What's it like to grow up the child of gay parents? The young reporters of Children's Express find out.
| I’ve always known my mum was gay. It was just something I accepted, like the fact that she’s blonde and supports Arsenal. |
'Having two parents is great. So why should I be discriminated against because both my parents are women?" That's the view of 16-year-old Jessica* from north London. She has lived with her two mums all her life. She's aware that her father lives in Ireland, but has never met him.
"I've always known my mum was gay," she says. "It was just something I accepted, like the fact that she has blonde hair or that she supports Arsenal."
Yet Jessica felt that she had to keep the fact she has gay parents secret from everyone except a handful of friends. When people at school found out about her family background, she found herself the victim of bullying.
"My classmates discovered I had two mums when they came to parents' evenings together," she says. "The other kids were very cruel about it, calling me names and refusing to leave me alone.
"It made me feel like I didn't want to go to school any more. I had to fight back the tears because I wanted to appear brave; I dealt with the situation by bottling up my feelings."
Jessica is one of thousands of young people up and down the country who live with gay parents: "My best mates don't even know. They don't need to know. They're my friends, and stuff about my mum doesn't come into it, just like I wouldn't expect to know personal things about their parents."
Howard Delmonte is a family and couples therapy coordinator at the Project for Advocacy, Counselling and Education (Pace), the only organisation in Britain offering support and advice for families with gay members: "I think society struggles with the idea of gay men or lesbians having a child. But things are slowly changing.
"Our service aims to help parents to understand how best to support the child. We also help them appreciate what feelings the child will be going through."
Jessica, though, isn't convinced that support groups offer any help to ordinary young people like herself: "I really couldn't imagine ever wanting to go to one. They're just talk, and don't offer any real support."
"For many young people, being part of a group can be incredibly supportive," Delmonte insists. "Peer support helps them realise they're not on their own and gets them to share their experiences with others."
Unlike Jessica, many teenagers find their parents' sexuality tough to deal with. Liam* is a 17-year-old student from north London. Last year, his mother announced that she was divorcing his father - and that she was a lesbian.
"We'd expected the divorce bit, so that wasn't too much of a surprise," he says. "But then the whole gay part really shocked us, especially my younger brother and sister."
At first, Liam couldn't bring himself to tell anyone the news, but recently he's plucked up the courage to talk to his closest friends: "I've been very careful who I've told. I've made sure the people I talk to would understand rather than fly off the handle. I hate the way that gay is used as a derogatory term."
Liam's family shake-up has been an important learning experience for him. It's made him realise that not everything in life is straightforward: "My friends, perhaps, don't confide in me so much now because they think I've got greater problems than them. They see my experience as a really negative thing, whereas I now see it as being mostly positive."
* Names have been changed.
About the team
This story was produced by Jenny Roe-Stanton, 16, Alisha Fuller, 16, Gabriella Gay, 15, Annabel Mcleod, 15, Akosua Bonsu, 15 and Ella Parry-Davis, 12. It was published in The Guardian.
