I hereby incorporate by reference the whole of Polycarp’s last post.
I’d actually quibble with the notion that gender roles are “wholly” a social construct, though doubtlessly that’s a part of it. KellyM appears to be well-informed on the subject, and her readings evidently indicate that there is some biological component to gender roles (though I’d love to hear the citations upon which she bases her opinion).
But even if we assume that gender roles are wholly socially constructed, it does not follow that they are infinitely and quickly malleable. Gender roles have developed over thousands of years of human interaction; they can’t be changed at the drop of a dime. Given that, and given that a big part of raising children has to do with preparing them to interact with the rest of the world, it’s important that a child have both maternal and paternal figures in his or her life.
I disagree to an extent with Diogenes on this point. I agree that a gay couple adopting a child should strive to include both genders in that child’s life. But I disagree that such interactions are a perfect replacement for having both genders represented in the parenting relationship itself. Certainly other family members and family friends impact a child’s rearing, but none as much as the parents themselves. After all, Aunt Sally and Uncle Fred aren’t there day in and day out; they don’t wake the child up and put him or her to bed. As important as quality time is, quantity time cannot be overlooked.
You know, it’s funny. When I was around 15, I recall some church function or another where we were asked to list the major influences on our lives. I put “friends” at the top, and my parents somewhere near the bottom. And yet, here I am at age 30 looking back, and I realize how wrong I was. My parents are more responsible for making me the man I am today than anyone else. It isn’t even close. No one – not extended family, not friends, not teachers, no one – has had more to do with who I am today. I hardly think I am alone. Reliance on extended family and others to provide gender role examples is a decent substitute, but it should in no way be considered the equivelant of having those models within the home itself.
Dewey, the evidence on which I base my conclusion is a combination of my personal experience, personal communication with experts in the field (to wit, my psychiatrist and psychologist, both recognized experts in the psychology of gender), and a handful of neurological studies I have either read or read abstracts of. While I’d love to try to locate the citations for you, I am afraid that I am going to be extremely busy for the next several days (I have a business trip upcoming that will likely monopolize most of my spare time until the trip, and during business trips I have limited time for leisure use of the Internet). Some of them are mentioned here on the Boards in other threads (mainly those on transsexualism, a topic I understandably take a strong interest in). Others are cited on various websites discussing these issues.
I am not prepared to say that there is conclusive evidence for a biological component to gender; I prefer to describe the evidence as compelling but not conclusive. At this time there is significant evidence in favor of that conclusion and, as far as I am aware, no clear evidence opposed to it.
I will admit to some bias on this point. Accepting that hypothesis does lead to the corollary that transsexualism is a form of intersexualism, and as such a birth defect. If transsexualism were proven to have an organic origin, it would be considerably easier to for us to convince the medical and insurance establishments to consider our treatment as “medically necessary” and might also eventually provide us with an objective test for transsexuality (something which is currently lacking). It also provides a basis to repeal (or find unconstitutional) the exclusion for transsexualism in the ADA, to overturn Ulane v. United Airlines, and even possibly to undo the damage of Littleton v. Prange in Texas or Gardiner v. Gardiner in Kansas (either judicially or legislatively).
Well, that’s how I see you, Polycarp. In fact, you remind me a lot of Mister Rogers.
And needless to say, the idea of a homosexual couple being inferior to a heterosexual couple in terms of child-rearing, or anything else for that matter, is utterly ridiculous.
Dewey, you may find some illuminating citations over here, courtesy of Tzel. There is strong evidence for structural variations between “male” and “female” brains, to the extent that this is considered a proven fact by neuroanatomists. Whether this is due to chromosomal effects directly, or an indirect result mediated by fetally-generated androgens, is less clear. (Note that Tzel is actually arguing against an organic cause of transsexualism, or at least that transsexuals ought not to be considered members of their identified gender. I am curious whether Tzel still holds those beliefs.)
See also Eve’s post in that same thread; Eve and I share the same conviction on this issue (probably for much the same reason), and I do not believe that Eve’s conclusion is any less informed by science than mine is.
DocCathode provides another reference in this thread, this one referring specifically to the neuroanatomy of transsexuals. I am aware of an additional article from the Journal of Neuroanatomy (IIRC) but cannot find the reference at this moment.
Consider also the recent announcement (widely publicized) regarding the relatively small number of genes on the Y chromosome. Included in some of those articles, at least, was the statement that most of the masculinization effect of the Y chromosome is indirect (that is, through the operation of androgens secreted by fetal testes) rather than direct.
Consider also the disasterous consequences of Dr. John Money’s now discredited belief that gender is strictly socially constructed, specifically disproven (at least in one instance, and in fact by thousands more; see www.isna.org) by the infamous Joan/John case.
There are other threads with discussion and possibly references on these issues; perhaps DocCathode, Sterra, or Eve can provide references to them in my absence, or perhaps the SDMB’s Search (or even Google) function can help you disgorge them.
Given the course of this thread, would you like to expand on that? I think that both Poly and I have made decent arguments that, while homosexual adoption ought not be disallowed, there is a reasonable basis upon which to say (assuming all other factors are equal) that a male-female parenting set is a better arrangement development-wise than a single-sex pair of parents.
“Assuming all other factors are equal” is the unreasonable part.
The assumption that a male-female parenting set is ideal requires acceptance of the premise that the male and female are perfect. It requires the belief that the male is the perfect example of masculinity, whatever that is, and the woman is the perfect woman, whatever that may be. It also assumes that they are perfectly capable of being parents; knowing as well as providing exactly what the kids need.
How many perfect parents do you know? Every parent pair brings their own idiosyncrasies, strengths, weaknesses and faults with them. Therefore, it is my belief that parents can only be judged individually rather than generalizing that opposite-sex couples are automatically better than same-sex couples. There is no reasonable way to make the blanket statement that an opposite sex parent set is always better or more ideal.
I don’t really agree with this, or at least I’m not convinced of it, but I see your contention as being well within the bounds of a civil debate on the issue. My issue with SnoopyFan was not that she thought same-sex adoption was less ideal than traditional male-female sets but that she asserted it to be a morally dissolute practice for society to allow. She did this in a drive-by post in the original GD thread and I called her out to explain herself. AFAIAC she has failed to offer any substantial evidence that the practice is immoral and I think her assertion was offensive and insulting. I didn’t intend for this thread to be a debate on the relative merits of gay vs. traditional adoptions but as a vehicle to upbraid a poster for shitting in the GD thread. I think your (Dewey’s) contrubutions in this thread have been rational and defensible with regards to the larger debate on gay adoption but they have not really been a defense of SnoopyFan’s original comment.
No, it doesn’t. It just means that, when comparing two things, it’s important to hold variables constant outside of the variable being considered.
Would a child be better off in a single-sex home that loves and cares for him versus a dual-sex home that abuses him physically and mentally? Of course. But that doesn’t tell us much about the relative merits of single-sex versus dual-sex households. To meaningfully compare the two, we have to assume that both sets of parents are equal in other areas: equally loving, equally strict, etc, etc, etc.
The basic point is that there are things that males contribute to child-rearing that females cannot fully duplicate, and there are things that females contribute to child-rearing that males cannot fully duplicate. A child deprived of one gender as parent isn’t getting that gender’s contribution. That other variables may make that a tradeoff worth making does not alter that basic analysis. **
I don’t recall ever making such a blanket statement. Perhaps you’d like to point it out?
I still think that Dewey has failed to meet the burden of proof on the contention that “there are things that males contribute to child-rearing that females cannot fully duplicate”. However, I’m not going to argue this point here.
I don’t think this sort of thing is susceptible to proof in the “scientific study” sense. I still think it’s a valid point, though. I, as a man, have never experienced key aspects of womanhood. Although I would certainly do my best, my contributions to a child’s understanding of womanhood cannot be possibly be as fruitful as those from someone who has experienced womanhood firsthand.
Indeed? If that is true, Zenster then I respectfully suggest you retract and rephrase:
This seems to leave no room in your mind for the possibility or debate on the idea that there are women who have not felt discrimination - and I have no idea where the 90% figure came from, either, just as an extra note.
Perhaps you meant to say that you’d be very surprised to learn that she had not experienced discrimination, rather than the unchanging, undebatable certainty your post offers.
I’m not taking a position on the merits of the adoption debate, but I did think it was worthing pointing out the self-contradictory portions of your post.
If I may, I would raise a point which is being lost in all this academic bickering: Does any of this matter? Human beings are complex beings in and of themselves, and the relationships we weave are often simply beyond comprehension. Beyond certain basic extremes (support, lack of mental or physical abuse, adequate food, clothing, shelter, medicine…), we cannot say from one child to the next precisely what circumstances are absolutely ideal for them. The variables simply become overwhelming in number and depth. All things being equal is simply an academic exercize, because real life people are never absolutely equal in every way.
So the real, non-academic question would be roughly as follows: “Are the benefits of one trait (two-sex households) extreme enough to ban or underweigh single-sex households in an adoption process?”. I say “extreme enough”, because, as raised above, by ruling out a same-sex couple for one disadvantage (which I only concede for the sake of argument), you lose that couple’s myriad other tiny advantages. So the negative had better be big enough to overrule the positive. Is it?
Dewey, as a man, there are probably many aspects of “manhood” you haven’t participated in, either. Are those missing aspects from your manly education “key” aspects, or were they optional?
I’ve participated in aspects of both “manhood” and “womanhood”; would this make me qualified to be both father and mother to a child all by myself? Or am I totally disqualified?
And I’ll co-opt what Poly wrote earlier: “But there is no way in heaven, earth, or hell that I would ever be able to show a little girl how to be a woman. That takes someone who is one, or at minimum feels like one in her inmost self. And a little boy learns something of how a woman reacts from his mother, his aunts, his grandmother, his family’s woman friends. And the same holds true in reverse: no woman can give a little boy a model of how to be a man, nor let her daughter pick up how a man reacts in various situations from how she herself reacts.”
That is as clear a distillation of what I’m talking about as I can imagine.
Bolding mine. KellyM, given the comments made in past threads, is covered by the second half of Poly’s statement. She is transgender (please beat me with a stick if I’m wrong, Kelly). Be careful the argument you co-opt, because sometimes it actually disagrees with you.
I have been monitoring this thread with great interest. Indeed, I believe SnooyFan’s comments to be bigoted and ignorant. Unforgiveably so that she declines to imagine a scenario that she could possibly change her mind on the subject.
Dewey, Polycarp, KellyM(and others) have exchanged very well articulated, very intelligent discussions about comparing hetero- to homo-, two parent and single parent adoptions and which combinations produce the optimal results.
I submit to you all however that whatever the outcome, the fact remains that ANY of the above combinations are a welcome alternative to being bounced around foster homes and orphanages. If there exists a two-parent (or single parent) homo environment where said parent(s) is financially and emotionally willing to adopt a child, we are morally gone NOT to place that child there
Please show me where that disagrees with anything I’ve said. Granted, I haven’t traversed the field of transgendered persons, but I think my comments can be reasonably understood to encapsulate that as well.
More to the point, transgendered persons make up a very small percentage of the population. I shouldn’t have to incorporate every single statistical outlier into my comments for them to be considered reasonable. And frankly, I’ve been quite clear that I’m speaking in generalities – what is true in most cases, not what is universally true in every possible case.
Indeed, if you had bothered to read my comments in this thread you would have noticed this in one of my early posts:
Just to make my position completely clear, I’m not in total agreement with what Dewey’s post referencing the views we share in response to KCSuze ascribes to me. I think that there does need to be extensive adult-child interaction with members of both sexes, true – but, save for the totally ideal situation, that does not mean that I necessarily elevate heterocouples over homocouples as potential adoptive parents. To me, it depends 90% on what the prospective adopters can provide the child in terms of physical, economic, spiritual*, and nurturing resources, which would include in the case of the homocouple what were available role models of opposite sex to the couple.
At a time when one of my boys was separated from his wife, he and his kids lived with his mother, who assumed the maternal role relative to her grandkids during the period and IMHO did an outstanding job. I could easily see a situation where a gay couple constructs a family including adoptive children and the opposite-sex parent or sibling of one of them as completely fulfilling my role model expectations. Families are like cookies; there’s no single recipe that produces results fitting everybody’s tastes.
Kelly, I sincerely hope you will not find this at all snotty, because I do not mean it as such. But a very close paraphrase of your own words in one of the transsexual threads is that you never thought of yourself as a man; you always considered yourself a woman literally “trapped in a man’s body,” if you’ll forgive the use of the sick chauvinist line in a quite serious context. Unless there are parts of your psychological (self-identity) history that you have not shared (a possibility I do not discount), you would be unable to help the small, skinny, weak, bookish 12-year-old that I was get past the idea that he does not measure up to “what a man is” – you haven’t, psychologically, been there. While I in no way wish to belittle what you’ve been through and the insights it may have given you, I beg to suggest that you may have the least insight into what a boy aspiring to be a man may be going through of any of us Y-chromosome-bearing types. (On the other hand, if I ever met a kid with gender dysphoria, you’re the first person I’d suggest he talk to.) Forgive the bluntness, but just as I cannot feel what it’s like to be a 14-year-old girl, a woman cannot feel what it’s like to be a boy – and here we must talk about interior identification, feeling that one does not meet a cultural norm of what a “real man” is, and all that stuff. I accept your statement that in your mind you’ve always been a woman – and IMHO that disqualifies you from what you need to have experienced to be a good male role model, no matter what your genes and your phenotype may say.
I don’t have a better word than “spiritual” to describe this aspect, but suffice it to say I don’t mean “religious” – contemplate what characteristics of Gaudere’s personality would make her an excellent adoptive mother if she so chose, to see what I’m driving at.
The thing is, I think I have some idea of what it’s supposed to take to be a man. I tried to be one, for many years, before giving up. So does this make me some sort of superparent? (God, I hope not. I could never raise a child alone. I have enough trouble being one of three parents of a newborn.)
