You can always rely on Annette Bening and Julianne Moore to make anything look cool. In Lisa Cholodenko’s Oscar-nominated, GLAAD and Golden Globe-winning movie The Kids Are Alright, mainstream audiences watched the glorious story of a modern lesbian couple raising two surrogate children; a frankly terrifying prospect for many, gay or straight. Then, along came Mark Ruffalo, the sperm donor Dad, to mix things up. Yikes. Yet somehow – by virtue of Cholodenko’s exceptional writing –  Bening and Moore made the whole thing look effortless. Simple. Something of a riot, in fact. Where are my lesbian mums?, I cried.

And yes, while one Hollywood movie can’t eliminate all the discrimination directed at LGBT parents, parents-to-be and their children, its presence in cinema’s mainstream culture is a surely a start. The reality is that gay parents are slowly becoming more common: gone is the stereotypical idea of 2.4 children, and the rulebook has been thrown out as to what exactly a loving family must consist of. We should be proud to embrace that.

The ‘alternative family’ is slowly but surely disproving the prejudices raised by those who criticise same-sex parenting. Of course, the cynics are still out there, and while they can’t be ignored, in many ways there has never been a better time for same-sex couples to start a family in the UK. We’ve come a long way since 1999, for instance, when Barrie and Tony Drewitt-Barlow made legal history by winning the fight to bring their twins – conceived via donor eggs and carried to term by a surrogate mother in the US – home to Britain, making them the first British children to be registered as having two fathers and no mother. Now, UK law is on gay couples’ side, and Stonewall’s Different Families report recently revealed how children with same-sex parents enjoy the same quality of upbringing as those from other families.

‘Attitudes towards gay adoption and gay parenting are changing,’ explains Jeff Crockett at Pink Parenting, a parenting magazine designed for those in the LGBT community interested in having children or those who already have them. ‘This is especially true with the fact that in many countries it is now legal for same-sex couples to marry. Having a family is the next logical step.

‘In the US, for instance, according to the 2010 census, gay families are on the rise. Thirty-three per cent of lesbian couples and twenty-two per cent of gay couples are now raising children, and in these modern times more gay people are becoming parents than ever before. ‘

Erika Tranfield of Pride Angel, a business dedicated to matching sperm donors, egg donors and co-parents worldwide, agrees. ‘Attitudes are improving slowly, with more awareness on TV and in the media about gay families,’ she notes. Now, the ‘alternative family’ is slowly but surely disproving the prejudices raised by those who criticise same-sex parenting, and with films like Kids helping to push the point home, it’s easy to see why.

‘The family unit can mean different things to many people,’ explains Crockett. ‘At Pink Parenting we define the family as a loving, nurturing parent(s) and a child that requires love and attention. This can be similar to a single heterosexual mother or father raising a child on their own, or a gay or lesbian couple raising children as a family. My mother and father both passed away some years ago, and I currently describe my family as my partner, myself and our two spoiled dogs, and everyone that knows us would agree.’

The presence of more celebrity gay parents is also helping to change attitudes as well. Sir Elton John and David Furnish are probably the world’s most famous gay parents, having introduced us to Baby Zachary back in December last year; Glee star Jane Lynch is now stepmother to two daughters from her partner Dr Lara Embry’s previous relationship, after their same-sex marriage last May; Sex and the City’s Cynthia Nixon and girlfriend Christine Marinoni then introduced their baby boy in February this year; and the UK’s biggest soaps – EastEnders and Coronation Street – are both currently embarking on gay adoption storylines. It’s all good to see.

However, that’s not the end of the story. In fact, it’s barely the beginning. Just as the rulebook for the traditional family finds a new home on the scrapheap, new challenges, issues and problems present themselves with aplomb. While some are trivial – ‘What exactly will Baby Zachary call Elton and David?’ – others are more serious. Can we really expect society to be as accepting as we hope? Aren’t children with gay parents just easy pickings for bullies and the narrow-minded? Is there not some serious re-education required if we’re really going to get to a place where it’s easy for gay parents to raise children?

Earlier this year, leading children’s charity Barnardo’s reported that too many people continue to think gay parents make inferior parents. It said that nearly a third of the public think heterosexual couples make better parents than same-sex couples. At the time of publishing the study, the charity’s chief executive told the Daily Mail that ‘prejudice against gays is harming the chances for young people in the care system winning new homes through adoption.’

In addition, while Stonewall’s study reported that children with gay parents were proud of their families, they often faced prejudice at school, with many complaining that homophobic abuse at schools was not treated as seriously as racist slurs.

Furthermore, while the children in the study – which focused on teens with gay parents – were comfortable being open about their family situation, research found that nine out of ten secondary school teachers who heard homophobic bullying in schools felt ill-equipped to deal with it. Ben Summerskill, the chief executive of Stonewall, said at the time that this was ‘further evidence of the urgent need to tackle homophobia in our schools.’

So how do we beat homophobia for our kids? Well, Stonewall’s report recommends that schools should ‘start early when teaching children about homophobic bullying, avoid making assumptions about typical families, and respond robustly to homophobic language.’ So does the current curriculum need something of an overhaul? After all, perhaps if we just talked (or learned) about the idea of the ‘alternative family’ more – from a younger age – we’d all become so much more ‘comfortable’ with the concept.

Only by talking about different kinds of families can we expect future generations to be inclusive and open-minded. For instance, in American writer A.M. Holmes’ debut novel Jack (which she penned in 1989 at the tender age of just 19), she portrays a teenager who wants nothing more than to be normal, even if being normal means having divorced parents and a strange best friend. But, as the blurb reads, ‘when Jack’s father takes him out in a rowboat on Lake Watchmayoyo and tells his son he’s gay, nothing will ever be normal again.’ Ouch. Yet, out of Jack’s struggle to come to terms with his father’s news, Holmes – an organically intelligent writer – offers a story about a young boy searching to redefine what ‘family’ means. It’s quite something, and Jack, or something like it, would surely have benefited me if it had been made more readily available growing up. What’s more, there is a plethora of books capable of achieving the same effect as Holmes’. Sadly, the nearest thing we had to to Jack was The Animals of Farthing Wood. As it was, I didn’t read Jack until 2006. I missed its – or something like its – presence.

After all, as Stonewall’s report suggests, the national curriculum aims to help children be successful learners, confident individuals and responsible citizens; but only by talking about different families can these aims be achieved. Explaining to our children that there isn’t much of a difference between, say, families with adopted children, children with only one parent, children with a mum and dad, or two dads, or two mums, is the only way to help them become more respectful, interested and open about the differences around them.

Only through these conversations can we expect future generations to be inclusive and open-minded. Only if they are engaged in the discussion, find their family experiences reflected and dicussed in the classroom can they grow in confidence and feel included. ‘After all, there have always been alternative families, whether they be gay couples, grandparents or single-parents raising children,’ notes Tranfield. ‘Children have been raised successfully for many, many years in different family units. The important thing is changing people’s perception to these differences, which will only benefit any child growing up within an “alternative family”.’

Or, perhaps, this argument is best summed up with one word: love. As Stonewall’s own poster-girl Alice, aged 7, who has two gay mums, explains, ‘Everybody loves each other in my family and we always care for each other and watch out for each other.’ And that says it all, really, doesn’t it? Bening and Moore, or no Bening and Moore.

Link to article: http://sosogay.org/2011/opinion-mums-the-word-the-reality-of-gay-parenting/