Alternative Family Values

I'M SURE GEORGE BUSH IS A NICE man. And I'm sure George Bush would find my mother a nice woman. I suppose that's why I'm confused about the attacks he (and, of course, his concerned vice president) are making on my mother and her lifestyle in an effort to salvage his faltering campaign.

I've been reading with great interest, nonetheless, about the effect that not living in a traditional two-parent family (preferably one where the father works and the mother stays home) has had on me. I've been reading about how a gay or lesbian couple cannot raise a child, how they destroy the moral fiber of their kin and their country. I've only just begun to realize how incredibly disturbed I really must be.

In fact, George and Dan talk like they know more about my relationship with my mother than I do.

When I was five years old, my mother fell in love with another woman, a woman she has been living with for the past 14 years. She left my father, whom she married when she was 18, to pursue a relationship which made her happy.

My mother, like other women who married young, found marriage to be constraining to her work, hostessing distasteful due to her dislike of social occasions. Her relationship with her lover, also an artist, allowed her more freedom financially as well.

Unfortunately, though, there are some people in the world who think like George and Dan. One of them just happened to be the judge at my parents' custody battle. This judge, who also apparently had intimate knowledge of my mother and her lover's relationship, deemed that a single man was more qualified to raise two girls than two women were, simply because the women were lovers.

I, as it happens, did not even realize they were lovers until age 14. In fact the only defining factor to their relationship at that point, in my first year of high school, was my terrifying realization of what had happened at the trial, of what had been the reason for our separation. Otherwise I assumed they were best friends.

Despite the fact that I was living with my father during the school year, I was raised, for three months each summer, by two women who tried (sometimes against my will) to make me into a strong woman. Perhaps George and Dan were afraid that would happen.

The summers were an intense period of learning for me. Just the four of us (myself, my sister, my mother and her lover) lived together on a small island. When other children were sent by their parents to be with other kids, my sister and I enjoyed the company of two adults who took it upon themselves to be our mentors. We certainly had the benefit of quality time.

OF COURSE, GEORGE is the President of the United States and I am but the daughter of the two women in question. But I have lived with them most of my life and I think I have something to share.

My mother and her lover's relationship is full of love and based on equality, in which both work and both cook. They have cared for my sister and me to the point of sacrificing their work to spend time with us. They counsel us, and reprimand us, and understand what it is like to grow up as a woman.

My mother's lover opened her heart to me as few step-parents would do. I shared a room with her when I was young and afraid of the dark. We chatted about mischief and school days and the books we were reading. She would always be interested to hear what I thought of my story. She would then tell me what it was like growing up in Vienna during World War II.

Their love extended to the basic aspects of growing up, of soothing me after fights with friends and of teaching me to swim, arms wrapped around my stomach. Both my mother and her lover quit smoking to set a better example when I started trying a few puffs.

There are other advantages that are unique to living with two women. Bra shopping is more efficient, for example. When my sister tries one size with one mother, I can try another with the other. Please don't underestimate the value of bra-buying partners, nor the advantage of having someone to accompany you to the toilet when you're a kid. You also always have two women's opinions for every article of clothing you buy. (Not that I've actually ever heard them disagree about anything.)

WHAT I LEARN MOST from the relationship, however, is that it's important to be true to yourself. My mother could have stayed in a stifling marriage in order to keep her children around her all the time, but she would not have become wiser, nor would she have bloomed with the knowledge of her courage. My mother and father could have put on a facade of a traditional two-parent household to hide the hate and resentment. That, according to dear George and Dan, would have kept the moral fiber of the country intact.

My mother and her lover, because they broke with convention, had to examine their love for themselves and for us. Parents in a non-traditional relationship are more likely to place the burden upon themselves to decide how they will relate to a child, because the challenges facing them are greater.

I have my own child-rearing fears as well. I think my mother would like me to have children and I am aware that with a child comes responsibilities But having experienced an alternative family structure, I know that a child does not judge with an artificial set of values. If I bestow love on her, she will be happy.

Ultimately I am not sure what George and Dan mean by "family values." If they mean that parents care for each other and for their children, my non-traditional family is as overflowing with values as anyone (even a Republican) could hope for.

But if they mean something else, I suggest George and Dan should take a step back to see that the depth of love in a relationship between two women can meet or exceed that of any traditional family.