DO CHILDREN NEED A MOTHER AND A FATHER? PART 3: Eve

3) But can't a same-sex couple have a male or female role model on hand for the kids? Like a friend of the family or an aunt or uncle?

My strong reaction against this idea comes from two experiences.

First, I read Jennifer L. Hamer's important book What It Means to Be Daddy: Fatherhood for Black Men Living Away from Their Children. Hamer wants her book to be an argument for "alternative family forms." But to someone like me, who grew up with your basic, reliable, in-the-armchair married father, the men she described had frighteningly intermittent, unreliable, patchwork relationships with their kids. And she studied the most committed unmarried fathers, men who really wanted to be with their kids but didn't want to marry the mothers. I sympathized with the dads, but honestly, they just weren't there. They shivered in and out of their kids' lives like shadows in firelight.

And a friend of mine made a terrific point. Speaking from personal experience, she pointed out that even if you make a commitment to be there whenever you're needed, you just can't know when children will need you. They don't need you to be "on call" like a doctor (although that's better than nothing...), they need you to be reliable, familiar (look at the root of the word), there even when they don't know they need you.

They shouldn't need a reason to need you. They shouldn't need to petition for an audience with a father or mother. They should get to know both a man and a woman closely, familiarly, in all different contexts, caught off-guard, not just on Sunday zoo trips and special family dinners.
posted by Eve at 12:41 AM | link

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