All in the family

Same-sex couples rear their children just like everyone else

Erica Braswell (left) spends a Saturday at home with her wife, Leah Braswell, and their sons, Reid and Ross. “We had an experience in the baseball dugout where a little boy finally put two and two together … the kid goes, ‘That is not fair. I want two moms,’” Erica says.
Erica Braswell (left) spends a Saturday at home with her wife, Leah Braswell, and their sons, Reid and Ross. “We had an experience in the baseball dugout where a little boy finally put two and two together … the kid goes, ‘That is not fair. I want two moms,’” Erica says.

"It's all good in the Braswell 'hood." -- Family saying

Leah and Erica Braswell joke that they had a 13-year engagement. In their minds, they became a couple during the ice storm of 2000, but under Vermont law, they became a couple last September.

photo

Special to the Democrat-Gazette

Tyler Gober was jointly adopted by Keith Gober (center) and Mark Norwine from the Arkansas Department of Health and Human Services. A year ago, the family planned dinner with friends, two other men and their adopted son. The parents were bewildered when their sons immediately embraced. “It turns out, they were in the same foster family. Now we try to get the boys together whenever we can,” Keith Gober says.

"We had a florist ... and after the ceremony in the church, the photographer took us around to different places and we took pictures," Erica says.

Ross, 7, and Reid Braswell, 5, attended the wedding. It would take nearly another year for Leah to obtain full parental rights, despite the fact that she witnessed their births, cheers at their soccer games and answers to "Mama."

The Braswells are as nuclear as families come. They live in Roland, in a sprawling ranch house at the end of a gravel road. There's plenty of space for four-wheelers, water balloons, baseball games and roaming rescued dogs. The boys spend summers shuttling between Vacation Bible School, swimming lessons and grandparents' houses, while falls are consumed with sports and school.

Leah and Erica, 35 and 36 respectively, met on their first day of medical school at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

"I couldn't figure out who this girl was, sitting in the front row, who kept asking every annoying question," Leah says.

"I was not in the front row. And I maybe asked one question. Or two," Erica counters.

They discussed having a family early on and started seeking a sperm donor. "We had certain criteria that we looked for ... We obviously wanted somebody that had more coloring from Leah's side," Erica says of her lighter-haired, blue-eyed wife.

"But once we got past the initial characteristics, we really didn't care. We really just wanted him to sound nice in his personal profile, like

someone you could hang out with," Leah says.

The same donor was used for Reid's conception.

"It was important to me as a pediatrician that they be full-blooded [siblings], in case one of them got sick and needed a bone marrow transplant or something," Erica says.

Erica became pregnant with Ross while they were residents. Before he was born, Erica changed her surname to Leah's, and they hired a lawyer to draw up guardianship contracts for Leah. Even so, until the adoption went through in July -- incidentally, on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act -- there were no guarantees.

...

According to family lawyer Bonnie Robertson, there is no provision in Arkansas law for unmarried partners to adopt each other's biological children. There is a provision (under Arkansas Code 9-9-204: Who May Adopt) for step-parent adoptions, when two people are legally married, and one biological parent is negligent or relinquishes parental rights.

In May, Pulaski County Circuit Court Judge Chris Piazza found Arkansas' ban on same-sex marriages unconstitutional. The matter is currently before the state Supreme Court, but if the high court allows the ruling to stand, Robertson expects judges will see many step-parent adoptions.

"I've had cases where this nonbiological parent is the only other parent that child has ever known, and if the relationship breaks up, I've had the biological parent say, 'Nope, you don't get to see her anymore.' ... Literally, it's like that child's other parent has died," she says.

But the Braswells' lawyer, Beth Echols, says there may be a way to assure both parents full rights.

"Under Arkansas law, a biological parent can adopt their own child," Echols says, without having to terminate parental rights (ACA 9-9-204: Who May Adopt). "In the case of same-sex parents, they can jointly petition to adopt, one person as the biological parent and one as an unmarried person."

...

The Braswells are open with their boys, who have spent time around cousins with heterosexual parents since infancy.

"They know the word 'donor,'" Leah says.

Their social circle ("We call it our village," says Erica) is made up primarily of straight couples, the parents of Ross' friends.

"We've gotten phone calls from them, 'Oh, So-and-so finally came to us and started asking questions about how does Ross have two moms' ... they were concerned that they were approaching it right," Erica says.

Only once has Ross been taunted.

"When we talked to him about it, he was like, 'You know, it's not his fault, he just didn't understand,'" Erica says.

Another time, when Erica and the boys were on a night airline flight, Ross headed off a potentially awkward conversation with a flight attendant, who was telling children to go straight to bed for their "mom and dad."

Ross responded with, "I don't have a dad, and I don't need one. I have two moms."

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Financial analyst Keith Gober, 35, has a similar story about his son Tyler Gober, 4, whom he and his husband, Mark Norwine, 51, adopted from the Arkansas Department of Human Services in 2013.

A new neighbor asked, "Which one of these guys is your dad?"

Without missing a beat, Tyler told the man, "These two are my daddies."

Gober has no biological children. When he and Norwine met a decade ago, he became a third parent to Norwine's sons, then 10 and 4.

"I've always really loved kids," Gober says. "I've always known that I wanted to be married and have kids and the perfect house, the white picket fence and the soccer games."

At first Norwine's ex-wife was hesitant to have Gober around, but after a few months, they became friends. Norwine's kids even send Gober Father's Day cards.

In 2011, the state Supreme Court overturned a ban against unmarried couples adopting. Norwine and Gober filled out paperwork with DHS that week.

"A lot of our friends say, 'Why don't you use a surrogate to have a child with your own DNA?' ... But we wanted to have a caring home for a child who needs a home," Gober says.

The call came when he was Christmas shopping. Gober remembers the adoption specialist's exact words: "We have Tyler, and he's ready to come to your home after New Year's."

Gober started weeping in the middle of Dillard's.

When Tyler first came home, he had separation anxiety and only knew a handful of words, most of which were inappropriate for a 2-year-old. But Tyler learned quickly, thriving under the attention of his new parents and brothers.

"Everybody is just in love with him. It's brought both of our families together in a way we couldn't have imagined," Gober says.

Norwine's ex-wife and her husband are Tyler's godparents and will be his legal guardians should anything happen to Gober and Norwine. The two men hope to adopt a second child from DHS in a few years.

Gober compares their lives to the hit sitcom Modern Family. "We're all together in this. We are a modern family," he says.

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Dianne Campbell, 53, a social worker, and Jennifer Chilcoat, 49, a librarian, worry about many things. They worry about their son, Henry, when he's sick or upset. They worry about his schoolwork and if he'll get teased for not liking team sports or, worse, for having two moms.

But thus far, Henry, 10, has been a low-key kid.

"Give me a command," he says to his parents, whom he calls Mama and Dodi.

"Wiggle your tooth," Chilcoat says. "The orthodontist wants you to wiggle that tooth to get it to come out."

Henry stands before her, wiggling obligingly.

Chilcoat claps and says, "He's very obedient, see?"

...

According to Abbie Goldberg, 30 years of research show that children of same-sex parents are just as likely to be obedient and well-adjusted as their peers. A psychology professor at Massachusetts' Clark University and a visiting scholar with the UCLA School of Law's Williams Institute, which studies policy related to sexual orientation, Goldberg has written extensively on the topic.

"There's a wide consensus among all reputable, scholarly and professional organizations that children's psychological and social development in these families are not compromised," she says. "Some studies have shown some potential advantages, such as maybe being more tolerant of people who are different. A few studies have found some advantages in terms of self-esteem or career goals."

In July, the journal Child: Care, Health and Development published a report from the University of Melbourne's Australian Study of Child Health in Same-Sex Families, which attempted to gauge the possible effects of social stigma on children's health. Analyzing responses from 315 parents with same-sex partners, representing 500 children under 17, researchers found these children scored an average of 6 percent higher than the general population in health and family cohesion.

The U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study has followed 77 families since 1986. In 2010, it released a report on the 17-year-old offspring of lesbian mothers, stating that they rate higher in social and academic competence and lower in social problems than their age-matched counterparts.

Goldberg only knows of one study with negative findings, released in 2012 by University of Texas at Austin professor Mark Regnerus. The Social Science Journal, which published the study, renounced it after an internal audit found that Regnerus used children of parents who merely had, at any point in their lives, been involved in a same-sex relationship, rather than children raised by same-sex parents.

Jerry Cox, president of the Arkansas Family Council, mentions the Regnerus study and a study by Canadian economist Douglas W. Allen, published in December 2013 by Review of Economics of the Household, which finds that children of same-sex parents are only 65 percent as likely to finish high school as their peers. Based on a 20 percent sample of 2006 Canadian census data, the study also doesn't distinguish between children living in same-sex-parented families since birth and children born into heterosexual families who are currently living in families headed by same-sex adults.

"Same-sex marriage has only been remotely common in the past 20 years. When you're studying human behavior, it takes a lot of time to know what the impact is," Cox says. "How we approach it is, there's a huge body of evidence out there about why marriage between a man and a woman is good for kids ... rather than saying same-sex marriage doesn't work, I would rather talk about what does work."

Goldberg concedes that most same-sex parent studies have problems. The sample families may be skewed toward lesbian rather than gay male parents or have more initial financial advantages than the general population. "But even if studies have flaws, the fact that they're all finding the same thing is quite important," she says.

...

On a recent stormy evening, Campbell, Chilcoat and Henry settle into the cozy glow of their living room, discussing what Henry wants to be when he grows up. Ideas considered and discarded include a video-game creator, a hobo and a soup-maker.

Henry has always been interested in cooking, even though neither of his parents is.

"Remember that fake food you used to have?" Chilcoat says. "The plastic bread that used to go in the plastic toaster?"

Campbell nods at Henry. "Good times," she says.

"Don't tell me these times aren't good!" Henry quips.

Chilcoat grins broadly.

"These times are good," she says. "They're all good."

Family on 10/01/2014

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