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.