Okay. Point of clarification though, if you don’t mind: is it sarcasm that is not allowed in GD, or the oblique insult, sarcastic as it might be?
Picking fights and making disputes personal is counter to good discussion in Great Debates. If you need to engage in a personal feud, open a Pit thread.
[ /Modding ]
Honest question–if gender roles are as fixed and girls are girls and men are men, then why do we need a parent of each gender to model gender behavior/roles? You yourself said that the little girl with the mother who wasn’t into make up or clothes still gave birth to a girly daughter.
That’s not what that sentence says. Sorry, but it simply isn’t.
See, this part is pure inference on your part. There’s really nothing in her post that supports this conclusion. All she said was that she wouldn’t force any kid of hers into one role or the other. The “crap” part was pretty clearly referring to the idea that, if you are of a particular gender, you must fulfill a particular gender role. Which idea you shot down yourself, by your example of your non-girly friend who had a girly daughter.
Well quite, which shows that the positions are entirely contradictory - either children will be of their of their own gender come what may and messing with the status quo is doomed to failure (so no gay adoptees) or children are some kind of gender blank slate and if they don’t get proper doses of each gender as parent they’ll suffer in some way (so no gay adoptees).
I think the behaviours and dispositions that comprise some of our gender identities come directly from our genders, but given there is so much overlap between men and women in the modern world I would be loathe to say which ones those are. I’ve heard referenced studies that show male traits like being competitive and wanting to have more rough physical play starts extremely early, way before one would expect a child to be able to internalise a projected gender role, suggesting these behaviours are in some way innate. But do we seriously take as a position as adults that people can only be the sum of their gender? Clearly not or we’d live in some kind of gender caste society because we’d be unable to break free of our genetic conditioning.
My problem with putting things like that is that “all things beign equal” never happens and “all things being similar”… well, they’re never so similar that the only difference is that one couple is heterosexual and the other one homosexual. I have known enough shitty hetero couples and enough great same-gender couples to be able to say, and mean it, that I don’t see a hetero couple as intrinsically better than a same-gender one… no, not when it comes to raising kids, either. I don’t see a couple as intrinsically better than a single-parent, either; in fact, I see a couple without additional support as being worse off than a single-parent with external support. “It takes a village” and all that jazz.
That said, I have a question too. In Spain it’s possible for single people to adopt children from abroad, Spanish children or embryos. Can single people adopt, in Argentina?
They can and they do. Because of this there are lots of homosexual couples with adopted kids. The problem is, of course, that only one of them is the legal parent. This is actualy another argument employed for gay marriage.
Yeah, and while we’re at it, let’s make sure that only white parents can adopt or foster white babies, and only black parents can adopt or foster black babies. After all, we wouldn’t want the poor kids to be brought up unhappily in the undesirable, poorly adjusted environment that is a family with differing genetic traits.
What I’ve gotten over the years, and sorry for no cites on this, but I’m confident they’re available with an appropriate Google search, is this:
[ul][li]The most important part of any child’s development, natural or adopted, legitimate or not, is having caregivers with whom the child has a parental-filial bond, who genuinely care about the child.[/li][li]Two parents are, by and large, better than one, in terms of providing adequate parenting. (No sneer intended at competent single parents; the point is that a second parent alleviates a lot of the stress that single parenting can cause: financial, emotional, time-constraint-related, an otherwise.)[/li][li]Role models of each sex are valuable – but need not be a parent. A regularly-seen member of the extended family or a close family friend often fills this role, even in “vanilla” father=-mother-2.5-kids-and-pet-dog families. Kids are flexible; they find role models from what is available.[/li]There is absolutely no statistically valid evidence suggesting that a mixed-sex couple provides better parenting than a same-sex couple.[/ul]
For those of you thinking about gender roles this article covers a study of all boys schools.
In an all male environment children are further enabled to explore activities not normally associated with their gender. Might be relevant to that discussion.
I would like to hear from someone who was raised in a gay household.
How did it affect you growing up? I dated a guy once whose Mother became a lesbian. It affected him big time. I won’t tell you how but it screws with a boys head to be raised by two women.
My sons father was killed when he was 4. I am not gay but he grew up without a father and it affects him. Just not having a Father around does make a difference just as not having a Mother makes a difference.
We are trying to argue a point based on a guess here unless we have some people that can say what it is like.
A longtime member, who became inactive at the time of the “Pit reforms,” was raised by his biological father and his other father, his bio-father’s partner, and posted at some length about it, very positively as I recall. Do a search.
I really don’t grock this whole gender roles thing. IMO, kids like what they like, until somebody tells them otherwise. My son is crazy about cars and trains. He also loves to dress up with Mardi Gras beads and other jewelry. He loves cooking with us. He is very gentle and loves to hold babies. On the other hand, he has very little use for stuffed animals. His favorite color right now is yellow. He likes all sorts of music. He runs and plays football, but comes to get a hug in between plays. So… what gender role is he playing exactly???
My partner and I both do cooking. We both share in cleaning. We both earn a living. We both make small repairs, when necessary. We both help decorate the house. I pick up the bugs, spiders, and dog poop. But my partner knows how to haggle for a car. I pay the bills but my partner does the long-term budgetary planning on spreadsheets. We both know how to sew a button on or repair a rip. I’m not sure what gender roles we’re playing, but the work gets done, and we’re happy and love each other.
People may know this from my previous posts, but can you tell if we’re a straight couple, or two gays, or two lesbians, or two transgendered people, or whatever we might be… by what roles we play? And what does it matter anyway? What our son knows is that he’s loved and gets the opportunity to explore the stuff he likes. We’re his parents, and that’s a role worth playing.
I know a guy who grew up with two moms, and he’s a totally well-balanced young man with all his screws in place. Then there’s this other guy I know who has straight parents, and he’s completely messed up, and an alcoholic to boot. But that logic, it must mess with your head to be raised with both a father and a mother in one family.
Instead of anecdotes, try reading Estilicon’s link. Here, I’ll post it for you again: Adoption and Co-parenting of Children by Same-sex Couples.
Let’s start with your first link, which goes to the following article: “Boys’ And Girls’ Brains Are Different: Gender Differences In Language Appear Biological.” OK, so girls have biologically superior language abilities. We may be discovering that now. But in Western culture, girls have not (in even the very recent past) thought to be able to grasp reading and other learning as well as boys. In other words, there can be a bunch of cultural crap surrounding what it means to be a boy and what it means to be a girl that isn’t particularly rooted in any kind of objective reality.
Given that, what ideally is a hypothetical boy getting from which gender? Is he modeling the traditional view of boys and language/learning from his dad or is he modeling the newly-discovered information about language/learning from his mom. Or maybe he’s modeling stuff about language from his English-major parent, whether mom or dad. Or… how do you know in any individual situation if he’s going to get a boost in language skills from one gendered parent or another?
Remember, we’re not talking about differences in a vacuum (as in totally unsocialized monkeys for example). We’re talking about raising children in human society and culture. How do you determine the ideal mix of biologically and culturally “masculine” or “feminine” traits to apportion to the ideal parents?
I’ve a question. Though no doubt i’d say it’s a fair guess you’d consider (like me) that this is rather a nebulous, hard to pin down to specifics area, you’ve suggested while gay households are not the ideal there are certainly worse household situations that a child could be raised in. Roughly speaking, to what are you comparing gay parents as a less-than-ideal factor in comparison to other potential less-than-ideal parental traits? I’m not looking for you to draw a certain line, but would you consider being gay as a parental trait to be equivalent to a pair of parents who are grumpy, or a single parent, or an alcoholic couple, as so far as a negative influence on a child? I’d be guessing that, since you’re in favour of gay adoption, you consider it as a factor to be less generally negative than other factors which might legally stop an adoption, but where in the “allowable” less-than-idealities does it fall?
I read it and it was written in 2002. I am asking for people to weigh in that lived it. I was raised in a traditional family so I don’t have the answer. I just know that it affected my son not having a father. I dated a guy that raised that in a two woman household and what I noticed.
I know I learned important lessons from both my mother and my father. In todays world so many kids are raised in single parent households. I raised two children without Dads around. I am glad to hear that it does and can work out well.
If you think I’m anti gay you are wrong. I was looking at it from the loss of having a significant male or female role model in a childs life.
Those role models don’t have to be parents.
I guess I’m still trying to figure out what a “male” role or a “female” role is for a human being, that a child needs to model. Basic manners, courtesy, compassion, fair play, hard work, persistence, planning, and so on are things that apply across the board, regardless of gender. As far as things we do from day to day, like approaches to education, professional development, housework, home and car maintenance, financial management, decision-making, care-giving, social interaction, and so on are also things that both men and women can model. And if a particular set of parents lack in any of these areas, there are always other adults around who can help.
So, what’s left? OK, I can see that (as a woman) I will have trouble teaching my son things like peeing on a tree, men’s bathroom etiquette, and advising on various penis-related issues. I would add dating rules, but those seem to change so fast, that even if I were a guy, I wouldn’t know where to start!
I’m trying to remember what specific “womanly” things I learned from my mom , that my dad couldn’t also teach me. Beyond some advice about my period, I can’t really think of anything. (My mom was horribly out of date on fashion, so no help there!) There are plenty of resources out there about the mechanical aspects of sex and reproduction (that are probably a lot more accurate than “the talk”) – and either a man or a woman can teach a kid about mutual respect and courtesy in a relationship.
For my son, he has two godfathers that can help him with specific male-anatomy issues. They’re already on notice that they get to show him how to pee on a tree, next time we go camping…
Maybe someone else can fill me in on what I’m missing.