A New Hope fore Families

Another English paper.

A New Hope for Families

                In the past years there has been a lot of dispute over the rights of people in homosexual relationships. These disputes range from taxes, home ownership, legal medical rights, and even parental and adoption rights. This last dispute of parental and adoption rights has been the source of much heated debate with many literally fearing that such parenting would lead to more homosexuals in the world. This also brings to my mind the question of what is all of this doing to kids that are caught in the middle of this debate.

This is of course an extreme, but none the less what some people believe. This has led me to ask the question, What are the effects of having gay parents on children?

Going into this paper I knew that I would be hard pressed to find good resources especially ‘peer reviewed scholarly’ articles, that being the case I started interviewing a few semi close friends that are gay but in heterosexual marriages with children. I first started with Lucas Jones, a father of 4 kids that came to the realization of his homosexuality after having been married for several years and already having become a father. This put him and his wife in a difficult position. He was then faced with the decision of staying with his family and figuring things out together or leaving them for a homosexual life. They chose to stay together and as time passed of course their children grew as all children do; with this came the decision to tell them of his attractions or to not disclose this to their children. After discussing the matter, they decided that it was the right thing for their family that their kids know. This is the story of what happened as things were explained to their oldest child.

I asked him to come join me on the couch while playing his video game—it’s easier to talk to someone with some kind of slight distraction he said. I explained to him how much I love him and his mom. I talked to him about attractions and how some guys are attracted to other guys. I then told him that these attractions are something that I experience, that I have attractions towards other guys. I was panicking at this point and afraid that he would hate me and not love or want me anymore. But instead, he said “I love you” and hugged me.

                This led me to ask if this has been the outcome in other situations. I decided to ask another friend Kerry Harding who came out to his kids much later in their lives.

My kids didn’t take is so well—they were extremely upset with me and felt that they had been betrayed and lied to. They said that they thought I was perfect making it seem impossible to talk to me about problems that they were having in their lives. They believed I was perfect and had never struggled with anything in my entire life. I regret not having a more open relationship with them when they were younger; thankfully however our relationship has become much deeper and filled with much more love and respect for one another.

                This made me reflect quite a bit on the relationship that I have with my own parents and how open and honest I feel that I can be with them. And between these two stories alone, I have decided to be as open as I can with not only my future wife, but also my future kids about my own homosexual attractions.

                The Gay and Bisexual Dads and Diversity: Fathers in the Work, Love, Play study, shows both positive and negative effects that some children go through. Sadly the negative is shown almost perfectly in one unnamed man’s response when he said “My family rejected me because I am gay and wanted to be a parent. They felt that being gay, I should not have parental responsibilities. My father no longer talks to me and does not want to see my daughter”. After I read this I thought and asked myself how could anybody react in such a way and what must this poor girl now think of herself and/or her dad, what fears of rejection does she now have and what fears will she face in the future leading to countless psychological problems. As a peace of hope found in the story just before this on the very same page from another unnamed man reads, “I think it made our relationship with our families closer as it made it clear to them that we are normal people in a normal relationship with normal responsibilities. We spend more quality time with them all now as they love the new addition to the family”. Both of these men live in Australia and are with-in ten years of age from one another—however the contrast shown between the stories of these two men is heartbreakingly and joyously obvious.

As I spoke with a psychologist by the name of Ty Mansfield, the topic of divorce came about and how the parent(s) with homosexual attractions many times disconnects him/herself from not only their spouse, but also from their children. Such disconnection can lead to great emotional voids and psychological issues throughout the spouse’s and child’s lives. I, though not for reasons of homosexuality, have both witnessed and experienced many of these issues on a first hand bases and from my own personal experiences know just how intense these issues can become. For example many children whose parents divorce for one reason or another often think themselves to be the blame for their parents splitting apart, become torn if given the choice to life with their mom or dad, and many children whose parents divorce often disconnect themselves from everything and everyone they once loved.

                When it comes adoption there has been much heated debate from those for and those against Gays and Lesbians being able to adopt. One article entitled ‘Can Gay and Lesbian Parents Promote Healthy Development in High-Risk Children Adopted From Foster Care?’ has given much light as to the outcome of such adoptions. The study included in this article spans across a two year period with cognitive and psychological developmental testing done at intervals of two months after child placement, twelve months, and twenty-four months. These tests were done on eighty-two high-risk children adopted by heterosexual, gay, and lesbian parents.

                On a positive side this study reportedly shows how high-risk children whether adopted by heterosexual, gay, or lesbian couples equally progress and have better long-term success in life than children left within the foster care system. It also shows that successful interracial adoptions where neither of the adoptive parents is of the same ethnical background are more common among gay and lesbian couples. However—on a more negative side—this article also reports that while there are around “107,000 children awaiting adoption within the foster care system”, ”approximately two million gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals interested in adopting”, and “the supply of adoptive families has not met more than forty percent of the need”. This study reports that even though there are so many non-heterosexual parents interested in adoption many do not do to a lack of legal challenges and a lack of support from the child welfare system. Given the findings of this study and others I personally find this to be a tragedy that need not exist; a tragedy that we have the power to change and need to change without delay! This study continues on and reports the following.

Adoption has long been seen as beneficial for abused and neglected children’s long-term development, but questions remain regarding whether children adopted from foster care by gay and lesbian parents achieve similar positive outcomes to their peers in heterosexual households. Using three assessments of cognitive development, internalizing problems, and esternalizing problems from a sample of high-risk children adopted from foster care in Los Angles County, we found virtually no differences between children from heterosexual and gay and lesbian households in these domains at 2, 12, or 24 months post-placement. Further, regardless of the sexual orientation of their adoptive parents, children exhibited similar patterns of change in these variables over time: On average, children in both household types showed siginigicant gains of approximately 10 IQ points in their cognitive development and maintained stable levels of behavior problems that were not clinically significant. These similarities across household types were especially notable given that the children adopted by gay and lesbian parents had significantly higher levels of background risk and were more likely to be of a different ethnicity than their adoptive parents compared with children in heterosexual households.

                My original purpose in doing this research was the question that if should children with parents in a heterosexual relationship know if one or both of the parents had homosexual attractions, and if so, at what age should they be told, and what would this knowledge do to them on a short and long-term scale. However after beginning my initial research I realized that a broader question needed to be asked. That question being  if any differences exist at all between having heterosexual parents or non-heterosexual parents?

 Based off of what I have found I would have to say that many positive effects exist when it comes to children and parents having an open relationship in such cases where a heterosexual relationship is had even though one or both parents may experience homosexual attractions. And in such cases where the parents are in some form of a homosexual relationship the children are just as successful in life as children with heterosexual parents; in fact going off of the results of the last mentioned study one might conclude that homosexual parents are better apt to help higher-risk/more problematic children, that is not to say however that heterosexual parents are not capable of helping such children as in fact each child is different. I say this including my personal opinion of having gone through added trials surrounding their homosexuality may be a key factor of having a more open mind, more patients, and potentially being able to connect on a more personal level with some children due to personal background history.