http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/us/19gays.html?_r=4&pagewanted=1&hp
Here are some of the things that peaked my interest:
- Black or Latino gay couples are twice as likely as whites to be raising children
- Gay couples in Southern states like Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas are more likely to be raising children than their counterparts on the West Coast, in New York and in New England.
- About a third of lesbians are parents
- Jacksonville, FL is home to one of the biggest populations of gay parents in the country.
Take a read, give me your thoughts.
3 comments:
I read this article this morning, and while much of it wasn't really surprising to me, it's a good reminder of the diversity of the LGBTQ community, and the frequent lack of representation of that diversity. Lots of queer parenting content online is focused at middle- to upper-class white couples who intentionally conceived of children with their current partners. But many, many families with same-sex parents were created in lots of different ways. There is a lot of privilege inherent in the ways that many of us pursue TTC, and I think it's good to remember that this privileged subset (of which I am a part) is only one piece of the gay parenting community.
I think we should be moving to Jacksonville lol :) All we have here are backwoods country folk...can you hear the banjos?
@ becky - you are absolutely right. I often look at my own family and see the diversity that can exist when defining family within a queer context. Coming from a latino upbringing, there has always been the pressure to get married and have children. And while I was able to come out of the closet and find the wifey, I have close family members that did just that: got married to men and had children, only later in life to come out. They then created new families with their wife/partner/girlfriend where that person was also a parent.
You are also right in saying that a lot of the stuff out there is directed towards people that are creating a family "from scratch" so to speak as opposed to creating "blended" families.
@ fruitlooped : living on the east coast, Jacksonville is sorta like the deep south...but I know it is not, since I have been there multiple times and have lots of friends who live/are from there (mainly because I went to college 2 hours from there). All in all J-ville is a wonderful town with a great northern Florida feel.
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