no, I'm not missing in action

So, my promise a few weeks ago to update more frequently quickly evaporated after the depressing election. I'm too exhausted to rant about it anymore. To normal life I return....

For Thanksgiving, I went to Philly and got to spend 5.5 days with my sweetheart Steve! Much better than our usual 48 hour weekends. :-) But, it made it that much harder to leave, and made Monday suckier than ever. Steve didn't want to make a turkey just for himself, and I wanted to make Thanksgiving sides (mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, mac & cheese, pumpkin pie, etc) but he's not a huge enthusiast of those things. Instead, we made an Italian Thanksgiving, complete with lasagna (special because we made it on our 2nd date), tomato, fresh mozzerella & basil salad, white wine, and a yummy chocolate mudcake dessert we got from the grocery store. I was going to make a chocolate hazlenut cake, but we decided to buy dessert instead of being in the kitchen the ENTIRE day! I am going to make it another time though.....Anyway, on Friday Steve went to work and I went shopping! Yay for the King of Prussia mall! I got most of his Christmas presents, all 40-60% off, and a few things for myself too. :-) Saturday we went shopping for Christmas stuff. We got wrapping paper, a 4.5 foot tree, ornaments, a ginger holiday-smelling candle, and we decorated that night. It is our third Christmas together (WOW how time flies), but we haven't ever decorated a tree together. It was fun to begin creating our own holiday traditions together!

This Friday for the intro to child development I'm a TA for, I have organized a mini-lecture and activity on children of same-sex parents. Basically, results show that children raised by same-sex couples aren't any different than children raised by heterosexual parents. What influences a child's outcomes in adolescence and beyond (depression, anxiety, self-esteem, peer relationships, grades in school, delinquency, etc) is the quality of the parent-child relationship and the child's feelings that they are understood, cared for, safe, etc. (For more info, see the APA's July 2004 statement on homosexuals as parents and their children, click HERE to download the pdf file.) It has been really interesting to explore, but sad in some ways. Did you know that in Florida, a state that forbids homosexuals to adopt children, there are 4,000 children floating around in foster homes?? Where the HELLLLL are the "moral values" in enforcing this sort of rule?!? Arghhhhh!!!

Now I sort of wish that my research was more relevant to policy issues and really made a difference in people’s lives. The people who are doing work on the developmental outcomes of children from same-sex parent families have a direct impact on policy, politics, and children's lives. It is NOT the case that gay parents are unfit, or that their children have adjustment problems, gender identity issues, or peer relations problems. The upside is that even if I’m not involved in any of this sort of research, I can still teach it to impressionable young minds and (as a beloved Furman professor of mine was fond of saying), “dispel a modicum of ignorance.” :-) As educated, intelligent people pursuing college degrees, I think that it is important for them to know what the data say about children’s outcomes when they have grown up with same-sex parents, and to base any anti-gay-parenting views on other reasons instead (personal religious beliefs, or whatever), rather than speculation that isn’t supported by any credible scientific evidence.

Ok, stepping down from the soapbox now.