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Lesbian Mothers and Their Children from
Womankind November 1972
(Editors Note: All parents face challenges raising children, but
lesbian parents have an additional complication to contend with-society's
relentless homophobia.)
The lesbian
who is also a mother faces a unique oppression in this society. Lesbians
without children may, in a certain way, escape the scrutiny of society
in their personal lives, simply because of the low visibility given
to female homosexuality in comparison to male homosexuality. However,
even this small security, and its worth is certainly minor when compared
with all the other negative forces facing gay women, is withdrawn
from the lesbian mother. A mother, any mother, is subject to a certain
moral code demanded of her by a whole society. Mothers socialize children
and therefore must be observed and controlled to a high degree, because
a social system maintains itself largely through the passing on of
its values to its children.
Lesbians,
women who consciously choose to love other women, are a tremendous
threat to male supremacy, to the nuclear family, and to most institutions
of our present system. But lesbian mothers are even more of a threat
because they transfer their values to at least part of the next generation.
Children raised in lesbian households have a chance to experience
the world differently from the children of heterosexual couples.
They see women not in positions of inferiority and subservience to
men, but as independent human beings. Many of them see a love relationship
significantly different from the traditional sexual role stereotypes.
Many have the possibility of being encouraged to, develop in freer
and less limited ways than the conventional “boy” or “girl” roles.
A lesbian
with four children says “In talking about being a lesbian with
my children, my oldest, who’s twelve, who could verbalize it,
said it was really hard for him to accept, because for twelve years
he’s lived with a mother and a father. It’s not that he
can’t accept it, but he said it’s something he has to get
used to, because it’s really a new feeling for him. With the
smaller children, they could tell the difference just being around
my lover and me and having been around my husband and me. They were
simply told my husband and I weren’t living together because
we fought a lot, rather than any long explanation. But they can very
much feel the difference in how I am when I’m with my lover.”
The very
openness the above women has with her son leads to one of the main
threats facing a lesbian mother - that of losing her children because
of a social system that labels her behavior as “unfit” for
a mother. The fear that her children may reveal something to an in-law,
or to their father, thus precipitating a custody fight, is ever present.
For many lesbians, the court fight comes just after they leave their
husbands, or the fathers of their children. If a woman has publicly
declared her wish to live with another woman, she is particularly
vulnerable. But the woman who simply wants to live with other women
in a commune, or apart from her husband, or without men period, is
also fair game.
In California,
the law states that a court cannot find a mother “unfit”
on the basis of homosexuality. It must consider the best interests
of the child. This almost always means that the judge will find in
favor of the father, or the in-laws, because they represent the heterosexual
value system and thus must be in the “best interest of the child.”
Even when
a judge is forced to find in favor of the woman( takes the law at
its word?) the father can appeal— this happened recently in California
when a woman of her children in the first suit and in the retained
their custody, but with these restrictions:
- The woman and her lover could never live together, or she would
lose the children.
- Her lover may never visit her when the children are in the house.
- The woman may not leave her house to visit her lover when her children
are at home (even if they have child care).
The
punitive character of this decision is obvious. The second judge felt
he was obliged to obey the letter of the law. But his conditions deprive
the woman in question of any say in determining her life style, lest
she lose her children.
A group
of five lesbian mothers on the west coast have realized that they
have a better chance of changing their lives if they act together.
They say “It’s especially important for lesbian mothers
and other lesbians or just single mothers to get together and really
help each other, because if we don’t we’re really isolated.
We have to create a community so that we can support each other
in the kinds of problems that come up. A part of the revolutionary
process itself is the process of including children, of being open
with children, of allowing children to be viable human beings within
their environment in relation to other human beings, rather than
a special group to be pushed off to the side.”
parts of the above article taken
from MOTHER LODE
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