Asks Kazzy:
I’d be curious to hear about your experiences navigating the parenting world as a father in a same-sex relationship… All-in-all, I’d be curious to know about your personal experiences (with the promise that I won’t generalize them to all same-sex parents), specifically those that come in relation to schools.
Well, first of all, my personal experiences should never be generalized to anyone, ever. Between the vagaries of my upbringing and the manifold quirks of my personality, it is horrifying to imagine drawing conclusions about anyone else based on my worldview. Ours would be a much weirder world if I were any kind of norm.
Anyhow, with that said I can move on to the question at hand — what’s my experience of being a same-sex dad, particularly vis-à-vis schools.
My experience with being a gay dad in relation to schools is a tidy example of why I can’t really speak for anyone else, in this case because I have it very, very good. The Better Half and I live in a deep blue part of a light blue state, and we send our nearly 3-year-old son to a Montessori school. There is another child with two fathers who had been going there before we arrived. While we were sure to raise the question about how they handle the topic of “non-traditional” families when we visited before enrolling our son, under the circumstances it seemed rather like asking if the building had functional plumbing. They fell all over themselves reassuring us that of course they welcome all kinds of families at their school. We knew we had nothing to worry about.
However, you’ll note that we felt compelled to ask. And perhaps that’s the only illustrative point to be found in my experience. We will always feel compelled to ask. We will never send our son to a new school without making sure in advance that our family will be respected, and that bullying will be taken seriously if it occurs. (I pity the child who bullies my kid because he has two dads. [Actually, I pity the child who bullies my kid for any reason.] I fear I will make Rebecca De Mornay in the playground scene from “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle” look like Donna Reed.) It will always be something about which we will be vigilant, at least for the foreseeable future.
In this way, I suspect we are like any other family that deviates from the norm in some way. I am sure members of minority religions have to ask similar questions in certain parts of the country, for example. I don’t feel victimized by this additional duty to my child, and consider it one of the responsibilities I agreed to face when I participated in the decision to adopt a child in the first place. Indeed, it is a smaller-scale, educationally-oriented version of larger decisions about where we would and would not live. I hope that this question will be rendered moot in the years to come, and am optimistic about those chances. But in the meantime, I will always have to be attentive about a detail that opposite-gendered parents don’t have to consider at all.
Here’s some footage I ran across of Russell responding to bullying.
I’m at work so let me guess… Little Zangief?
Breaking Bad. If you watch that show you’ll know exactly which scene it is.
Yes, that looks just about right.
“However, you’ll note that we felt compelled to ask. And perhaps that’s the only illustrative point to be found in my experience. We will always feel compelled to ask. We will never send our son to a new school without making sure in advance that our family will be respected, and that bullying will be taken seriously if it occurs.”
First off, thanks for indulging.
Is there anything a school can do that would negate the need to ask? Any signaling behavior, either implicit or explicit?
Well of course I’m going to answer your question, Kazzy! It would be remarkably churlish to tell readers to ask questions and then ignore them.
I would say that signaling is best avoided, though perhaps that’s an unrealistic hope. Much more preferable to me would be a pleasantly direct statement along the lines of “We make a point of honoring all the different kinds of family our students come from. If you have any concerns about how your child’s family would be received or described, I hope you feel free to share them. But please be assured that your child will get every bit of the respect that children from any other family get at our school, and we would never tolerate any kind of behavior to the contrary.”
Can you elaborate on signaling? I’m well aware of the problems with folks who signal how “down” they are with black people by greetng them all with “Yo.”
However, it seems like there can be some meaningful ways a community can signal its acceptance or rejection of a particular group of people. For instance, are you put off by forms that have a space for Mom’s name and number and Dad’s name and number? Do you take note of how the school handles Mother’s and Father’s Day?
Ah, I think I have a better sense of what you mean by “signaling.”
If my son’s school does anything to commemorate Mother’s Day or Father’s Day (and I think it had let out by the latter), then I missed it. To be honest, that question hadn’t even occurred to me.
I just generally prefer that people be straightforward, instead of gesturing or hinting about their intentions. The more implicitly communicated something is, the more room for misinterpretation. I simply think it’s better for people to speak plainly, is all.
Thanks again. As promised, I will use your experiences here as but one data point in th effort to support all families.
I did not, however, promise I wouldn’t use it to generalize to all DOCTOR parents. I will be sending some your way for instructions on how not to be dbags. 🙂