Well, will you please say what it is, for gods’ sake?
I learned a great many things from my dad: that you should use your career to the greater good, that you should be mindful of the needs of others, that you should marry only your dearest soulmate; that respecting your lovers is essential. I learned from my mother that you should be calm in a crisis; that you should respect diversity; that you should take things in stride; that you should be skeptical.
What, exactly, did I learn of being a man, from my father? Why didn’t I learn about being a woman, from my mother? Were the things I learned from my father somehow masculine and the things I learned from my mother, somehow feminine? Would I have learned different things from them had I been their daughter? Is this good or bad? What does any of the above have to do with being a man? Does it mean anything that my dad cooked and my mom made lots of money?
It seems to me if gender were so essential, that boys should be raised by men only, and girls by women only. Can you please add anything to the debate other than “Everybody knows…”?
Here’s another question: if appropriate gender roles are so terribly important to learn, does the fact that I’m a femme boy mean that my parents failed?
If not, then I guess gender isn’t as important as all that, and that positive human qualities are positive no matter what genitals their possessors have.
If so, you can predict my response, which will be brief and Anglo-Saxon.
Sorry, Otto, the reason why you’re not getting it is becaue I’m not saying it. You learn about how men react and how to be a man from seeing men and generalizing from what they do, and the same for women. All I ever meant to do is say that gender role models are imprtant in a child’s development. The child of a same-sex couple is going to pick up that data about the “missing” sex from Grandma, Aunt Harriet, Sylvia from next door, and Dad and Pop’s friend Marion, or from Grandpa, Uncle Ed, Joe from Mom’s work, and Hugo who lives across the street, rather than from a parent, just as the child of a single mother or father would – but IMHO with the added benefit of being the child of a loving couple, which the single-parent’s-child misses out on.
Not so. Men need to interact with women and women need to interact with men. They learn how to do so principally from their opposite-gendered parent. **
I don’t think this sort of thing is susceptible to listing. Like the Supreme Court’s definition of pornography, I can’t define the differences but I know them when I see them.
What it boils down to is this: men and women are fundamentally different (not inferior, but different). If you don’t believe that, then you’ll never agree with me on this point.
Um, men and women are different in that men and women are different people. I’m a different person from Potter. Why wouldn’t our range of differences be acceptable?
I can understand that it would be difficult for a father to explain menarche to his daughter; but what virtues is it necessary to have a man, or a woman, around to instill in a child?
There are some psychological traits that are found more commonly in men than in women, and vice versa. But I can’t think of any that are important and essential for a child to learn.
A child needs to learn virtue, and virtue (the etymology notwithstanding) is the province of virtuous men and virtuous women. I don’t think gender has anything to do with virtue, and I hope you don’t either.
And you didn’t answer my question about my own gender roles.
I think if you’re arguing from criteria that you yourself can’t identify or define, it makes it a good deal less real. Sorry, but “I don’t know what it is, and I don’t know how it works, but I know it’s real,” isn’t very persuasive.
Poly, you’re saying that a male child needs a male role model to learn how a male acts, but you still haven’t defined how a male is supposed to act. You did, earlier, mention two specific things: how to treat your wife, and when to stand up for your beliefs. Interestingly enough, I learned the later from my mother, not my father. As for the former, I venture to suggest that what you learned was not how to treat a woman, but how to treat someone you love. That the parent you chose to base your behavior on happened to be the one that had the same gender as yourself is, perhaps, incidental.
Your interpretation does raise some interesting questions about the upbringing of homosexuals: did matt_mcl, for example, learn how to treat men from his mom, or did he learn how to treat men by observing his father and translating it to his own relationships? I’m certainly in no position to answer that, except to suggest the question is meaningless: matt, like everyone else, learned how relationships worked by observing both parents, and emulating whatever behaviors he felt best suited him individually.
Finally, the capper to the debate is, if a child lacks a role model from each gender, so what? What, exactly, is the negative impact of only being raised exclusively by one gender or the other?
All I really wanted to say in my post that I thought Polycarp was a super-neat guy and that I agree with those who believe that there is nothing wrong with a homosexual couple adopting a child. As for expanding that, let me see. Aunts, grandmothers, neighbors, and female friends can all provide good female role models, in the case of a gay male couple adopting a child. And as Miller pointed out so well, there is no set standard for male or female behavior. What is feminine or masculine for one person might not be considered so by another. For example (and it is only that), my mother was loathe to put me in pretty dresses, preferring jeans and play shirts for me. And yet I still consider myself relatively feminine.
My point is, while role models for both sexes are important, they needn’t be found in the immediate family. And even the degree of masculinity or femininity of that role model can vary, depending on the individual.
<sigh> Next time I’ll send a private e-mail when I want to say something nice about someone and keep my fool mouth shut.
Exactly, ya know snoops??? People OTHER than the parent can be a role model for the child!! Even if he/she has only one parent, or two parents of the same sex. Having two parents of the same sex doesn’t somehow = this child will not have an opposite sex role model, ya know, who says it has to necessarily be one of his parents?
Even among kids with hetero-sexual parents that are (miraculously) still together, the child may have someone OTHER than his/her parents as his/her opposite sex role model.
The fact that a child has gay parents does not prevent him/her from having contact with adults that are the opposite sex.
It might be telling about me (though how, I’m not too sure) that the gender roles for my parents were fairly well wholly reversed.
My father stayed home with us (and is a registered nurse, FWIW), cooked and cleaned and did laundry and kissed us and made us better and such things.
My mother worked five days a week and came home and was exhausted and wanted to relax while we complained about what each other had done.
What I learned about being a good worker I learned from each as it pertained to the meaning of the word, and what I learned about being a person I learned from each as it related to specific events in life and their punishment for what I did wrong.
What I learned about who I should be I learned largely from society … well, to be more honest, I learned what other people wanted me to be and what they felt I should be or needed to be. What I want to be is what I believe best for myself and those closest to me. Both of my parents, with equal force and love, showed me how to be a good person (and what happens when one is not). I figured out for myself how I should direct myself in life regarding who I want to be.
Other than matters of reproductive organ function, appearance and use (which I got, not only from them, but from books and such things, and more of the latter because after a certain age it gets kinda oogy looking at your dad’s penis, and that age for my mother’s various parts was a LOT YOUNGER), I didn’t learn anything from one parent that I couldn’t (or didn’t also) learn from the other.
So it turns out that once again, my personal experiences suggest to me that although I was raised in a heterosexual household, that doesn’t necessitate such for other people.
It’s difficult to have a discussion with someone who thinks he is right but can supply no support for his opinion. At the same time that person dismisses the opposing view, supported by citations from the APA, with the wave a hand. You are being disingenuous and not participating in this discussion in good faith. You have your opinion and damned be any evidence to the contrary.
If you can’t even identify what intangibles you mean, then how are you so sure it takes a role-model living in the same house to impart that learning? How are you sure that it even takes a same-sex role-model at all?
You are certainly free to think so. I suspect most people’s intuition on this isn’t that much different from my own.
At any rate, it hardly matters: it isn’t like I’m suggesting policy changes or anything. I just think discussions of these type give short shrift to gender roles in parenting, and the notion that those roles are important shouldn’t be poo-pooed.
I don’t think one gender is any more virtuous than the other. I do think that, as a general rule, they approach things differently. **
I don’t see how I could – I don’t know you terribly well – or even why your specific case would be relevant. I’ve noted repeatedly that I’m of necessity speaking in generalities, and that there are undoubtedly exceptions to the general rule.
Well you can say that. But it would seem to be an inevitable consequence of your posts to this thread that this is not so.
You’ve said earlier that “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”. OK, but even that leaves over 10%. Suppose you were the adoption agency, and you had a choice of two prospective adoptive couples who to the best that you can tell were equivalent with regards to these “90%” factors. Going by your posts here, you would have to give the nod to the heterosexual couple.
I also think God exists. I can’t provide a whit of scientific evidence for that proposition. Does that mean my position is “unsupported?” Are peer-reviewed scientific surveys the only source of truth in the world? **
Au contraire. I take that evidence very seriously, which you would see if you actually read my posts. I was hardly dismissive of that citation.
I do, however, think that this kind of emotional intangible is in many ways beyond objective measurement. Psychological surveys are useful in this area, but I do not think they are the end of the discussion. We do not yet live in such a cold, sterile brave new world. **
Again, au contraire. I think I’ve been quite up front about the basis for and limitations of my opinion. I freely grant that much of it is based intuition, that this is hardly scientific proof, and that the extent to which you find my view persuasive will hinge on the degree to which you share certain worldviews with me.
I fail utterly to see how that can be construed as “bad faith” or “disingenuity.” Indeed, I think I’ve been scrupuloulsy honest and forthright.
In fact, far be it for me to complain, but it certainly appears that others aren’t exactly paying attention. How many folks have asked me about specific cases, many involving their own lives, even though I have clearly noted that I’m speaking in generalities and that exceptions to the general rule undoubtedly exist? **
Intuition based on experience and observation, leavened by the views of others. Which, dare I say, is how most worldviews are shaped.
In other words, objective scientific evidence is dismissable whenever it comes into conflict with subjective belief. You have constructed a belief system in which your thesis is not disprovable. You have taken it on faith that gender matters in childrearing, and will not countenance any reversal of that position.
That’s fine. Your religious beliefs are your business. But don’t expect anyone else to agree with you.
I would disagree with this characterization. I don’t “dismiss” scientific evidence. I think it is an important part of a bigger picture – but only a part. There’s more to it than that.
I also think that there are limits to what science can adequately measure. That isn’t “dismissive” of science. It’s a recognition of science’s limitations. For example, consider that, to measure social integration, studies necessarily rely on self-reporting – not the most objective source in the world. That doesn’t mean the study is worthless, but it does mean we should be wary of considering such studies to reflect metaphysical truth. **
Outside one analogy to belief in God, I don’t think any aspect of my position here has included any facet of religion. But I digress.
If you are suggesting that a given proposition necessarily needs peer-reviewed research to be valid and thus worthy of discussion, you are cutting out a wide variety of philosophical topical discussions. What a terribly boring world that would be to live in.
But you’re not just arguing a matter of faith; you’re using a matter of faith to argue that same-sex couples are worse child rearers than opposite-sex couples, despite the evidence that’s been brought up to show this isn’t so.
Why is your complete layman’s opinion, influenced only by your religion and considered only as a hypothetical case, given more weight than the position of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association? Both these organizations have stated, and referenced what studies do exist, that homosexuals are as qualified as heterosexuals to raise children. These organizations have studied the issues and came to their conclusion. Are you really that much smarter than everyone else?
Look, all I was saying is that gender role models are real, if hardly immutable, and important to a child’s psychosexual maturation. Even matt’s reference to himself as a “femme boy” and gobear’s comment in another Pit thread that he was “masculine acting, though a complete Kinsey 6” acknowledge them in the very process of refusing to be bound by them.
IMHO, that is exactly the way it should be. They are default options because they define sociopsychological ideals amenable to a large fraction of the population, and are not mandatory on those of us whom they do not fit precisely or at all. (JFTR, Barb recently brought me some news regarding the All-Star Game – carrying on a three-generation tradition in my family that it is the women who are the baseball fans.)
And Izzy, do not presume to decide how I would weigh a complex multivariate social question on the basis of a single paragraph I type and reach a conclusion in direct contradiction to two basic principles I stated that I hold in the same thread. If this sounds contradictory to you, rest assured that I don’t think so, and I would answer such an assertion in the words of the Good Grey Poet: “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large; I contain multitudes.”
Actually, if you bothered to actually read the APA link, you wouldn’t be quite so stalwart in saying those conclusions were definite. As Priam pointed out, studies in this area are relatively few in number, and as the APA document makes clear from the get-go, there are (as there always are in this type of research) significant issues about methodology. It’s a mistake to call that particular summary of research “conclusive.”
I also note that the passage Priam quoted did indeed note differences in the play habits of the daughters of lesbian mothers, although no such differences existed for sons of lesbian mothers. And although the study nevertheless concluded that such variances were well within acceptable limits, a difference was still observed.
This actually jibes with my position. As I’ve said repeatedly, there ought not be any barriers to gay adoption. Doubtlessly, children in such arrangements will typically turn out to be acceptably prepared to function in the world. If I thought differently, I’d oppose gay adoption. But being “acceptably prepared” and being “ideally prepared” are two different things.
Again I turn to the analogy of economic status: there should be no barriers to letting lower-income people adopt. Doubtlessly the adopted children of lower-income people will turn out well-adjusted and adequately prepared to integrate into adult society. But that doesn’t change my view that it would be better if such children could be adopted into equally-loving upper-middle-class or wealthy homes.
I think calling my position a “matter of faith” is a bit of a pejorative, unless you believe that all positions based on personal experience and observation are matters of faith.
At any rate, my position is not incompatible with the studies cited. The studies only purport to measure what is acceptable (as they should, since they will form the basis for public policy). I’m not talking about the merely acceptable; I’m talking about the ideal.