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Aug. 25th, 2012 07:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pktechgirlbackupAfter several boring attempts to cheer myself up, I stumbled upon Fatherhood Dreams, about gay fathers in Canada. This one managed to be both thought provoking and not horribly depressing, which is nice. I don't know enough to have coherent thoughts, but here are some things I found interesting:
there's a single gay man who has a dearth of good options for having kids. There's essentially no chance of adoption because birth mothers prefer couples, and it's impossible to find a surrogate who will work for the rate mandated by the Canadian government (he eventually illegally pays a surrogate a higher amount). I probably don't want kids, but when I think about that decision, it's always with the knowledge that I totally could if I wanted to. Single men who want kids, which includes my best friend, really don't have that option. Apparently How I Met Your Mother covered this exact issue, with a woman who'd never wanted kids finding out she physically couldn't and feeling really weird about how sad it made her.
This guy was also interesting because he views his decision to parent, and parent solo, as separating him from the gay community. He'd still like to fall in love and marry, but he assumes the odds of doing that with two newborns are negligible, and that having kids will always severely limit his options. It struck me as very sad that he probably burned a lot of bridges to come out as gay (just going by his age, he doesn't mention anything), and then has to burn a lot of the new bridges in order to become a parent. It's a reminder of what an incredibly strong drive the parental instinct is.
There's a couple that adopted, and they were chosen (by the baby's grandmother, who was the one calling the shots) in part because the grandmother felt that this would keep a place for her daughter in the baby's parental pantheon.
There is something really amazing about watching something adorably mundane, like parents playing with their baby, and knowing how upset it would make certain idiots.
One of the failed attempts to cheer me up was a documentary on the early days of the AIDS epidemic in San Fransisco. I wonder how much of the difference in resonance between this and Fatherhood Dreams is due to documentary quality, and how much is due to where gay culture was when I grew up.
there's a single gay man who has a dearth of good options for having kids. There's essentially no chance of adoption because birth mothers prefer couples, and it's impossible to find a surrogate who will work for the rate mandated by the Canadian government (he eventually illegally pays a surrogate a higher amount). I probably don't want kids, but when I think about that decision, it's always with the knowledge that I totally could if I wanted to. Single men who want kids, which includes my best friend, really don't have that option. Apparently How I Met Your Mother covered this exact issue, with a woman who'd never wanted kids finding out she physically couldn't and feeling really weird about how sad it made her.
This guy was also interesting because he views his decision to parent, and parent solo, as separating him from the gay community. He'd still like to fall in love and marry, but he assumes the odds of doing that with two newborns are negligible, and that having kids will always severely limit his options. It struck me as very sad that he probably burned a lot of bridges to come out as gay (just going by his age, he doesn't mention anything), and then has to burn a lot of the new bridges in order to become a parent. It's a reminder of what an incredibly strong drive the parental instinct is.
There's a couple that adopted, and they were chosen (by the baby's grandmother, who was the one calling the shots) in part because the grandmother felt that this would keep a place for her daughter in the baby's parental pantheon.
There is something really amazing about watching something adorably mundane, like parents playing with their baby, and knowing how upset it would make certain idiots.
One of the failed attempts to cheer me up was a documentary on the early days of the AIDS epidemic in San Fransisco. I wonder how much of the difference in resonance between this and Fatherhood Dreams is due to documentary quality, and how much is due to where gay culture was when I grew up.
