MPR’s Dale Connelly interviews Anna Clark, of the Lesbian Resource Center, about the struggles for lesbian mothers in the community. Clark describes how the center attempts to provide support.
MPR’s Dale Connelly interviews Anna Clark, of the Lesbian Resource Center, about the struggles for lesbian mothers in the community. Clark describes how the center attempts to provide support.
SPEAKER 1: We are under constant repression by the society that we live in. You live in a lot of fear. The fear of being found out and fear that your child is going to be punished somehow by that knowledge. Fear that the neighbors are going to find out and the little girl next door will no longer be able to play with your little girl.
You're afraid to tell a child's teacher because you don't really know that teacher well enough to know what her or his attitudes might be about homosexuality. And there's a fear that your child is going to suffer because of your lifestyle. So you learn how to live with a lot of lies. And there is a double life, a double existence that a lesbian mother is often forced to lead.
She also lives in fear that her children might be taken away from her if she's found out. And more and more women are beginning to fight that battle and sometimes lose that battle. In fact, lose it more often than win. But there's that whole thing. A lot of women never leave heterosexual marriages who would like to because they're afraid of their children being taken away from them. It's hard to say how many women are living within marriages who don't want to be there because of that fear.
SPEAKER 2: What about the things that you do when you say you help the children of lesbian mothers because they have a lot to deal with. What things can you do for a child in that situation?
SPEAKER 1: Well, basically what you can do-- and there is a group called the Lesbian Mothers Union that formed about a year and a half ago and meets irregularly. But when the union meets at mothers and children have a place to get together. And there are often 50 children running around.
What it does for mothers is give them a support system and it also gives children a support system. My daughter has a lot of friends now whose mothers are also lesbians. And it really helps her because they're kids that she can talk to about what's going on between she and I in a different way than she can sometimes talk to her other friends about it because she doesn't always tell her other friends. And so that's something that you can do for those children is let them know that they're OK and that their moms are OK, and that their life is good.
SPEAKER 2: Yeah. I imagine the other friends probably wouldn't understand even if they were told.
SPEAKER 1: Some of them don't. My daughter has certain friends that she tells and certain friends she doesn't tell. And when I ask her about that, she says, well, mom, you know that Nikki would understand, whereas Mary wouldn't. And she just somehow knows somewhere who's going to understand and who isn't.
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