Liberal grassroots group Truth and Hope created this video as part of a study about the effects of targeted marriage equality advertisements on a group of voters. You can read the Advocate post about the project to find out what both Democrats and Republicans thought—but before you do, take a minute to watch the video. It’s a wonderful piece featuring two straight grandparents talking about their gay son, his partner, and the men’s two children.
Lovely video!
It’s a shame how many parents/grandparents are not accepting or supportive. When I told my otherwise very accepting grandmother that my partner and I were thinking about having a baby, she immediately proclaimed that she hoped to G-d that I was the birth mother so that she could say it was HER great-grandchild. My father also had an awful reaction and spread romors around the family that my partner was, for lack of a better term, a gold-digger. One family member expressed that my father’s fear was that my partner would leave me for the child support money. [We recognize that breaking up is a possibility in any relationship, which is why we have a lawyer - we want to make sure we are both protected.]
We also have family members who are ecstatic about the prospect of us becoming parents, which is what we try to think about more often!
Sarah, good luck in your journey — and by the way, less-enthusiastic family members have a way of melting when confronted with an actual baby.
Fortunately we had a better experience, but it was interesting to me that my grandmother’s one remark to my mother was to ask what would happen if we broke up, me being the non-bio mom. I think she wanted to be sure that *she* would still have a great-grandson. (And she fully accepts him as such.) She seemed happy to hear that we have legal protections and that I would adopt the baby. Earlier generations might be unfamiliar with any non-normative family creation. We have to show them that abandoning old rules does not translate into lack of family bonds.
Old friends of my partner’s family opined, “oh, another child without a father” — her sister had already become a mom while single.
Bottom line, some relatives and friends will find reasons to criticize, whatever the family structure, and the unconventional family makeup just provides an easy target. Others can see a parent loving a child and accept that essential truth, no matter what they’ve been taught in the past.