If you are a mum/dad family, do you actively talk to your children about different ‘types’ of families?

[Family87]

Do you spend time talking to your children about families that are different to your own- same sex families, adopted children, single parent families etc etc?
do you think your children have the idea that their family is the ‘right’ or ‘normal’ family?

@Nowthenhere

So gay parents, single parents etc should be hidden away as something not appropriate for young children?! Bloody hell. It’s not the 1950s.

Oh! And my friends kids have two grandmas! So for my children is completely normal.

Yes, it's come about because the person DCs dad lives with is transgender, and one of their aunts on my side lives with a woman, so we talked about it.

So if your child encounters a family with 2 mums and asks about it, what would you say?

I don’t have to as such. There are a number of gay couples at my kids’ school, so they see different family units to their own on a regular basis.

I've never made a thing of it but talked about other families organically.
They know single parent families and they know some blended families but not any same sex ones but I've talked about them when they have asked questions about marriage and when it was shown in the Lightyear movie.
My son did what a pp child did and said he wants two mummies too 🤣

This. I mean mine are teens now and know so they obviously picked it up along the way. I'm sure these things came up in conversation but we never had a big plan to educate them about it or sit down chats.

100% this.

No because in our circle there are many different types of family, so there isn’t one normal. Interestingly though, because they’ve known since a young age how babies are made, it’s been necessary to explain a little bit of the mechanics around how a family is made if it isn’t a mother-father one. Basically that everyone has a biological mother and father but who you are raised by varies in different families. I think this is quite an important conversation so that kids don’t end up thinking babies appear out of thin air.

I have a 2 year old and its come up. She often tells me we're going home to big house (we are very fortunate to have a big house) and she has a mummy and a daddy. Easy enough to say people live in different houses and some people have 2 mummys, 2 daddys, 1 mummy, 1 daddy. She sort of gets it, but i figure the more we discuss it as normal the less she ll have issue with it.

I never want my child to be like our neighbours child who tells people they should see his house because its way better than anyone elses. He's 9 so old enough to know better imo. But then his mother seems to act like shes the princess of Wales, so I can see where he gets it from.

They just know about different family types naturally.

One if my best friends is in a 2 mum family so obv they are v familiar with that set up.

My oldest DD has a friend who is adopted.

Various family other types amongst their friends.

DD's schoolmate has two mums- actually 3 because they divorced and one has remarried. Plenty of single parents, blended families in her cohort.

How could it not be age appropriate?

Not brought it up exactly but friends are in the situations you mention - one child in my youngests class has 2 dads, one is adopted, my oldest friend is being brought ip by his grandmother, a friend of mine is in a lesbian relationship who's just had a bay so they are aware of different type of families.

No - a lot of parents (one in particular) I know made it into a "big deal" that other families were different and it massively backfired. It gave the kids a weird complex about other families and they went into school and told everyone else "Jemima is different as she has two mummies" etc. They also did the same with race, and it made for a very awkward conversation at a birthday party when they walked over to my daughters friend and said "you're different to me because you have an Afro and that means we should be kind to you" and deeply upset my daughter's friend who is mixed race.
I don't talk to my kids about it but they are very well socialised with people from all different backgrounds etc so it's not really something they would ever consider.

I've mentioned it. She's an only child so we've talked about how all families look different - some have 1 kid, some have lots, some have two daddies / mummies etc

Our family is a beautifully messy, non traditional family so I think to our lot, mum + dad + 2.4 kids probably seems a bit unusual.

I really don't understand why you'd need to have an 'active' conversation about this. If the subject comes up or if they ask a question or say something that prompt it, yes but otherwise it would feel preachy and artificial.

Our family and close friends include same sex parents, divorced and separated couples, step families, no contact relationships, adopted families and many different religious and cultural practices. We even know one family that consist of a married mother and father with a daughter and son. It's weird but we try not to 'other' them.

What do you think will happen if you don't have the conversation?

No, haven’t seen the need, it’s pretty clear just through living life (maybe we live in a more varied area) and watching TV. Your second post shows you only started the thread to call out people like me who haven’t sat our kids down and made a big deal of explaining it though, despite the way your first post presented the question 😄

Yes all the time. I don't purposely set out to do it but situations arise frequently enough to make it worth mentioning.
A friend of mine is a lesbian and her wife just had a baby via IVF. My son is in reception and his closest friend spends most of his time with his grandma because he mum died when he was 2.

Yea, we have talked about those kind of things, dropped into conversations here and there or in answer to questions.

I do also talk about biology though, so they know it takes a man and a woman to create a baby.

Whenever it's arisen over the years we've always taken the opportunity to keep them informed about differences, including making sure they know that not everyone's parents live together. But they've been aware of that from an early age as one or two of their friends' parents divorced when they were little.

Yes but I’m a lone parent so my children have asked why they don’t have a dad and others do

We're more of a 'there's not boys' things or girls' things, you can wear and play with anything' family. Rather than regressive and reductive stereotypes.

And yes, we talk about different families. Although we needn't have bothered because in DD's friend group me and DH are the 'different' family with a selection of blended, two adoptive, two single, one two mums. DH and I are unicorns!

I guess I was curious because in my conversations I’ve had with friends around this I’ve found that the ‘mum/dad’ families don’t tend to actively talk about this but any families outside of that tend to actively discuss it. Obviously children who grow up with a mum and dad might end up in a computer different family set up themselves and i wonder if talking about it to them from a young might be be beneficial to them (say for example they end up coming out as gay and being a 2 mum family it may have been very affirming to them to have heard their own parents speaking about this in a accepting way from early on)
I also feel it’s not up to the children from these ‘non traditional’ family set ups to educate other children on them and that is should come from their own parents who are of course their biggest teachers