Rupert Everett, gay dads...and life as a little pink gladiator

Gay dads – good or bad thing? Silly question? Well following Rupert Everett's comments in the Sunday Times, this week the media has dared to ask it.

Taking part in a phone-in on Kaye Adams’ morning show on BBC Radio Scotland this morning, I found myself flailing in a sea of anti-gay-dad sentiment, courtesy of a succession of callers for whom Mr Everett’s unease about children being brought up by two men seems eminently sensible.

I did my best, ably assisted by a gay adoptive dad, the daughter of a lesbian couple, and Ms Adams herself, to make the point that it’s the quality of the parenting, not the gender (nor, dare I say it, sexuality) of the person delivering it, which matters.

This key insight - based, as pointed out by Patrick Strudwick in the Guardian, on a growing evidence base - only ever seems to come up in the media when a gay celebrity becomes a mum or dad, or makes a comment about gay parenting; or when there’s some kind of panic about lesbians having babies and the ‘death of the father’.

In fact, child development experts are increasingly clear that gender’s probably less important than we think in parenting - whether in a gay or straight context. Professor Joseph Pleck argued some time ago that if you’re looking for something uniquely male about the value of fathers’ parenting, for example, you’ll struggle to find it. Dads, like mums, are all different. What’s likely to be most important about all of them is their competent, confident, sensitive hands-on parenting from Day One.

So what? So while non-heterosexuals’ parenting may seem like something other, it in fact offers a springboard into an altogether bigger, more mainstream debate about gender in families (much needed in Scotland, if today's phone-in callers are anything to go by!).

Unfortunately, the media isn’t much interested in that. The TV and newspapers love nothing more than men being from Mars and women from Venus – a dichotomy that feeds effortlessly into pretty much all their coverage of family life (and most of the advertising that supports it). Mothers need to be soft, gentle, ‘natural’ parents…fathers harsh, awkward and ultimately…well, useless and a bit optional.

With that as the backdrop, it is of course fascinating to ponder how on Earth the gay version of parenthood (for there must, needless to say, only be one!) could possibly work, especially since lesbians all look like bikers and gay men just want to dance around to show tunes!

So until the media shifts from its simplistic and sensationalist stereotypes on gender, gay parents will carry on being cast to the lions from time to time – like little pink gladiators fighting the corner for modern, balanced and involved mother- and father-hood. Ah, life at the leading edge...Rupert, you just don't know what you're missing!