Last month came the news that Christian conservatives across the United States must secretly have been dreading. Long in love with the dastardly Vice-President Dick Cheney, they have always struggled to reconcile this with the fact that his daughter Mary is an out lesbian. And finally, it appears, their tolerance has reached tipping point. Mary is pregnant and plans to bring up the child with her partner, Heather Poe.
George W Bush said he was ”very happy for them”, but the announcement had the country’s Christian conservatives spitting venom.
Which raises a question: just why are people so scared of lesbian mothers? A key reason, I would guess, is that they are out of the control of men and are therefore perceived as ”unfeminine”. As American writer Aminatta Forna has pointed out, the stereotype of the perfect mother ”must embody all the qualities associated with femininity, such as nurturing, intimacy and softness”. In general, we lesbians are not seen as ”real women”, we are not actually expected to have wombs, or the ability to produce breast milk. And, obviously, we have rough hands, from constantly tinkering with our motorbikes — certainly no good for nappy changing.
Allied to that is the fact that there is no father in the picture, something that always comes up in debates about lesbian motherhood. The idea that a baby can be made without a man in the room still makes a lot of people — especially men — deeply insecure.
That’s not all that scares people about lesbian motherhood, though. Many people simply cannot bear the idea of children being brought up to believe that lesbianism is not a fatal disease. This, in turn, naturally leads to the deep, dark fear that ”allowing” queers to breed will result in more being born. I am sure that many of these Christian conservatives are worrying that, if it is a girl, Mary and Heather’s baby will pop out and immediately start chatting up the midwife.
In fact, of course, there is much evidence that lesbians make very good parents. Studies have shown that the children of same-sex relationships are no more likely to be gay themselves, although those raised by lesbians were significantly less judgemental and closed to the idea. Other research suggests that their children generally grow up feeling loved and secure. And, let’s face it, the children of lesbians are far from the only kids to be brought up in a father-free environment. In the US alone, there are 7,5-million single-mother households. And while Christian conservatives always bemoan this, they should be somewhat mollified by the fact that the children of lesbians are actually more likely to have two parents than many of their contemporaries. Research shows that lesbian mothers can make considerably more stable parents than heterosexuals, as they are more likely to stay together.
I could cheerfully strangle those who believe same-sex couples make unfit parents then — and am happily prepared to defend lesbians’ right to procreate. Though, and for very different reasons, I have to admit that when lesbians first began searching for sperm donors, I was horrified. In 1977, when I came out, there was no such thing as a debate over whether lesbian couples should be able to have a child together and I was therefore utterly unprepared when friends started reproducing.
Women should be able to feel fulfilled and believe they have a useful role to play in society, without feeling the need to reproduce and devote their time to nurturing. All of a sudden I was being asked to babysit, and had to endure squawking brats in meetings, and put up with baby talk and endless photographs. I felt cheated out of one of the many privileges and advantages of escaping heterosexuality — namely, living in a child-free zone.
I soon learned that it was almost a rule that lesbians had boys, and, as a result, would drop all their critique of men’s atrocities, and assume their sons would grow up to be Mr anti-sexist, pro-feminist angel.
Although I find the homophobes’ attitude towards lesbian pregnancy and motherhood utterly abhorrent, then, I still believe that lesbians were not made to breed. Why? Because lesbian feminists have traditionally provided a critical analysis of heterosexual family life, pointing up the fact that it is oppressive to women, and limits their opportunities.
I wish Mary and Heather well, and hope their child is healthy and happy. But the joy I felt at their news did not stem from a love of babies, but from the thought that Dick Cheney will be forced to defend his daughter for choosing to become a lesbian mum. After all, she is having his grandchild, and that child will grow up in a country that has no laws to protect its parents from homophobes, and in which one of its mums — the non-birth mother — will have no legal rights as a parent. Will it change him for the better? It remains to be seen. — Â