Disclaimer: I believe that everyone has the right to form whatever sort of family they choose, I was just struck by something I had not previously thought of and it hit a bit of a nerve when I recently came across a woman bemoaning the fact that her friend and sperm donor elect (she is in a lesbian relationship) seemed to be getting invested in the idea of being a father, she was stressed and appalled and asking for advice on how to warn him off, therein follows a lot of other advice from women who said they had to do similar things, they lied about when they went into labour so he would not know and turn up etc. Besides the obvious question of why didn't/don't you go to a sperm bank? I was also wondering, what is the big deal? These are friends, (not evil exes who will attempt to steal your child away and call you a bad mother?) Why not let him form a bond if he wants it?
Are we just naturally possessive of our children? Or is it something else? Is it the cultural inclination we have to recreate the norms of heterosexual, monogamist society in which two parents are all a child should have and since these roles are taken within the dyadic (in this case, lesbian partnership but of course this is not an exclusively lesbian issue ) then there is no place for the sperm donor after conception?
As a person who came to Poly from a communal living hippie viewpoint, I always loved the idea of children having many loving parental figures in their lives and as long as they are still maintaining a caring and respectful friendship, how can it be a bad thing? It doesn't have to be equal time but just being just another caring adult who loves the child? OTOH, I suppose people would not like the idea of their liberty being curtailed due to having to make sure there is a certain level of contact being maintained, I know I came unstuck with my move due to crossing borders, I suppose it would suck if you and your partner wanted to move to Ireland/Italy/Hong Kong and third parent put the kabosh on it....or just made such a fuss that the friendship is destroyed and the child or children lose some thing significant and that is a sense of security.
A slight deviation but, if this friend is so respected enough that you would ask him to contribute their genetic material *dude, that is like 50% of your child* can't that person be considered a part of your family as well? Or is family considered, only your blood relatives or the person you live and have sex with? If a monogamous romantic pair bond and any children raised within it is the only allowable definition of family then all of us Poly's are screwed.
A couple of days ago I was watching the last episode of Ugly Betty, in it Betty is telling her sister Hilda, that it is ok to move out of her fathers house in Queens and move to Manhattan with her son and new husband, they were both talking about how Hilda has finally got what she wanted, a "family" what the heck??? Who were those people she had been living with? Chopped liver???
Hilda had only, in fact, gained a husband, her son by a previous relationship was already in his mid teens and they had always lived with her father and sister up until that point but it seemed, it counts for nothing compared to a wedding ring! Wow....sometimes, these little nuggets of mono-normative thinking passes us by, buried within a cute storyline about a thirty something woman afraid to leave her ageing father alone I totally understand a need for an adult child to move out of their parents home of course, I mean, I couldn't live with my mother for love nor money, but to say that now she (Hilda) has a family now is so devaluing to every other kind of family that does not fit the mould. .
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I find this very sdddening. The dyadic cultural paradigm strikes again.
ReplyDeleteAs a man I feel that fatherhood has been a really positive and developmental experience for me. I believe that the unreasonable denial of any possibility of contact and involvement with your child is just abusive.
If a gay male couple denied access to the birth mother of their adopted child without due cause, would this be seen as acceptable by this woman?
I see no reason to buy into the dyadic norm. If we are serious about challenging the heteronormative paradigm we have to go beyond it, and if we ask for respect and compassion from others, we need to model it ourselves.