Irvine511 said:
how did you come to understand that your family structure was a little bit different than others? did this ever cause you any angst/pain? how did you deal with it? how did your parents explain this difference to you?
(actually, i have a million questions ... now is a time when this forum feels too impersonal)
This is hard to answer, because I don't really know when I became aware of it. As I mentioned earlier I've always had a group of friends with 2 mothers (our mothers were all in a baby-having support group). First there were babysitting arangements with them, then sleepovers and other gettogethers, for many years when I was about 8-13 there were week-long group vacations that involved other families with kids our younger siblings' age, then their younger siblings. To this day we all get together on christmas day, attend a hannukah party, and have a post-pride barbeque, and we used to do every new year's eve together and the aids walk together. So throughout my childhood I had a support group and a place to go where my family was "normal."
So, when did I realize my family was different? I insisted as a toddler/little kid that a gay babysitter (one of the "uncles") had two dads. And apparently for a while I called all parents Moms, which is ironic because around 1st grade I realized my life would be easier if I stopped calling my parents "moms" and called them "parents" and didn't explain to random kids in the girl's bathroom that I had two mothers, was artificially inseminated, etc. My family being different didn't cause any angst/pain directly, it was the homophobia around that caused angst and pain. For a while I tried telling people in 1st-3rd grade, when they asked what my father did, the job of one or the other of my mothers. My birth mother is the more traditionally male-gender-role parent, so it was confusing which one I should make my "father," (note that both are and always have been equally my mothers in emotional and practical manners, though only my biological mother nursed me because they hadn't been together for very long when I was born and she wanted that for herself. As a result, when my sister was born only my other mother nursed her. But I guess that little squabble isn't a concern to male couples...) and I switched off and generally confused myself. Then I started saying that I didn't have a father, which inner-city kids understood to mean he was dead or absent, and I'm not sure if they picked up on my use of "parents."
Anyway by the middle of elementary school I was fully hiding behind the word "parents" and general avoidance of conversations like that, though my close school friends were from my neighborhood and they and their parents were cool with it. Still, I'm not sure if it's how I am or because of my parents (mothers! see? even today...), but I was never the type to have friends over to my house very often, I usually went to theirs. The hurtful times came often, though, when "gay", "fag" etc were used as playground slurs. I always have been outspoken and socially concious, but on this one issue I could never speak up, afraid that by doing so people would somehow (I knew this was irrational) know I had two mothers. I remember one occasion in 3rd grade when my best friend stuck up for me, well maybe not for me but it felt like it, saying in response to somebody saying the word gay, "you shouldn't say that, that's racist, or sexist, or something," which I told my mothers later, giggling that she didn't know the word homophobic as a 3rd grader.
I went to a really liberal hippy-ish overnight camp starting when I was 9, with only about 25-30 kids in each age group who would return every year. There was a lesbian couple on staff and all the kids came from really liberal families and my councilors knew and there were other kids in other age groups with two mothers and plenty of older kids/counselors who were gay, but only a few of my closest friends knew until once when we were 13 and the whole group was having some discussion about gay rights (this was a very socially concious place). I "came out" to the whole group. Some of my closests friends there were just beginning to realize they were gay themselves. (by the way, I've always had remarkable gaydar.) That was the beginning of my own "coming out" experience, and before freshman year the girls on the soccer team (I'd been on it for a year already, I went to a 7-12 school) kind of guessed and asked and I remember standing by the goal and thinking "oh what the hell, time to stop hiding, there's nothign wrong with it and if people have a problem with it that's their problem and they're probably people who aren't worth worrying about anyway." I joined the GSA that year and never again lied or hid from it when it came up, though I certainly wasn't and still don't come right out and say "hi, I'm soandso and I have two mothers," as my younger sister was known to do on occasion (she has basically no social tact, actually diagnosed with social learning disabilities, and she mortified me at more than one doctor's office, public place, etc by doing this...)
My parents never really "explained this difference" that I can remember. My family was the way it was, and others were the way they were, and I never really asked them about it, though I related a few stories to them here and there and I'm sure they said all the right things. My mother (see I always go singular with that word, without specificity, which confuses people to no end..."wait, your mother is a software engineer? I thought you said she was computer illiterate!") was always amused by the girl in 2nd grade who thought it wasn't fair that I had 2 mothers and she only had 1.
I think especially for the oldest child that the kind of peer group I had is really important and I can't imagine growing up in isolation, rurally or in an isolated suburban situation. In high school I spent a few months as an older-but-not-as-old-as-the-social-worker role model for a group of middle school girls whose mothers had put them into a program run by a local gay-oriented health center. These girls hadn't had anything like the support system I'd had, and were all at that awkward awful preteen moment anyway. Some had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the group, one wouldn't talk about her parents even though they and we had made it perfectly clear this was a group full of girls with gay parents.
Sorry I'm so long-winded! Anyway ask all the questions you want - sorry you can't PM me, I haven't paid up, but my email is raizen head@hotmail. com.
They only dated for 8 months or so before I was conceived, actually, because they met at a group for single lesbians thinking about having children (kind of halarious, yes?) and my birth mother is 8 years older than my non-biological mother and was getting to the age where having a baby needed to happen soon. Anyway, when I was 2 they had a commitment ceremony with both sets of grandparents, plenty of gay and straight friends, etc. My sister was born (from my non-biological mother) when I was 4 and when I was about 6 or 7, can't remember exactly, we were one of the first families in MA to do a second-parent adoption, meaning that each of our non-biological mothers adopted us and thus both became our legal guardians. Then in 2004 my parents got married the week it became legal. Anyway, to address the substance of your question, yes, to some degree. For me it wasn't so much a big personal deal considring we'd done the 2nd parent adoption except for thinking about medical issues or whatever. But it didn't make a difference in terms of how we interacted as a family unit. When my parents did get married it was a big deal and a very happy occasion, and I don't want to minimize it, but it didn't change anything about our family or their relationship. They still celebrate the anniversary of their commitment ceremony as their primary anniversary, although we acknowledge both "Adoption Day" and their marriage date. But as a way of showing publicly that my family is equal, my parents' love is equal, yes, it is great. Gay marriage is very important to me as a civil rights/equality issue. On the other hand one friend my age felt very strongly about her mothers getting married, so strongly that although they didn't really care they married for her. (That week was quite the busy week for my family and many in the local community, running around to eachothers' weddings! Though my parents chose to have it be a private ceremony in our Rabbi's living room with just us and one set of grandparents that made it)
, I wouldn't worry about that.
