The One Man/One Woman argument hurts children
by Sid AndersonJuly 21st, 2006 at 12:58:10
Lately there have been a few letters to the editor in the Oregonian debating the idea that children need one father and one mother in a household in order to grow up to be decent human beings. I’d have to say I feel lucky that when I was growing up with one mother and no father (he died while I was in elementary school) that this argument was not a part of our national conversation. Had it been so, I’m certain I would have felt even more pain and devestation over my father’s death than I already did. Seeing a bumper sticker like “Children need one father and one mother” would have only rubbed salt into an open wound. But thankfully such insensitivity wasn’t loudly out there to make things worse.
Instead my mother, other family members and friends worked hard to ensure that my brother and I would overcome such a loss. That’s not to say we weren’t left with a scar, but we did overcome and if anything we gained strength from our tragedy. My mom successfully raised both of us by ensuring that we lived in a secure and supporting environment by emphasizing the importance of education, family, the outdoors, friends and civic engagement.
But the point of this post is not to demonstrate how my mom successfully raised us without a father and, thus, outside of the one father/one mother paradigm, but to explain to those who espouse the one father/one mother argument that they are hurting a countless number of children. Everytime I see one of those one father/one mother bumper stickers, I wonder if there is a grief stricken little girl out there who has just lost a parent and had the unfortunate experience of walking past that bumper sticker in a grocery store parking lot. It’s pains me to even think about it.
Most importantly, such bumper stickers and shouters of this paradigm hurt and insult every child that isn’t raised in such an environment. No matter how much love and support a child receives in a household that exists outside of the one father/one mother scenerio, these bumper stickers will always hurt the child at some level. And this is about the children, right?
July 24th, 2006 at 10:15 am
Excellent, excellent point, Sid. The slogan is aimed at gays, but it hurts children more than the intended target – all children that don’t happen to live in the standard “nuclear†family, which of course includes children of gays. Putting forth the ‘one man, one woman’ message doesn’t help these kids any more than it helps children of widowed or divorced parents. As Sid points out, it only piles on pain and stigma.
It is estimated that up to ten million children in the US are being raised by gay parents. That’s a reality that’s already in place. These kids are already here.
The child of a gay couple COULD enjoy the advantages of having a family in which TWO adults have the right to visit them at the hospital, to make emergency medical decisions, to pick them up at school, to sign permission slips and release forms, to travel with them across state lines, to bequeath them social security benefits in the event of death, and to take family leave from work. The child’s financial security would be doubled if their gay parents had those rights. They’d have next-of-kin inheritance rights from two people, they’d have access to health benefits from the employment of either parent, and they’d receive child support from the absent parent in the event that the relationship broke up.
The relentless beat of the “one man, one woman†message allows a lot of the public to feel righteous about denying gay couples any way of legalizing their relationships. If we as a society really cared about all children, wouldn’t we want to put this kind of security in place for children of gays as well? How would increased stability for any child be a bad thing?