Let’s set aside the obvious political stories for a moment to take a look at some other LGBT parenting news, including a few family profiles, entertainment news, and more same-sex penguin parents. Seriously, with all these stories, the penguin should be adopted as the mascot for LGB parents. (I only leave off transgender parents because I’m guessing there’s some other animal that changes the gender it was assigned at birth, which might be more appropriate. That’s for the trans community to decide, not me.)
Family Profiles
- Moms Susan Shepherd and Marcia Hams, the first same sex couple in Massachusetts to get a marriage license, spoke with Radio Boston on the 10th anniversary of marriage equality in the state — and the country.
- CBS News looks at “The Modern American Family,” exploring the negative reactions to Cheerios’ recent commercial featuring interracial parents and profiling gay dads Monroe Moore and Lupe Perez, who are raising three kids with a little help from Moore’s 92-year-old mother.
- The Albuquerque Journal profiles 18-year-old Klara Castillo, a rising golf star and the daughter of two moms.
- While this isn’t a single “family profile,” it’s essentially a group one: A new study by Clark University Associate Professor of Psychology Abbie Goldberg and JuliAnna Z. Smith of the University of Massachusetts has found that “sexual orientation is not a predictor of parenting stress among first-time adoptive parents.” Instead, the factors that most impact post-adoptive stress are the parents’ pre-placement well-being, relationship quality, and social support. The results are based on “the first longitudinal study of parenting stress in early childhood among lesbian, gay and heterosexual adoptive parents.” Goldberg and Smith have previously looked at preschool choice among same-sex parents. Goldberg is also the author of Lesbian and Gay Parents and Their Children: Research on the Family Life Cycle
, a great compilation of research on our families, and Gay Dads: Transitions to Adoptive Fatherhood
, a more focused study of one segment.
Entertainment
- Jeremy Hooper of Good As You wrote at the GLAAD blog about ABC’s Modern Family, whose gay dad characters Mitchell and Cameron are getting married. In “Why the #ModernWedding Matters,” Hooper explains, “All across America tonight, viewers who have honored this on-screen couple throw laughs, poignant smiles, and other emotional responses to a relatable portait of family life will have no choice but to consider what this, the logical next step for Mitch and Cam, really means for the characters, their daughter, their loved ones, and society as a whole.”
- And actor Sherri Saum, who plays lesbian mom Lena Foster on ABC Family’s The Fosters, became a real-life mom, welcoming twins with her husband Kamar de los Reyes.
- Jumbs and Kermit, a male Humboldt penguin couple at Kent, England’s Wingham Wildlife Park, are raising a chick they were given to hatch after the biological father proved incapable of incubating it with the biological mother. The BBC reports that park owner Tony Binskin said Jumbs and Kermit are “two of the best penguin parents we have had yet.” (Does this really fit under “Entertainment”? Well, I find penguins rather entertaining.)
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