Happy Birthday, Jennifer Beals!

It’s Jennifer Beals’ birthday, and even though she isn’t a lesbian mom, she plays one on TV. That’s enough for me to wish her a very happy day and tell her how much I’m looking forward to Season Five of The L Word, premiering January 6.

Stay tuned for more thoughts on The L Word and lesbian parenting. In the meantime, here’s my analysis of parenting storylines in the final episode of last season. It includes links to my coverage of earlier episodes.

That’s Not a Grinch, It’s a Stressed-Out Lesbian

If you’re feeling a bit Grinch-like this holiday season, you’re not alone. More lesbian adults (80%) than straight women (64%) say they feel stressed around the holidays, according to a new survey (PDF link) by Harris Interactive and Witeck-Combs. Half (51%) of the lesbians surveyed said they tend to feel depressed around the holidays, versus 36% of their straight peers.

Dr. Linda Spooner, Chair of The Mautner Project’s Board of Directors, offers some reasons for this: “Estrangement from family, marginalization within and isolation from society, separation from children (sometimes due to custody battles), and inadequate access to culturally sensitive health care practitioners are all factors that can adversely affect mood during a season so identified with ‘family’ activities and ‘belonging.’” Stress and depression, she says, can also affect not only quality of life and workplace productivity [as well as interactions with our children], but can also impact hypertension and other diseases. Spooner and The Mautner Project are “once again calling on mental health and medical researchers to do more to include lesbians in their studies so that our community as well as lesbians individually can understand how to do more to take care of themselves and prevent disease.”

A worthy endeavor. On a personal level, though: Do you indeed find the holidays more stressful than other times of year? If so, does this stem from the tension of a “family” holiday in a world not always fair to our families, or is it the practicalities like gift buying and arranging childcare for when school vacations and employer vacations don’t overlap? Either way, what are some of your strategies for coping?

Good Will Towards Men

In the seasonal spirit of “good will towards men,” here are two recent articles about gay dads:

• When a single mother of four young teens died, leaving her children with no other relatives and no family friends who could take them in, the two brothers and two sisters were at risk of being split into separate homes. Gavin Glynn, a gay man who was approved as a foster parent and in the process of adopting a seven-year-old boy, stepped in to take them all. The LA Times tells this heartwarming story while not sugarcoating the challenges and adjustments Glynn and the children faced. The article also relates some of the funny moments Glynn encountered as a gay man raising two girls, yet steers thankfully away from tired explorations of whether gay men can raise girls (or lesbians raise boys). It simply mentions that Glynn turned to a female friend for help when needed. He also ran into Gloria Steinem in a bookstore: “I asked her, ‘How do I interpret femininity to them?’ and she said, ‘Let them interpret their femininity themselves.’” With advice like that, and a willingness to accept it, it’s no wonder he and the children—some now adults—are doing all right.
• The LA Times also relates the story of a gay couple and their journey to parenthood using a gestational surrogate. It took them four-years, three egg retrievals, 65 eggs, seven fertilization attempts, three surrogates, the loss of premature twins, and over $200,000. The Times originally profiled the couple in a three-part series last year. In a media dominated by tales of lesbians searching for sperm, the series is a rare look at a gay male couple who wants biological children. (I didn’t like the phrase “It would take a village to manufacture their child,” in Part I, as “manufacture” ignores the human emotion behind the process, but overall, the series is more sensitive than that one unfortunate phrase would lead you to believe.)

Easy “Gingerbread” Houses for Kids

If you’re looking for an easy kids’ project for a snow day or just for the holidays, try a “gingerbread” house make of graham crackers. It’s become one of my favorite seasonal activities, either for my son and I or for a playdate (where I put together the base houses in advance).

Make up a batch of icing with confectioner’s sugar and water—start with about 1/2 cup sugar to 1 tsp water and add more water if necessary. It should be thin enough to pipe a line, but not runny. Put icing into a sandwich-sized plastic zip bag and cut a small piece off a bottom corner to make a hole. (Use a proper pastry tube if you have one, of course.)

Use four graham cracker squares for the walls, two more for the roof, and one cut diagonally for the roof supports. Glue together with the icing. Let harden for about 15 minutes, and then let the kids go to work adding candies, cereal, raisins, etc. A dusting of powdered sugar over the top (a teaball makes a good applicator) gives it a snowy look.

Martha Stewart, not surprisingly, gets fancy with the concept. (That’s why she’s Martha, and I’m not.)

Weekly Political Roundup

• Jamison Green and Donna Rose, former members of HRC’s business advisory council who resigned over the organization’s handling of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), launched the Transgender Employment Partnership “to continue the work they began at HRC.”
• The Arizona Department of Administration filed a proposal last month, without announcement, to offer health and other benefits to same- and opposite-sex domestic partners of state employees. Governor Janet Napolitano reportedly supports the measure. The Regulatory Review Council will make the final decision, most likely after a public hearing.
• The California Supreme Court has received more “friend of the court” briefs for its case to determine the constitutionality of same-sex marriage than for any other case in recent memory. 145 different organizations submitted 45 such briefs, on both sides of the issue. The court will likely hear the case in 2008, and is required to rule 90 days after oral arguments. Read the rest of this post »

Conception Misconceptions

I really don’t want to be writing about sperm again. Some won’t stop, however, and so I find myself once again turning to matters seminal. Elizabeth Marquardt, of the Institute for American Values, has her say in The Times about children conceived by anonymous donors. She claims “children today are being raised in an era of increasingly flexible definitions of parenthood, definitions that often serve the interests of adults without regard for children.” She has spoken, she says, with donor-conceived children who are unhappy at having been told their origins don’t matter and “they are silly and deluded for thinking that some guy who went into a little room with a dirty magazine holds a key to their identity.”

Shockingly, I find myself agreeing with her—to a point. Read the rest of this post »

So You Want to Get Pregnant . . .

(Originally published in Bay Windows, December 13, 2007.)

Louise Sloan’s new book, Knock Yourself Up: No Man? No Problem: A Tell-All Guide to Becoming a Single Mom (Avery: 2007), is something of a novelty. It is perhaps the only parenting book by an out lesbian mom that is directed at a mixed audience, lesbian and not. While some books about single motherhood are inclusive of lesbian moms to varying degrees, and some books about lesbian parenting state they are also appropriate for single straight moms, Sloan goes beyond them and weaves the experiences of herself and other lesbians with those of straight women in an even-handed way that makes neither group feel like outsiders.

The book features her own perspective as a single mom by choice, as well as the voices of 43 other women whom she interviewed at length, representing a wide variety of backgrounds and choices on the path to parenthood. Sloan says she wanted her book to be “a lively support group in text form, offering a diversity of perspectives,” and in this she succeeds. Chatty, informal and at times laugh-out-loud funny, there is nevertheless much practical information in the women’s stories and Sloan’s asides.

Some people, of course, feel single moms by choice are selfish and view men as unnecessary, the same argument many throw at lesbian moms. Sloan, however, argues “What the straight women in this book rejected was not men or marriage—it was the idea of getting into a bad marriage, or the wrong marriage, just to have kids. . . . In fact, many have made the decision to bear a child out of wedlock because they respect marriage too much to enter into it lightly for reasons of social and procreational expedience.” For lesbians, the marriage situation is somewhat different, but the idea is the same: Don’t force yourself into the wrong relationship just to have a parenting partner. The de-linking of marriage and procreation, however, is one of the many reasons the book has already garnered a number of far-right detractors, who also seem to believe the lack of a dad means a troubled life for the child—an assertion disproven by credible research. Straight single moms by choice and lesbians, coupled or not, may find common cause here, an alliance that in my opinion has yet to be fully explored. Read the rest of this post »

Welcome, Advocate Readers!

A big welcome to those of you visiting after reading the profile of Mombian in The Advocate! Please have a look around. My goal here is to offer a blend of parenting, politics, and lesbian culture, including:

• New LGBT-inclusive children’s shows and books;
• LGBT visibility in mainstream children’s media;
• Commentary about family creation and family law;
• Interviews with a pioneer in lesbian reproductive services and a researcher studying LGBT families;
• An ongoing Family Voices series (in hiatus through the holidays) of interviews with LGBT families (both parents and adult children);
• News about initiatives and media to create welcoming schools for all families;
• Occasional kids’ activity ideas and craft projects, plus much more to inform and entertain.

I’m glad you’ve stopped by, and hope you’ll return.

“She Got Me Pregnant”: Episode Seven

In this edition of our weekly video blog, brought to you in partnership with After Ellen, Helen and I use Jodie Foster’s increasing openness about her personal life as an excuse to talk about why it’s important for parents to be honest about their families. How does being out (or not) impact children’s sense of self? How can it aid parents and children in everyday interactions? Are there circumstances when it’s best not to be out? We also recommend a book that should be on the shelves of every LGBT parent (and their older children) to help children talk about their families on their own terms.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

If the Veoh video above isn’t working (sometimes their server can be flaky), you can try it at Daily Motion, though the picture quality isn’t as good there.

Butch-Femme Holiday Gift Question

OK, my ever-insightful readers: Which of the following items best represents an amalgam of butch-femme, a perfect gift for the keep-’em-guessing lesbian: The Swiss Army Knife in a pink floral pattern or the KitchenAid Mixer with the flame detailing?

Other suggestions welcome.