Meg DeJong's Response to Daddy and Papa

        I really enjoyed watching the documentary Daddy and Papa. I found the personal stories of the gay couples who choose to have children deeply moving. I was especially touched by the story of Doug and Oscar. The fact that Doug was willing to take Oscar in on a second’s notice when nobody else was able to care for him was truly beautiful. It was hard to watch when, at the end of the documentary, Doug applied to officially adopt Oscar and was rejected by the state of Florida, who has ultra-conservative adoption laws. To see what an amazing father figure Doug was for Oscar and the bond that the two of them had, I could never imagine someone more fit than Doug to adopt a child. However, our country is still largely not acceptive of gay couples, and especially gay parents.
I think the documentary Daddy and Papa proved two important points: that gay couples are just as capable of being good parents as straight couples and that fathers are just as capable of parenting as mothers. In class, we’ve talked a lot about the myth of the maternal instinct. Our society holds the belief that it is mothers who should care for children, and that fathers will forever be inept parents compared to mothers. This belief is so prevalent in our society that I’m sure the majority of people would be shocked to hear that there really is no such thing as a maternal instinct. When watching Daddy and Papa, it becomes clear that both men and women are capable of being amazing parents. In the absence of a mother figure, the men in the film took on what our society considers a very maternal role. However, we should not consider what these men were doing innately maternal. Ultimately, we should not hold men and women to different standards of parenting and assign the labels of “maternal” or “paternal.”
Lastly, one part of the film that really resonated with me is how prevalent heteronormativity is in our culture. When you look at our country’s media, we hardly ever see representations of gay parents. This is especially true of children’s media. I think this can have a very negative impact on the children of gay parents, who could easily feel that the lack of representation of the type of family they have signifies that there is something innately different, if not wrong, about their family. I think it’s long past time that the media starts focusing on creating more diverse images of what it means to be a family.