Seán H ([info]ohnefuehlen) wrote,
@ 2009-06-23 14:42:00
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Follow-up
The thought behind the cut is brief, and can be ignored by anyone who didn't read (or, having read, didn't care about) my last post.

Novak highlights the "natural" parents, i.e. the contributors of genetic material, as those who ought to be raising a child, a moral imperative almost on the level of a right to life. But take the example, used by Novak, of a lesbian couple, one of whom is inseminated by a man (friend or stranger, doesn't matter) so that they can have a child. This pregnancy, and subsequent child, is the product of two unions. One is biological, the man's (let's call him Ted) sperm with the woman's (let's call her Selma) ovum. The other is intentional, the two women (let's call the other woman Lisa) having decided together to raise a child.

Selma and Lisa have made this decision together. They're reading up on parenthood, setting money aside, turning the study into the kid's room, knitting baby clothes. Ted, on the other hand, ejaculated into a cup. Why is he given precedence as a parent (which he does not want to be, at least in the sense of raising a child directly) over Lisa, who desperately wants to be the mother of this child? And why does the child have a right to be raised by Ted, based on a shared genetic heritage? I just don't understand this privileging of the biological.

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[info]illessa
2009-06-23 03:54 pm UTC (link)
Sorry, this is all rather rough and over-simplified, I'm at work, so just jotting down thoughts as they come.

That whole bit's really dodgy anyway, I mean from what I've read on the subject (and I'll freely admit it wasn't recently), there's no real evidence of any kind of connection between biological parents and their children other than pure genetics. There's also at least some evidence that children develop the emotional connection to their mother over a long period of care, not in their first moments as is commonly thought, so even the "Snatched away from their mother at birth" thing shouldn't have any real impact. Basically as much as knowing who your biological parents are can factor into your identity and understanding the way you are, the people who care for you in your first years of life are the people who really count in these matters.

The more I think about the idea that adoptions should be hetrosexual couples only, the sillier it gets though. I mean it basically implies that (f'rinstance) if an adoption agency were trying to match by similarity to birth parents as he seems to think they should, and they had a choice between a lesbian couple who happen to be distant relations of both of the birth parents, and a hetrosexual couple who are completely different, different nationality, religion, physical appearance, social background, interests blahblahblah. The child should go to the heterosexual couple because they more closely resemble the original family unit.

I also love the utterly irrelevent example of "Just ask children whose parents have divorced if they do not often feel that their natural rights have been violated." Besides the laughable idea of asking a kid whether they "Feel their natural rights have been violated", the fallout of something that impacts the child in a tangible way (even if they weren't old enough to remember the divorce itself, there's still visiting and so forth), is hardly the same as something they don't even remember. Besides which I'm sure there are a few children out there who are mostly pretty happy with their parents being divorced, whether it's because of their parents' bad marriage becoming an amicable relationship post-seperation, or an escape from an abusive biological parent.

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[info]anorexicbrownie
2009-06-23 08:46 pm UTC (link)
I stand by my original comment: genetic heritage is -highly- overrated.

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[info]madz007uk
2009-06-25 08:55 pm UTC (link)
I think that the natural parents ought to take responsibility for their actions and put the child first. In some cases, this may mean that adoption is actually the best thing for the child.

But I will say this. I think that ideally, a child should have a mother and a father. This is how it is meant to work. It doesn't matter how much a lesbian woman wants a child, she can never properly substitute a father. Admittedly I came from a single-parent family myself and turned out reasonably OK, but the fact is that I would have given anything to have a mum and a dad at home who loved each other. Also, I believe that not having a proper male role model had a seriously detrimental effect on my little brother. He used to smash things up in fits of anger and threaten me. I honestly think that having a dad around would have would have stopped it.

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[info]ohnefuehlen
2009-06-25 09:29 pm UTC (link)
Why do you think this?

I mean, if what you're saying is true - that a het couple raise happier children than a same-sex couple - it would be important. But the evidence isn't there. My understanding is that studies have pretty consistently shown that the children of same-sex couples are just as happy. If you're going to assert the opposite, you need evidence.

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[info]ohnefuehlen
2009-06-25 09:37 pm UTC (link)
So I'm walking the evidence walk and not just talking the evidence talk: meta-analysis of studies shows same-sex parents are just as good, the American Psychiatric Association says that "Numerous studies over the last three decades consistently demonstrate that children raised by gay or lesbian parents exhibit the same level of emotional, cognitive, social, and sexual functioning as children raised by heterosexual parents" (and a more detailed review of research concludes that "Fears about children of lesbians and gay men being sexually abused by adults, ostracized by peers, or isolated in single-sex lesbian or gay communities have received no support from the results of existing research").

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[info]lux_fiat
2009-06-25 09:37 pm UTC (link)
There is nothing at all to suggest that "this is how it is meant to work". The only reason that men and women are supposed to bring different things to a parental unit is because of spurious gender roles that have been systematically drummed into us for centuries. There are plenty of families where the mother is more disciplinarian and the father more nurturing and vice versa and there is nothing to suggest that a same sex couple would not bring every necessary element to child rearing.

I too was raised without a father and turned out pretty well. For a while my mother had a boyfriend and, even though I hated the guy and he and my mother fought all the damn time, I wanted it to work out just because I wanted my mother to be happy, which would have given me a more stable home. Later I realised that my mother didn't love this man and my home would have been more harmonious without him. Lo and behold, it was. Now if my mother had met a woman she fell in love with, who loved her and me and my sister and wanted the same things as my mother, that would have been fine by me. Two happy, loving parents of the same sex or so much preferable to a het couple who hate eachother, yet whose side is the law on?

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