I can't comment on the balance of female and male role models either (I have seriously considered becoming a head-shrinker though), although I can compare this to the single parent fad (of which there is no influence of one parent over the child, for whatever reason). The balance of role models for these children come from other sources - grandparents, friends, teachers - and they don't end up uberly fcuked (expect for a girl named Sharlene that I know, but that's just her).
The social stigma is definitely a reality, more so at different ages and in different environments. The ultimate age for bullying about gay parents (and probably about the kid being gay themselves) would be about 11-13, in the preteen fiasco. This is the age where kids are the most facinated, worldly and exploratory, before they gain any significant maturity. If the kid of gay parents got through the tween years, they'd probably be able to survive anything. The environment is another thing, although something which probably is already under control - a gay couple is unlikely to be living in a red-necked country town, because they would not be able to live there without discrimination, so therefore the kid would not be in a playground environment that has the classical extremes of bigotism. Which is most definitely a good thing. But if you were to send the kid to a religious school for example (I'm at a Catholic school, so I know the dogma), you would find people at the school who agreed with the Pope on the issue more than others, and so there would be individuals there who would not understand. (I'm bias, of course, and I wrote the Lj entry to which Connie was linking two days ago - on Friday I told my best fri
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Date: 2004-05-12 11:42 am (UTC)The social stigma is definitely a reality, more so at different ages and in different environments. The ultimate age for bullying about gay parents (and probably about the kid being gay themselves) would be about 11-13, in the preteen fiasco. This is the age where kids are the most facinated, worldly and exploratory, before they gain any significant maturity. If the kid of gay parents got through the tween years, they'd probably be able to survive anything. The environment is another thing, although something which probably is already under control - a gay couple is unlikely to be living in a red-necked country town, because they would not be able to live there without discrimination, so therefore the kid would not be in a playground environment that has the classical extremes of bigotism. Which is most definitely a good thing. But if you were to send the kid to a religious school for example (I'm at a Catholic school, so I know the dogma), you would find people at the school who agreed with the Pope on the issue more than others, and so there would be individuals there who would not understand. (I'm bias, of course, and I wrote the Lj entry to which Connie was linking two days ago - on Friday I told my best fri