Kids Adjust Fine in Gay Households
Kathy Megan, Chicago Tribune, May 13, 2004
When Maya Levine-Ritterman was a very small -- and very verbal -- girl, she would tell almost anyone who'd listen about her two mommies.
She would be sitting in the cart at the Stop & Shop and tell the cashier, "This is my Mommy Barb, but I have another mommy at home with my brother, who is taking a nap."
That was when she was 3. Now she is 8-and-three-quarters, and she has learned to be a bit choosier about whom she tells about her mothers, Barbara and Robin Levine-Ritterman, and her brother, Joshua.
"I don't tell right away," says Maya, who has two thick, long braids, a hamster named Misty and a love for Harry Potter. "I wait to see how we are getting along."
Maya, who lives in a brick ranch house in a residential section of New Haven, Conn., has learned that while she loves her family and sees lots of advantages to having two mommies, there are those who think it's not "normal" to have gay parents. There are kids who will say -- she mimics their mix of shock and tease -- "Oh, you have two mommies?!" or "That's impossible; you can't have two moms," or "That's gross," or "You must have a dad."
While the debate rages over whether gay marriage should be legalized and whether gay families are "healthy" environments for children, kids like Maya -- estimates are that there are between 2 million and 7 million of them in the United States -- are defining the territory.
For them, it's more than a little irritating to hear officials who know nothing about the love and support their families offer arguing over whether kids might be more likely to be "damaged" or "confused" if they have same-sex parents.
"I'm tired of the arguments over whether it's `good' for children," said Jessica Horne, who was 16 when her mother, Peg, came out as a lesbian after a divorce. Her mother has been with the same partner, Maryann Otto, for almost nine years.
"Family and love is about support, honesty and trust," said Horne, who is 27 and lives in Unionville, Conn. "All those things are in my family."
No real difference
During the last 25 years, there have been many studies of children raised by homosexual parents, and almost all of them have shown no significant differences between children raised in straight families and those raised in gay families, experts say.
"The results of the research have been pretty reassuring overall," said Charlotte Patterson, a psychologist and researcher at the University of Virginia. Children -- whether their parents are straight or gay -- have very much the same levels of achievement, social adjustment and mental health. Most studies also show -- though the research is more scant -- that children in gay families are no more likely to be gay than those from straight families.
However, Judith Stacey, a professor of sociology at New York University, reviewed the research available about children of homosexual parents and did find some individual studies that point at what she calls "modest but interesting" differences. These studies, she said, are small and not conclusive but may suggest areas for future study.
A few studies suggest that lesbian parents tend to be more egalitarian and gender-neutral in their child-raising techniques. These parents tend to share child care and work outside the home in a more equal way, according to this research.
The boys in these families "were less aggressive, more tolerant," said Stacey. "The girls were more self-confident, with a wider sense of career perspectives."
Stacey said there were also indications in other studies that children of gay parents tend to be more sensitive about issues of diversity and more likely to be tolerant of differences.
And then there was the tiny bit of data in another study that suggested that a few more daughters of lesbians might be a little more likely than daughters of straight parents to have relationships that are not exclusively heterosexual.
When she included that study in her review, Stacey was criticized by some members of the gay community, who asked, "Oh, my God, how could you do this to us? My view is, `So what if this turns out to be true?'"
She would like to see more studies that pursue the differences and similarities among gay and straight families but said that, with all the hoopla about gay marriage, it is difficult.
"With any issue that gets so polarized and politicized, it becomes very difficult to say anything without it becoming misconstrued," Stacey said.
Abigail Garner, the author of a new book, "Families Like Mine: Children of Gay Parents Tell It Like It Is," says that politics also polarizes opinions about gay families.
Conservatives who don't know children with gay parents tend to see them as "damaged and confused," said Garner, while liberals and gay parents may argue that growing up in a gay family is no different from growing up in a straight family.
"This overlooks the complexity," said Garner, whose father is gay. "From my own experience, the answer is somewhere in between."
Unique pressures
Kids in gay families can feel pressures unique to those families, she says. For instance, she always felt the pressure to be perfect -- the feeling that she somehow represented her father and even all gay families.
"You turned out OK," she felt people would think about her. "You are proof that gay parents raise fine children."
There was also the hurt on the playground, where the biggest insults were calling someone a "***" or labeling something "gay."
"I was confused that what my father was would be considered a put-down by other people," Garner said.
Garner said she found that kids with gay parents have many of the same issues, whether they are the children of divorced parents, such as Horne, or whether they were born into a family with gay parents, like Maya Ritterman-Levine. In Maya's case, each of her mothers had a child using the same anonymous donor. Gay dads often become parents either through adoption or by hiring a surrogate mother.
Kids today may have it harder, she said, with the issue of gay marriage so much in the headlines.
"It's impossible to get away from the reality that the validity of our family is constantly being challenged," said Garner. "It's really hard to hear that gay people make terrible parents when you are in a home with parents who you know are wonderful."
It's also hard for Horne, who is engaged, to imagine that, while she can easily be married, her mother cannot.
"That can't happen for her," said Horne, "and she's the woman I'm going to look to for my entire marriage, you know, when I have questions or I need to sit down and talk. I look at her and Maryann, and I hope to model that with [my fiance]."
Horne said that when her mother first came out as a lesbian, she was surprised and a bit overwhelmed. "I can't say the thought didn't cross my mind: What does that mean for me? You know: Does that mean I'm going to be a lesbian?"
But after talking with her mother and reading materials, she knew, "No, you're not what your parents are. You learn from your parents. ... You need to be open and honest with yourself, and I know I'm not a lesbian."
At first, though, Horne didn't tell any of her friends about her mother. Growing comfortable with her mother as a lesbian was a "process," she said, and by the time she was in college, she was ready to tell her friends.
Her sister, Emily, now 18, was much younger when her mother came out. As an 8-year-old, this news meant almost nothing to Emily. Growing up, she said, she didn't tell everyone that her mother was gay, but she did tell her close friends.
It was a problem only once, when a grade-school friend said she couldn't sleep over because Emily's mother was gay. "That's when it kind of hit me: What? Is this not right? Not normal?"
She and that friend drifted apart, but it never became an issue with anyone else. "People find it more interesting," Emily said, "rather than wanting to make fun of me."
Her brother, Patrick, who is 19, said the divorce was always a bigger issue for him than finding out that his mother was gay.
Occasionally, he said, kids at school -- particularly in middle school -- might tease him or joke about gay people, but he and his friends settled that quickly.
"I really didn't have to say anything because I've got all my friends behind me, and we'd just kind of look at the guys," said Patrick, who is about to go to culinary school. "It's not anything to worry about. I don't worry myself about it."
He said that nowadays, when he meets people, "It's part of the beginning conversation I have with them. `Oh, yeah; my mom's a lesbian,'" he said. "I'm in no way ashamed that my mom's a lesbian."
Andrew Kowalski Devine, who is a junior at Westhill High School in Stamford, Conn., finds that his friends often wish they had a second father, as he does.
"They can see how cool my parents are, and they are really cool," Kowalski said.
Kowalski, who plays the saxophone and has a girlfriend, says that if someone tries to bother him about his fathers -- which happens occasionally -- his friends defend him.
He remembers once in middle school someone asking him, "Are your parents gay? My friends said, `Why should you care about that?'"
Back at the Levine-Ritterman home in New Haven, Maya is speculating about what she might say to President Bush if she had the chance. "I would say I have two moms, and I would stand up for all their rights."
She would tell the president that her family is exactly like any other, except she has two mothers instead of one. "What's the big deal? We're just the same," Maya said.
It's a feeling that Jessica Horne shares. "When you hear Bush talk about protecting our families -- who's protecting my family? I don't really think anyone is."
