Seasonal Thoughts on the Evolving Family

Thanksgiving and the pending winter holidays are for most of us a time to be with family. As we enter into this season of love and light and kinship, it seems appropriate to reflect on the changes propagating through society’s traditional view of families.

As LGBT parents, we are reminded every day that we must create our own definition of family—not by redefining the old meaning, but by expanding it, stretching it to include us. The fundamentals—a group of individuals bound by love and commitment—remain the same. Luckily, too, children are often quicker than adults to understand that different families are not necessarily bad, as Jennifer Gruskoff relates in the Huffington Post. The changes affecting families go beyond same-sex marriage and LGBT parenting rights, however.

A number of media articles in the past week or so have highlighted just how the idea of family is changing and broadening. The Washington Post looked at the increasing number of long-term straight couples in France who are not getting married, and the corresponding increase in out-of-wedlock birthrates. In the U. K., BBC News highlighted a new study on adopted children that indicated many of them feel “badly informed” about the adoption process and want to find out more about their birth families. The New York Times stuck with the topic of same-sex families and wrote about lesbian moms who used gay men as known donors, and the different and evolving relationships among the adults and their children.

Kara Swisher wrote in her Louie Chronicles that the New York Times article did have a tone of “Look at those crazy gays—always trying something wacky and pushing the boundaries a little too far.” One could similarly sense a slight “oh, those wacky foreigners” tone in the Washington Post.

Still, neither of the articles was negative, and neither felt the all-too-common need to quote someone from a conservative “family values” organization. Overall, it’s a good thing that the major media is giving space to the discussion of non-traditional families in a relatively non-sensational tone. At the same time, there can be a big difference between reading about something and encountering it in practice. It is on the playgrounds and soccer fields where we can open eyes and change minds, as we talk and share and simply exist with our families.

I sometimes wish I didn’t have to explain my family all the time, but I also realize I’m in a position to give people a real live example of what people may have read about in the newspaper, to make the “wacky gays” seem a little less so—or at least convey that any wackiness in our community is no more or less than the wackiness in society as a whole.

The benefit here is not just for LGBT families. As Swisher wrote, “I did kind of relish the feeling of strangeness that our life seemed to represent to [straight friends], of new possibilities and changes that could impact their own lives someday. Doing something so basically mundane in a different manner does create a space for reflection on how the whole thing is done and how new kinds of families are being created.”

And they are being created, as the articles above indicate. While France may be ahead of the U. S. in terms of the number and acceptance of unmarried straight couples, the U. S. is shifting, too. Less than 25% of all American families consist of a married, opposite-sex couple living with their own (biological or adopted) children—down from 40% in 1970. (Some of the 15% drop is because of a rise in countable same-sex couples, but not all.) There is a point, moreover, at which these trends impact LGBT rights. One of the reasons voters shot down the amendment to ban domestic partnerships and same-sex marriage in Arizona was that opponents of the ban convinced opposite-sex couples of the constraints the ban would impose on their lives.

The more cynical among us may wonder why we should even care about rights for opposite-sex couples, when it is LGBT families that lack equality. My answer is that we have a dual responsibility: creating a world that respects our relationships and families, and creating one that respects those of our children and grandchildren, who may take different paths and form different family structures.

These changes in family structure may take another generation to work out, to spread outside the pockets like Massachusetts and France, Canada and Scandinavia. The seeds are planted, however. It is up to us to make sure they grow in the right direction. To do this, we must seek out allies like unmarried opposite-sex couples and straight single moms. We must also look beyond equal rights and make sure those rights are not only equal, but sufficient. Equal rights to poor medical benefits still means poor medical benefits.

It is a tall order, and yes, burdensome, when the thousand little things of daily life still call for our attention. One of the best things we can do, however, is simply be ourselves. Be out, if we safely can, be willing to share information about our families, and answer the awkward questions (while deflecting the purely prurient). March in parades and support the LGBT-rights groups of your choice, by all means, but never forget the power of the personal touch. Focus on winning over the ambivalent or uninformed. (As Abigail Garner reminds us, we should never underestimate the amount of misinformation floating around, even among potential allies.)

The closing holiday for this season is New Year’s Day, when it is traditional to make resolutions for the future. This year, let us resolve to rededicate ourselves to reaching out and finding new allies, while continuing to draw strength from the LGBT community itself.