Article by Abigail Garner

This summer I joined nearly 400 families from across the country for Family Week in Provincetown. For many of the families attending, a sense of freedom draws them back every year. Freedom from societal judgment. Freedom to express ourselves openly without looking over our shoulders.

While at Family Week, I had the pleasure of meeting dozens of teens and young adults who have GLBT parents. Also present this year was a film crew from a major television news show ["20/20"]. They were interviewing teens for a story on children of gay and lesbian parents. Their presence had its good and bad points.

There was excitement about a mainstream news show giving air time to our families, which — compared to straight families — still seem invisible. It felt validating. On the other hand, having major media in our midst put some of the kids on the defensive. They were careful what they said in front of the crew, particularly when they were asked questions about difficulties growing up in such families, and questions about their own sexual orientation.

The experience with the media at Family Week sparked conversations regarding our expectations about the ways our families are presented to mainstream society. We started to talk about what we consider positive and negative images of our families. In light of these conversations, the teens picked the discussion topic for the Family Week town meeting and gave it the title, “Happy Rainbow Families: The Pressure to be Perfect.”

I have had countless conversations with both parents and their kids regarding this topic. Concerns about what images we put forth resurfaced yet again this summer with the release of “Our House: a very real documentary about kids of gay and lesbian parents.”

It is a ground-breaking documentary because it realistically addresses some complex issues that arise from having gay and lesbian parents in a heterosexist world. “Our House” was met with some discomfort by GLBT parents who expected a film that would be purely uplifting.

Filmmaker Meema Spadola is well aware of the fact that our families are under scrutiny. As the daughter of a lesbian mother, she has lived it first-hand. Talking about her documentary, Meema explained, “When we portray ourselves as perfect, we are setting a goal that we can’t possibly meet. It’s not just love that makes a family. Fighting with your little brother makes a family. Yelling at your kids to do their homework makes a family.”

Ashley, 17, and daughter of lesbian parents shares a similar view. “We’re trying to please both the heterosexual world and the GLBT world, but we’re trying to do both from a homophobic point of view,” she explained. “That means we might think we need to prove that gay parents can produce straight kids. We think we need to have exceptionally gifted kids so we can show that world that these families are A-OK. We set standards for ourselves that are unreasonable for us to live up to. We are submitting to heterosexism by pursuing those standards.”

As GLBT families in a homophobic society, we fear normal won’t be good enough. So instead, we strive for perfect. Anything less leaves weak spots for critics to poke holes though our argument that our families are worthy of the same acceptance as straight families.

I was one of those children who pushed myself to become an over-achiever, striving to build an airtight case for my family’s success. That way, when people found out my dad was gay, no one could use an imperfection of mine as bogus evidence that gay men would make lousy parents.

Besides academic performance, there are many other issues GLBT families might deny or ignore for fear it might reflect negatively on them. These issues include: same-sex parents who split up; custody battles; children who misbehave; children who identify as second generation; and families that access mental health services.

What are the consequences of ignoring the less than perfect facets of our families? The consensus from the teens at Family Week was that censoring themselves makes them feel fake. They grow tired of having to constantly watch what they do or say. They experience anxiety about getting caught with their guard down and fear it could result in someone exploiting their families’ vulnerabilities. All of these consequences take their toll on children’s self-esteem and self-worth.

Somewhere along our path to equality, the GLBT-family community started believing that perfectionism was our ticket to mainstream acceptance and freedom from oppression. But if we knock ourselves out trying to meet unobtainable homophobic standards, we will find our families no less oppressed than when we first set out to confront those inequalities. And if mainstream society is beginning to accept us only with certain conditions attached, that’s not real acceptance anyway.

Our families deserve nothing less than to gain full equality — not because we are flawless, but because we are human.

Originally published in Alternative Family Magazine.

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