Telling it Like it Is

"I drew our family," he remembers. "Dad, my two brothers, me, Mom, and Donna. The teacher asked who Donna was. I told her 'Donna.' I thought every family had a Donna."

This past week I have been reading Families Like Mine: Children of Gay Parents Tell it Like it Is by Abigail Garner for my Sociology of the Family course. Garner was inspired to write the book based on her own experiences as a child with a gay parents; Garner had a Mom, Brothers, Dad and Dad's boyfriend Russ.

The book is incredibly insightful about the experiences of these children growing up learning about their parents, handling it in school, learning the terminology and looking back on those years as adults. As a child of heterosexual parents and not knowing anyone growing with with homosexual ones, this book taught me so much of the everyday struggle of these children. They grew up with the world constantly debating if their parents should have been parents at all.

An interesting part of the book for me was the talk about proper words used to describe their parent's relationship, sexuality and their family as a whole. The author speaks about how the word 'queer' would be incredibly offensive to her Dads but her generation has redefined the word in an attempt to take away the hate from it. She uses it to describe the GLBT community as a whole as do many of her contemporaries. She also speaks about a child's confusion with other gay-parented children due to everyone having their own word for their parent's partner.

I would highly suggest that everyone read this book to make themselves more aware and open to these children. Debates are always raging about whether homosexuals should be parents and the main focus is not about their parenting skills but homophobia. I truly believe in all my heart that everyone deserves to love whoever they want and build a family with them. This book helps teach us that care for these children should be our main focus, not what their parent's sexual orientation is.

For more information, the author has created a great website of more information and a place to buy her book here.