Homophobia and heterosexism permeate the world of young
children through the focus of traditional families. Many of the books center on
the families with mother, father and children. There are illustrations that
include extended and blended families and maybe interracial families but none
that depict families with two fathers or two mothers. In fact
the most common way I have read about single parent household in children books are one
of the parent are shown as deceased as opposed to them indicating that the
parents were not ever married. Honestly I have yet to see children book that
displayed families with gay or lesbian families. The early childhood
communities in the area I live in still places a high focus on things like boys
not playing the girl dolls and little girl’s not rough housing as little
boys. In spite of the communities
growing number of gay and lesbian families most of schools and early childhood
center avoid responding to this family type in the area I live in. .
My response to a parent of family member who believes that early childhood centers should
avoid the inclusion books depicting gay or lesbian individuals same sex
partnered families is that it is unfair to children in the environment to never
see or her a representation of their families in the environment. If the focus
is to provide the best for children the best we can do for them is accept them.
Meaning our personal opinion of their family setup is not in their best
interest. We have to consider that the families
makeup be it a traditional, two fathers or two mothers are the choices of the
parents and not that of the child and we cannot penalize the child for their parent’s
decision. We that said it is important to make children of gay or lesbian
parents included as that of students whose family represents the traditional family.
I agree with you that the focus here is the children not the decision of the parents. Therefore the children should be included in the programs if we are to provide equal education and care for every child.
ReplyDeleteHi Kvonya, I also found that families other than the nuclear, heterosexual ones were not represented in the children's literature at our school. Even single parent families were not part of the literature. These gay families in your community, are they part of the school system? We have been reading about children who have written to publishers and have made a difference in the books they put out. Perhaps this is something we could foster in our schools. We have no parent at our school that would fit this description . Many of our parents are here as representatives of their home country which might be hestiant to push the issue with the Chinese governement. Another point is that where it is not recognized by the political system here, there may be couples that we remain unaware of. We all have a way to go on these issues,I think. Thanks for your post.
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