You can listen to my most recent show on “Fresh Fruit” which will temporarily archived it until January 5th on the KFAI website. [Archived show removed 1/5/05.]
My guests:

Dr. Peggy Drexler, author of Raising Boys without Men

I first became aware of Dr. Drexler’s research in an article published in The Village Voice about her research on sons being raised by lesbian mothers. It was 2002 and I was in the middle of writing my book. I contacted her to request an interview because our views on research differ significantly. At the time her book contract precluded her from consenting to an interview, so I omitted her work — and my questions about her work — from my book. This radio interview gave me a chance to ask some of my questions, but with a different audience.

Dr. Drexler’s research is based on intensive interviews with pre-adolescent sons, interviewing them every other week for a couple of years, asking them questions about their feelings, their attitudes about masculinity and their own sexual orientation. She argues that the strength of her research is that her data is qualitative — that getting beyond the yes/no and sometimes/always/never peppering of questions to kids of gay parents is what makes her work so informative. My perspective, from being in the fishbowl of scrutiny myself as a child, and talking to scores — if not hundreds — of other adult children of gay parents, is that the very awareness that a researcher is asking us questions that will be part of a larger study influences our answers. That’s why my interview with Drexler focuses more on the data collection itself than the interpretation of the data. Sure, sons in her research are more aware, more enlightened, more sensitive, but I question in the interview how much of their responses to question have to do with being subjects in research. Any person who is expected to talk in depth about very adult issues such as masculinity and “father hunger” is going to become a more enlightened, more aware guy.

So my question remains: Did the subjects inform the research, or did the research inform the subjects?

Also: Edwin John Wintle, author of Breakfast with Tiffany: An Uncle’s Memoir. I once saw a greeting card that said something like, Do you know why babies are so adorable when they are born? Because if they came out as teenagers, no one would ever have them in the first place. Raising his teenage niece is hard work, and Ed knows it from the start. I enjoy his story — still fresh and raw, as it only happened three years ago — because it has no fantasy about being a parent. Ed’s book is a tribute to all those cool queer aunts and uncles out there who step up for their nieces and nephews when their straight parents can’t or won’t.

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