Diversity of Sexual Orientation: Rocking the Cradle: Gay Parenting

Diversity of Sexual Orientation: Rocking the Cradle: Gay Parenting

Matt Ramsay

Waldorf University

Introduction

Rocking the Cradle: Gay Parenting educational video captured the life of six gay/lesbian families through their day to day lives. Two of the families followed are parenting by co-parenting with another gay couple, two families are lesbian families who became parents by insemination, and the last two families are parents by adoption. Each family tells their emotional story through the 15 adults and 11 children that are featured in the video.

What I Learned

        What I learned from the people in the film is that they all have the passion and desire to be parents. They do not want to be parents for the novelty of it, but because the parents in this film demonstrate a true compassion for parenting. What I did learn from this film is what co-parenting is. Divorce is very common in this day and age in my opinion and is also criticized by certain religions. I suppose when the children are shared between the two parents it is co-parenting, but I did not know that gay couples could co-parent also. There is a gay male couple and gay female couple who co-inhabit but have their own children. I did not know that occurred at all. I did not have any initial reactions because I could anticipate the negative ideas of what society says about gay parenting. The film interviewed people on the street to find out what people think about gay parenting. Only two people interviewed have opposing views and the other people interviewed verbalized positive reactions to the questions. What I found interesting was that there are 14 million children in gay parenting homes throughout the United States. That large number is surprising to me. I did not realize the shear number of gay families that are out there in the U.S. The demographic appear to equally men and female families but, I did not notice any gay families that are not white in ethnicity.  

What I learned About Myself

        I could have predicted my immediate reactions before watching this film. I knew that some individual would be against gay parenting for either a religious reason or blaming a political right wing mentality for being against gay parenting. I did honestly assume that adoption would not hold boundaries in the United States for gay parents. I was wrong, apparently there are some states that frown on gay parents adopting a child and or would only allow an adoption of a special needs child. How is that not discrimination? “Well I think people are scared. Fear is always a big driver for opinions. So people that don’t understand another lifestyle tend to fear it” (Rocking the Cradle: Gay Parenting, 2007). The gay parents clearly want to be parents and can provide the child with all its needs for a quality of life, then let them be parents. That is an underlying assumption by the lawmakers who have a narrow mind. My personal opinion, there are far too many bad examples of parents or parent today who just feed of the system. They continue to have more kids for the tax refunds. Individuals who cannot provide even the basic common sense of life to their children and or a clean environment to live in but society rejects a gay couple’s parenting aspirations to provide the best quality of life for a child.