"Daddy and Papa" -Ellie Merrell

I’m really glad we got to see parenting from a same-sex couple’s perspective. Parenting seems like one of the most difficult challenges a person can undertake. For every child, there is such a great possibility that something could go wrong; the parents could fail to provide the child with what it needs physically or emotionally, the child could experience something outside of the parents’ control that negatively alters its life, or some other unforeseen tragedy could befall the family. For same-sex parents, it seems that they face these struggles in addition to a whole host of other complications. First, there’s the issue of acquiring a child [“all heterosexual couples have to do is fuck and they get a child…and we have to go through all of this (screening)”]. Second, once the parents have a child, they have to worry about the isolation the child may feel in response to being surrounded by peers whose parents are heterosexual, the child will have to endure homophobic comments as though he/she were gay herself, the child may feel confusion over being separated from her biological parent(s), and the child may grow up without a mother or father in their life.

One of the things that I found to be really interesting is when one of the fathers mentioned that he was glad that his son was growing up to be a jock. For my research paper, I am exploring some of the interactions between gender and sexuality. I found that, in the late seventies, there was a substantial increase in the number of gay men who presented themselves as highly masculine, through body-building and “tough-guy” behaviors. The book suggested that they were trying to compensate for the way that their sexuality had stripped them of others’ perceptions of them as masculine and normal. It’s interesting that the father in the film was pleased to find out that his son was athletic, a stereotypically masculine quality, even though the father himself had no interest in sports. To me, the father’s response reflected an underlying satisfaction that his son was growing up to be normal, meaning not feminine like gay men stereotypically are. The comment almost implied that if gay men raised a boy who showed feminine tendencies, then the parents would have tainted the child because it turned out like them. I’ve thought a lot about what it would be like to raise a child with a same-sex partner and I think, like this father, I would be terrified if the child was gay or failed to gender properly because I would feel responsible. But another, more logical part of me thinks that it really shouldn’t matter if the child was a little different, because there’s nothing wrong with different.

            Another theme in the movie that really interested me was the brief acknowledgement of the difficulties that raising a child of a different race, especially of a minority might have. In some ways, I feel that same-sex parents might be better equipped to raise a child of a different race than heterosexual parents. I say this because gays and lesbians are also minorities, and so have some experience in what it’s like to be different or discriminated against. That being said, I think it is probably ideal for children to be raised by parents of the same race because every minority faces a unique type of discrimination.