A lot of parents agonize over how and when to have the "birds and bees" talk with their children. Not me. My older two girls remember my last two pregnancies and during those times we had opportunity to discuss -- in very basic terms, of course -- how babies get inside their mommas. My boys are too young yet to care, but their day will come soon enough and I'm comfortable having that conversation.
Our family is vegetarian, so initially I was concerned more about what to say when my children asked me where meat comes from. They are all pretty sensitive when it comes to animals and I did agonize over how to explain that meat is, well, a dead animal. Reading the series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder made all the difference, and my girls figured out on their own that Pa didn't go out hunting for wild carrots or broccoli. So the Meat Question has been settled, too.
There is one last question, one teensy weensy bit of data that I have not yet shared with my children and, frankly, I'm just not sure how or when I will. Because of this indecision, I am unusually alert to any outside sources that might let the proverbial cat out of the bag before I'm ready.
At issue: Homosexuality.
No doubt plenty of homosexuals would say I'm a hater just because I think their lifestyle actually warrants careful and thoughtful consideration before it gets discussed in my home. After all, I just said the whole human reproduction gig doesn't leave me squeamish. So, in theory, same sex relationships shouldn't either. Theory isn't fact and the fact of the matter is that I do not consider same-sex relationships to be of a nature equal to heterosexual relationships.
You can hate me for that, but just don't force me to discuss it with my children. Not yet.
A favorite children's magazine publisher, Carus Publishing, nearly did me in this past month. They produce a beautiful magazine for upper elementary age children called "Faces" that features a topic in social studies each month. One month it was the country of Turkey, another time it was famous inventors from around the world. This past month the topic was "Families" and when the magazine came in the mail its cover featured the question in big, bold typeface, "What is a family?"
Immediately, I went on high alert. Something told me that the magazine was my equivalent of a ticking time bomb and that I had to read through it before I could give it to my kids. Making the excuse that it had a subscription form I needed to fill out to renew for another year, I intercepted the magazine and set it aside before the girls could take it to their room.
After they were in bed I began to thumb through it. There was an article on families in different parts of the world, how the marriage ceremonies differed, how they lived, how they raised their children. Fine, fine, and fine.
Then I saw it -- an article on how families have "changed" over the centuries. Sure enough down towards the bottom of the two-page spread there was a mention of same-sex unions and how these are now legal in some countries and some U.S. states.
I could just hear my highly observant and curious seven-year-old, "Mama, what's a 'same-sex union' and why is it illegal?"
Crap. I'd rather sit through a root canal with no anesthesia.
Carefully, I tore out the short paragraph that contained the mention and I kept reading. Further inside the magazine there was yet another mention of homosexuality, this time in reference to how some children have two parents of the same gender.
Seriously. Homosexuals make up a fraction of the total population of our country and the world and yet they garnered mention in two different places in the same magazine?
Same-sex parents are not nearly as common as heterosexual single parents, never-married parents, widowed parents, grandparents acting as parents, adoptive parents and so on, and yet those various family types received scant mention or no mention at all.
Where was the article about babies born to teenage mothers? Or those born via surrogacy or donor eggs/sperm? Aren't those also families of a different stripe?
Carus Publishing goofed on this one, in my opinion, and I've written to let them know.
I'll discuss homosexuality with my children as soon as I think they're old enough to handle it based on what I know they can already handle and what is relevant to their lives at any given time. I sure don't need a kids' magazine to do it for me with its kowtowing to a fringe element of society.
What adults do in their own lives and homes is not my business. When they try to "share" it with my children, it is.
Like the poet William Wordsworth wrote so many years ago, "The world is too much with us, late and soon . . ."
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