit from maintening gender roles?
I’m glad that your horizons have expanded. As several other’s have posted, I grew up in a single parent household and never dreamed of another parent. What I had was a loving environment, and that was enough for me.
I just have to wonder how many Parents are reponding to this thread and how many non-parents are speculating about how well or badly children develope based on anecdotal experience. I know that things are different if you have a hand in raising a friends/siblings/others child than they are when raising your own. The brunt of responsibility lies directly on the parents shoulders like a ton of bricks. Non-Parents always have, in the back of their minds “Well, I’ll do my best, but some of this stuff I didn’t have a hand in…”
Do “Man-Hater” single women and lesbians (Feminists) do a good job raising a male child? Is there any info / statistics on this at all?
-Always makes me think of when some feminist organization forced Toys r’ us to unisex their toys , ie. mix the girls and boys toys under the pretense that the organization into separate sexes predelicated the boys to “violent toys” and girls to ponies and barbies. Didn’t work girls retained girl wants and boys retained boy wants; they just had to look harder. As a result, Toys R’ us lost millions in sales, and ended up reorganizing to how they were before.
I’m more than a little confused as to what you’re reaching towards here, but the important thing in this thread isn’t parental experience. It’s about childhood experiences and how things turned out in the various setups. As we’re seeing, everyone’s got something they wish hadn’t happened. For myself, I wish my brother had been less of a violent S.O.B. and more of a support. I wish he had let me support him instead of trying to live out some fantasy tough guy image in his head. I wish for a lot of things and so does everyone else.
?? Uhmm. Plenty of single mothers and lesbians don’t hate men. Most of them don’t, now that I think about it. And feminism doesn’t factor into most cases either.
As for your actual question, yes studies have been done about children of both genders raised in same-sex households… but they’ve always had problems getting a wide enough sample of randomly selected groups to make the study statistically significant. If we can use them as simple indicators instead of hard data, everything would seem to point to the idea that they really don’t turn out very different in mental health or development from those raised by heterosexual couples. I believe the APA published an overview summary on their website somewhere…
I think what people are obscuring is a certain fact about gender roles. Firstly, they do exist and I truly do believe children naturally gravitate into them. However, it’s not a clean break between girls falling into feminine gender roles and boys falling into masculine. Using myself as an example, I played with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles… but secretely also loved to play house with the girls. The parent’s role is not the iron out these anomalies in any way possible, but rather to help the child find the most healthy outlets to express their developing selves. If a boy doesn’t like to play competitive sports and does like to play with Barbies, the answer is not to force him onto a team and throw away his pink toy box. The answer is finding a healthy, non-competitive way to get him exercizing like jogging or riding a bike and making him aware that some other little boys, but not his parents, might make fun of him for wanting Barbie’s new corvette for Christmas… but that he’s all right. It’s not his fault if they don’t understand, just their own.
This is a really sticky subject. But I think what John Mace said is the best, simplest, and clearest answer I have heard yet. I was raised (until I was 8) with a mother and an abusive father. After that I was raised by my mother and her girlfriend. I had no shortage of men in my life, with 5 brothers and my grandfather. It’s impossible to say if I would have grown up better with a mother and a father. But I love my ‘family’ and I wouldn’t give them up for anything in the world. My moms did a better job than most parents I have seen. Their gender notwithstanding.
Matt asks a very valuable and important question here, and I’m surprised how little attention has been given it.
Those who argue in favor of the two-parent heterosexual stable household are assuming an ideal and there is nothing clearer than that such a situation does not always exist.
And while we pay lip service to the idea of personal freedom to make one’s own role in life, we fall back on stereotypical roles and their value.
Let’s assume that society – Western culture as we know it – “works” with some assumptions about what other people around oneself are going to do, be like, etc., and those assumptions make room for personal freedom. That Mrs. X is likely to but not necessarily will be interested in decorating schemes, while Mr. X is likewise likely but not definitely going to be much more interested in the NCAA playoffs than in the decorating schemes. And that without social opprobrium, they may very well turn out to have quite different interests and tastes than the presumptive set.
What is the value of role models for different sexes, given this? Why are they important? What if the available role models don’t fit the stereotypes? What if the kid’s own developing interests and tastes don’t fit the stereotypes? Is it possible that someone with trans-gender-appropriate tastes can provide a valuable role model? (I’m thinking of my own family, where for three generations the women have been the football fans, and the men are not particularly interested in the gridiron, as a good example of this.)
Barbarian’s comments about his Little and the kid’s adjustment and then expectations are very pertinent. Why is it that a fatherless kid misses having a father? Beyond the valuable but limited benefit of BB/BS programs, what could fill that need?
The assumption is that it would be nice if every kid had Robert Young and June Lockhart for parents – but what if they end up with the Bundys or Will and Grace? Is there a value to a kid in having a depressed drunk who considers himself an irredeemable failure present as a father, over no father at all? Over a kindly neighbor or clergyman “subbing” in the paternal-role-model role? What effect do parental expectations have on the developing child? How do they fit into the mix?
There’s a deeper question here than assuming that there is some ideal parental set of values and debating whether a single parent or a gay couple can fulfill the role of provider of those presumed values. What exactly are those benefits? Only when one answers that question can one speak intelligently about the relative value of non-standard parental systems.
The only benefits I can think of would be say, puberty-a girl would feel more comfortable talking to a female about her body than she would say, her two dads, and vice versa for a boy.
However, that doesn’t mean that said girl won’t have a female role model nearby who can help her with those sorts of things.
Good point. Certainly “person of the same sex who’s been through this already” is going to be more within a comfort zone for that sort of discussion.
However, I think it depends much more on the individual – both the pubescent and the adult – than on a generic gender-based assignment of role.
No anecdotal evidence. By sheer coincidence, the single and gay-couple parents I’ve known well enough to be able to evaluate comfort zone issues who have had children entering puberty have all been of the same sex as the children.
My eldest granddaughter has hit puberty with a profound impact, and fairly young. She and her mother have an extremely good relationship and such issues are largely between the two of them. However, she’s fairly relaxed in talking with me about boys and alluding to body changes generally, though there’s a tacit agreement brokered by her mother that references to menstruation, about which she is quite self-conscious, are on the taboo list. And that works – I’m male but “reliable” in her eyes; I can empathize with what a girl her age is feeling. And she has a valuable resource person for living through intimate body changes in her mother, and uses her as the primary reference point for working through it herself.