Response to “Daddy & Pappa”
By Emily Hunter
Throughout
“Daddy & Pappa” the narrator discussed the numerous times he and his
partner were questioned by strangers about their family and how they are able
to raise a child as a gay couple.
Usually, after discussing the living situation with strangers, little
change in mentality towards the gay parents was found, and the people remained
skeptical of the men’s ability to raise a child. What struck me was the fact that these people
in the park could not see the gay men as two loving parents for the child, but
a Fundamentalist Christian woman, Mrs. Foster, was able to put her strong
religious views aside in order to allow her foster child, Zachary, to have a
better life. Foster explained that
initially she believed that gay fathers would lead to Zachary’s “recruitment”
to the gay lifestyle or that the men (being obsessed with sexual activity)
would sexually assault the child. After meeting the partners and seeing the
loving family they could provide, Mrs. Foster fully embraced the idea of
Zachary living within a gay family. In addition to Mrs. Foster’s eventual trust
in the gay parents, the rest of Mrs. Foster’s family was also able to accept
the gay parents and Zachary into the family.
I believe that the fact that a strongly religious family was able to put
aside their beliefs to accept this gay family speaks to the fact that much of
the resistance to gay marriage, gay families, and overall gay culture is
because it is different than what is known and is thus frightening to
many. I believe that if more people were
exposed to gay culture and gay families, this form of family setting would
begin to be more accepted and less feared.
Before
coming to Conn, I did not know anyone who was involved in a gay or lesbian
family, but because both my advisor and my research mentor are involved in a
lesbian partnership and raising two toddlers (obtained through in vitro
fertilization), I have had the opportunity to see more deeply into a lesbian
family dynamic. Based on what I have
observed over the years, the mothers still provide the same (if not more)
amount of loving care that any heterosexual partnership could provide to
children. I do not believe the mothers
face as much interrogation as gay fathers face when raising a family, and I
believe this discrepancy stems from the cultural idea that females have a
natural instinct to be mothers, while fathers are not meant to be left in the
home and thus are incapable of raising children with no female aid. Hopefully, if the number of gay couples that
raise children increases, people will begin to see that males are not solely
restricted to existing in the public sphere and have the same ability as woman
to raise children.
Of
course, as the documentary indicates, the government is making it harder than
ever for gay couples to create families, and the families they are able to
create face many complications. One
complication that was continually explored involved white, gay men raising
African American children. This family
dynamic creates a situation that is loaded for discrimination and isolation,
and these factors may play a role in creating unhappiness within the
child. The unhappiness could then be
used against gay families in order to say they do not create adequate living
experiences for the children. For this
reason, I believe that gay families must work much harder to battle the
numerous forms of discrimination their children will face in
their life time.
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