to want to talk about sexual orientation in front of the children?

[LeggyBlondeNE]

Having a weird clash with DH over this. He's not remotely homophobic, has talked positively about how he doesn't care which gender our children want to date (challenged his uncle on that one, was very proud of him at the time), can't wait for a gay couple we're friends with to get married ...

... but he has this strange insistence that we shouldn't talk about it in front of the children. He refused to let us all attend a local pride event because he thought having to explain WHY pride events are important would plant the idea that there might really be a problem with being gay, and he didn't want them exposed to that conflict. The other day I ended up having to mouth the words 'gay' and 'lesbian' because he didn't want to 'spoil their innocence'. We can happily read them 'Tabby McTat' and refer to Prunella and Pat as a couple but I mustn't say lesbian!

I'm not clear on what he thinks we're protecting them from (I'm also not allowed to use the word 'dead'/'die' and neither are they) but thought I ought to check if I was missing something before ploughing on regardless...

Having been a child in the Cold War and grown up in terror of a nuclear conflict,I have to say I find myself shielding my dc's from too detailed information on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
That will come later.

I don't think he's homophobic either.
Nor do I think he's being over-protective.
I agree with the not needing to have big indepth topics of conversation about any politic issue with tiny tots.
I also agree with the idea of so many things just being 'normal' and not needing to be part of some sort of campaign.
As JuneyBean said upthread, you don't say we are going to see Steve and Joan ...you know the straight couple so why do you need to make a 'thing' about a couple being gay?
I believe totally in accepting every individual as they are - the fact both my ds and dds have all done things that might have been considered more appropriate for the other sex some 60-70 years ago, doesn't need to be an issue for my dc growing up in the 21st Century - they do activities because they enjoy them, or they learn skills that are useful life-skills, not to make a point about being all feminist about it, they just don't know there's any other way. I guess that's what your dh is trying to do too. Good on him.

It's only a difficult conversation if you're homophobic on some level Perspecacia.

Sometimes men go out with women. Sometimes men have boyfriends. Sometimes women have girlfriends. What's difficult to explain?

It's not as if you need to explain poppers and rimming at the church fete.

As pp said, he needs to grow a backbone. If he doesn't use certain words or talk about certain things he is going to make it very hard for the children to talk about things that are worrying them in the future as they'll know that they're not allowed to mention certain words or ideas at home, the very place they should feel they can speak freely without mouthing or whispering certain words. How do you know your 4 year old hasn't already heard the word Dead or died from a neighbour or at school/ childminders wherever but knows they can't mention that word at home so can't discuss it.
Madness. You should tell your dh to cop on.

It's not as if you need to explain poppers and rimming at the church fete

Your husband is being homophobic im sure he is a decent man and all that but by not letting children know what gay is then its just going to make it awkward imo, 1 of mine asked me at 5 who was that man with john oh that is his new boyfriend oh ok do men have boyfriends sometimes dd men like men oh ok mummy. Thats it conversation over i dont understand the hoha and protecting innocence

My best friend is gay. As are several more.

I have a transgender child (well, nearly adult now).

When children were younger, gay and lesbian aren't words that we used, just partner, love etc.

I don't think your DH is homophobic, just unclear on how to address relationships with children. The easiest way is to avoid categorizing them. A m/f marriage isn't a "straight" marriage, so why should a "gay" marriage be isolated as something that is "other"? Boyfriends/husbands/girlfriends/wives are boyfriends/husbands/girlfriends/wives regardless of the partner's gender.

I can only speculate, of course, but perhaps a gentle chat after your DCs are in bed might throw a bit more light on this.

Funny story about gender, actually, My youngest child has physical and intellectual disabilities. She wears leg braces and always gets to choose whatever shoes she likes to go with them. Most recently, she found a pair of "Iron Man" shoes that fit and were "so perfect, mum!"

A schoolmate decided to tease her about them, saying she was wearing boys' shoes. She was thoroughly confused - she came home that evening asking how they could be boys' shoes when she was wearing them and she is a girl. Girls' clothes are girls' clothes because they are being worn by a girl at the time, and the same goes for boys' clothes. That apparently is how she is fine with Daddy wearing a kilt (don't judge her response - just laugh until you fall over, like DH and I did)

That is basically how we have raised her - gender and sexuality are not primary concerns. Of course, her intellectual disability does play into it - she is almost 10, but functions at a 4 year old level.

Surely if we want to accept being gay as a normal part of life then we don't have to label and separate people's sexuality, it becomes irrelevant. As pps have said we don't mention that people are 'straight'.

Banning certain words from the family vocabulary however, is unhelpful at best and potentially damaging at worst.

Sex education should be an on going thing; questions pop up from time to time and should be answered age appropriately and likewise with death. Some children will be made aware of different things at different ages and stages of development e.g if you have friends who are a same sex couple, or granny dies and their questions should be answered honestly.

Not sure it's helpful to small children to have long winded discussions about people's sexual orientation though, regardless of what form that takes.

Id be more concerned that your husband, your equal partner, has banned these things and not explained adequately for you why.

They are very little
Maybe he just wants to wait until it's more of an age appropriate talk ...

I think I'm kind of with your husband on this one. My little boy is 3 and he's never asked anything about whether two men or two women can get married. He does know same sex couples with children and he doesn't seem to think it's anything out of the ordinary. It's just normal life to children these days and they take it in their stride.

When he does ask I will tell him love is the same no matter what gender people are. But actually making an effort to talk about it in front of them seems rather like Viz's trendy parents. I don't discuss my heterosexual friends relationships or sexual preferences in front of my child so I'm not sure why that should change if they're gay.

I also think that there's a danger of making too much of a big deal of it and making is seem like something out of the ordinary and therefore defeating the object.

I can see why he finds it difficult (although I think he's wrong in approach). DD is 5 and we recently visited somewhere where I wanted to start introducing her to the basics of the holocaust (think Anne Frank house). It was incredibly hard to work out how to talk about that and why it happened, why would anyone hate another so much.

I think it's labelling too. They should just be Mummy and Daddy's friends, not mummy and daddy's gay friends.

The holocaust at 5? Blimey, most five year olds I know shit themselves at the Lion King.

Fwiw i dont think your husband is a bad person probably just uptight he doesnt need to be

I thought Prunella and Pat were mother/daughter... but then again I also thought the oldest boy in Going on a Bear Hunt was just a really irresponsible dad

I can see the logic behind wanting children to grow up in a world where someone's sexuality isn't a subject that warrants a huge amount of discussion - why should they learn a word for same sex couples if they don't need one for 'straight' couples. I can also see the beauty of raising children in a world where marriage has always been an option for anyone, regardless of who they choose to marry - I personally am thrilled that my son will probably be surprised to learn that same-sex marriages were not an option until recently.

However, I think that avoiding talk of death and dying is a completely different matter. It is a fact of life and completely different from wanting to avoid labels which isolate and separate people. Children seem to be much better equipped to take the idea of death on board if they are introduced to it at an early age, and it is a lot easier to explain it to a younger child who will just accept it than an older one who is likely to immediately start asking if you will die and if they will die and what happens etc.

I love a difficult conversation with kids.
This morning Ds got a long explanation of smear tests. He took it well
Kids ask a lot about who they can marry, who they can't etc, I've explained all that I think- but oddly I haven't used the term gay/lesbian either. Hmm.

Pourquoi - wait, the oldest characters in Bear Hunt aren't the parents? I always assumed it was a whole family outing! I shall check the book again when I get home...

I can definitely see the point regarding 'why label them as different'; annoyingly I can't remember the detail of what the context was last time I got hushed. It wasn't that I was trying to talk to the kids about sexuality, more that we were having a conversation about topical issues and the children were in the room - which I actually think is a good way to gently expose them to ideas without doing so directly.

My eldest has had a conversation with me about who she can marry, when I explained she could marry a girl if she wanted to (she initially assumed she could only marry boys). She didn't seem particularly interested in this information. We've talked a bit about babies too; we have 'Before You Were Born' which is a beautiful picture book, and she happily pointed out 'look Mummy, that's a boy because it has a little tube' (I ignored DH's rules about not using the words penis/vulva/vagina, but Firstborn seems to prefer her own words anyway!)

I vividly remember my then 3 yr old DD asking if women could marry women at tea time when I had my 80 yr old Aunt round for tea. I explained that although women could love women and live with them, they couldn't marry them (as was the law then) and I thought my poor Aunt would have a fit.
Anyway after tea my Aunt asked me if I knew about my cousins DD who was in a lesbian relationship. My Aunt said I had explained it in a very matter of fact but positive way. I didn't know about my cousins DD, but it taught me not to be judgemental about old Aunts!

Um.

Your DH is hugely homophobic. If he thinks that knowing about this kind of thing will "taint" your children, that's an assumed negative view. He might be a "nicer" homophobe, but he is still a homophobe.

I suppose taking his argument to its natural end, all adjectives and adverbs should be banned. There is no need to label the banana 'yellow' or 'brown' is there.... Or the car 'red'....

What about people - can they be black, or Chinese, or Muslim? Or does he ban these words too?

Although I can understand his point that we shouldn't label people or their relationships, to want your children to be unaware of the words is ridiculous imo - it's only by hearing words that kids become familiar with them - and I think that's particularly true of words around death and dying - regardless of whether they understand the concepts or not, just by knowing the words makes the concept more acceptable and normal and from that awareness of the concept develops.

I think your husband has some rather odd ideas. Why in the world would your children's innocence be spoiled if they heard the word "gay"? IMO children should be protected from some adult ideas, but surely the fact that some people have relationships with people of the same sex should just be taken as a fact of life, not as something too shocking or painful for children to process.

And banning words related to death seems equally odd. I know someone who tried to explain the death of the family cat to her son (who was about 4). She tied herself up in verbal knots avoiding the word "dead." She told her son, "The vet put the cat to sleep forever." The child looked at her in utter horror and said, "Why didn't he just kill it?" I think he imagined a sort of Sleeping Beauty style spell which was more frightening than the reality of death.

In fairness to DH, he does come from a family who treat most difficult topics with complete silence. They put an expensive duplicate gift in the attic and left it there rather than tactfully try to get the receipt from DH's granddad so we could exchange it (could have come from multiple shops so no one would exchange without a receipt). BIL seems to have some issues (bought his own house 2.5 years ago, still hasn't started packing to leave PIL's place, house sits uninhabited only a mile away) and PILs just act like nothing's wrong. FIL made me miss a flight by refusing to follow my directions to the station once; no apology, never mentioned again. DH is pretty up front in comparison! (My terrible influence, obviously...)

Ok, maybe hes not homophobic. He's pretty weird though.

Normally I'd say parenting issues are a join issue to be worked on together, agree, compromise etc. But on this...you need to just do it your way. If he wants to live in some la la land where no-one ever uses a whole host of words or phrases or ideas, then fine, he can live there. But since you and your children live in the real actual world, none of you need to pretend that things don't exist.

Aren't we past the idea that children need to be a certain age before we can The Talk about people being gay, or The Talk about Death, or anything else?
I thought most people just lived their lives and children were allowed to know that everyone was different and everyone dies etc etc?