How to Feel Comfortable in Your Child’s School When You are Gay or Lesbian

Tired of automatically being addressed as Mrs. or being asked about your husband when you’re a woman with a wife? Whether you’re a new parent looking for preschools or moving to a new city with a high-school kid in tow, chances are that school staff and teachers will assume you’re straight unless you let on. Lessons in the area of GLBT studies will probably have to come from you.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Familiarity with school policies
• Security in your own role
• Ability to speak up

1. Interview staff and teachers if you’re looking for a new school. Ask whether they have any other gay or lesbian parents and how they deal with holidays like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Find other parents to talk with about the climate for alternative families and their children.
2. Arm your child with information. Little ones should have grown up telling people they have two mommies or two daddies or a single lesbian mom or dad. They should be able to explain: “Some families have a mom and a dad, some have just a mom, others have just a dad and others have two moms or two dads. Some have a grandparent or an aunt or uncle. Families are all different.”
3. If you are the only legal parent in the picture, and your partner wants to be involved, make sure his name is on school legal forms and let teachers know she will be also be contacting the school. If there is no box for “life partner” on forms, write it in.
4. Both you and your partner should attend school conferences when possible. This illustrates in a very concrete way that you are both in the child’s life.
5. If appropriate, introduce your partner as the child’s stepparent. That’s a concept most educators can already relate to, and it will help to normalize your relationship.
6. Brace yourself and your child for possible repercussions from friends’ parents. One lesbian mom responded to a family that wasn’t “comfortable” letting their child come over, with: “I can accept your prejudice if you can accept that I’m gay.”
7. Contact the principal immediately about any mistreatment of your child regarding his gay parent (or any other topic) from a child or teacher. Insist on a course of action that tells the perpetrator her words or deeds are unacceptable.

Tips & Warnings

• Be a room mom or dad if you can. The children will get to know you and realize your child’s parent isn’t “strange.”
• Consider removing your child from a school that won’t address homophobia from classmates, teachers and other parents.