One of the best things about The Fosters, ABC Family’s new “two-mama drama,” is that the kids are all older children, and we see much of the action from their perspectives—balancing the many storylines from other shows about same-sex parents and their tiny tots. A few articles from real adult children with LGBT parents caught my eye this week—as did an interview with David Lambert, who plays the oldest child on The Fosters.
- The Baltimore Sun profiles both a two-dad and a two-mom family with now-grown children. All of the children were from previous different-sex relationships.
- Paul David-Perry writes in Ed., the magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, about growing up as the adopted Black son of two White dads. It’s a wonderful piece that is as much about race, class, and education as it is about LGBT families (but as I wrote yesterday, our society could still use a little work on the whole race thing (and class, too), so this is a timely piece for your intersectional reading pleasure).
- Finally, in a media call Tuesday, 20-year-old David Lambert, who plays Brandon Foster on The Fosters, was asked, “How has your role as Brandon affected your outlook on foster families?” He replied:
It’s an interesting thing because the show is all about how do you define family. That’s something that we say a lot with the show. What they mean by that, I think, is that it’s a same sex couple; it is adopted kids; there are foster kids, but it doesn’t really change the fact that we’re still a family.
It doesn’t matter if you have two moms or two dads or whatever, adopted siblings, foster siblings, at the end of the day you’re still going to go through the same problems that any ordinary or more generally accepted family would go through, and that’s the thing when you watch the show. You don’t feel like you’re watching this gay couple. You don’t think that when you watch it. You just see these two women raising these kids and they just happen to be together.
That’s the beauty of the whole thing. We’re not preaching it. We’re not trying to jam it down your throat, this image of these two women. We’re just saying that they can still be a family. There’s no difference, and it makes for really interesting situations, I supposed.
I learned a lot by playing Brandon. I learned a lot just more along those lines, just realizing in myself. I was like, “Wow, these two women can do this. There’s really no difference.” I watched the show and you don’t even think that it’s weird. It feels right. It looks right and they’re a family. That was something I realized only after filming it and watching it was how subtle it is. It’s a great thing. It’s really, really cool.
I agree with his take on it—I’m loving the show’s light touch on LGBT “issues.” We’re so much more than just our “issues.” I suspect some episodes will delve into them more than others, but I’m okay with that, as long as the balance is there.
