Shit on my hands

MH

I was delighted to read today of a longitudinal American study that has found teenagers of lesbian parents to be more socially adjusted and less prone to juvenile delinquency, depression and engaging in risky behaviours such as midnight sexual encounters with 30-year-old men in public parks (oh wait, maybe that was just me) than kids raised in ‘traditional’ family units. Take that anti-gay-marriage campaigners! There goes your argument about children of such unions ending up damaged and deranged by the thought that their parents do different things to each other’s pink bits than Mr and Mrs Sloane next door. Lesbian parents, it was found, have an extraordinary level of commitment to their children lacking in many hetero couples. And that doesn’t surprise me one iota. My 15-month-old is fortunate to be mates with several other babies with two rockin’ mummas, and I’m downright jealous of them (the babies that is; don’t want to alarm poor hubby here). As per many of us, the gender wars were played out in my own childhood home, and they were mightily unpleasant. All my residual mental ‘quirks’ I attribute directly to the tensions and trauma of watching a man and woman duke it out for years before finally, mercifully, DIVORCE! Which was of course then followed by another 5 years of post-divorce emotional, legal, mental crap. Of course being gay doesn’t automatically entail a utopian destiny of permanent happy coupledom but, as the abovementioned study noted, lesbians even know how to do separations better! Children of separated same-sex parents fared much better emotionally and psychologically than kids from ruptured ‘traditional’ families. So if I’d been offered the option of being raised by two mums – with my dad as an involved benevolent donor – I very well may have taken it. Without wanting to lecture (oh what the hell, nothing drive me more nuts than homophobia), if you agree with our political leaders that children need a male and female parent in order to be well-adjusted rational citizens, you are bonkers. The evidence is in! Now, where’s that study showing children raised alongside two Burmese cats have a higher IQ and superior hygiene practices? My husband needs reassurance.