The kids are still all right, already

enhanced-buzz-22233-1388450045-2

Guess what? It turns out that kids of queer parents are still doing just fine.

In my post this week at Today's Parent, I talk about the findings of the Australian Study of Child Health in Same-Sex Families, released Monday.

In fact queerspawn aren't doing just fine — they are doing the same as or better than their straight-reared peers, a finding that is consistent with other studies on the subject showing that queer families do better in part because we're less likely to abuse our children, divide up childcare and household responsibilities more equitably, talk to our kids about how their families were created, and teach our kids about activism bullying, and standing up for the underdog. Just for example:

Specifically, children of LGBTQ parents showed no difference on factors such as temperament, mood, mental health, and self-esteem, and scored six percent higher in the areas of general health and family cohesion. Researchers collected data from 325 families with a total of 500 children. […]

What I find striking about all the studies isn’t that kids of queer parents are just fine — better than fine in fact. What I find striking are two things. First, it’s astonishing to me that we still need to study the issue at all, rather than accepting as a foregone conclusion that kids with loving and committed parents tend to do well.

Second, and more important: good parenting outcomes don’t depend on sexual orientation or gender identity. Any set of parents, gay or straight, could divide up chores equitably. No parent ever has to hit a child. We could all learn how to tell the stories of our family’s origins and what makes us strong — and we could all teach our kids to stick up for themselves and for the underdogs. We could all stand up to bullies.

Read more…

Photo Via Australian Marriage Equity

Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe

Morning. Today, you can find me guest-posting over at the Queer Pride Chronicles. I'm very happy to have been asked to contribute to this blog, which is part of the exhibition Generations of Queer: Robert Flack / John Greyson / Elisha Lim / Kiley May's (www.ocadu.ca/onsite) at Onsite [at] OCAD U, the Ontario College of Art and Design's professional gallery:

The exhibition presents vital narratives through the works of Toronto-based artists Robert Flack, John Greyson, Elisha Lim and Kiley May. Influenced by age, background, current context and health, each of these artists has different stories to tell. Bringing these four artists together, the exhibition is creating a dialogue between the works of two senior queer artists who began producing in the 1980's and two younger artists who have come into queer discourses as beneficiaries of the activism of their predecessors. Please visit our website for a full listing of educational events and workshops accompanying this exhibition. www.ocadu.ca/onsite

I've shared the essay "Mamas' Baby, Papa's Maybe," from  And Baby Makes More: Known Donors, Queer Parents & Our Unexpected Families. Funny to reread this piece, nearly six years after I first wrote it. Life is so much less question-y now. Have a look, and check out some of the other posts up there.

You know what's awesome about Mother's Day? The Internet.

If you know me at all well, or if you’ve been reading here for a while, you know about my ambivalent relationship to Mother’s Day. I thought I was done with the story, but you never really done with those kinds of foundational stories, are you? Here’s one more version, for the Mother’s Day edition of Today’s Parent.

My ambivalence about Mother’s Day, though, is changing, in large part because of that whole Interwebs/social media thang. I know, it sucks up your time when you should be focusing on writing the novel rather than reading about attack cats and Solange, but the thing about the Internet is that it can create visibility and communities where before there were none. Which is what I blogged about this week at Today’s Parent:

When Mother’s Day isn’t a Hallmark holiday for you, it can be a very lonely time. You sit there, quietly smiling, and wishing that other people knew about the grief and complicated feelings that accompany—or eclipse—the joy for so many of us. It used to be that those of us with complicated relationships to Mother’s Day dealt with the day on our own. But with Facebook, and Twitter, and texting and Instagram and any number of other technologies, we can do it together.

So thank you to everyone on my various feeds who came together on Mother’s Day and made me feel like part of a community. That’s what real nurturing is all about.

Thanks to Alexandra, Cheryl, Dresden, Elan, Joan, Laurie and Tracy (oh, yeah — and my kids), who — like so many of you — have helped to redeem Mother’s Day for me.