.. to think it wasn't up to nursery staff to tell DD this?

[HollyCherry]

Just interested in opinions really.

DD is 4.3 and last night gave me a big soppy hug and said, "I want to marry you when I grow up"

I told her that girls can't marry girls, to which she replied - "Yes they can - x at nursery says girls can marry girls and boys can marry boys"

I have a feeling I'm going to get flamed for even raising the subject - but I really don't expect the nursery to be filling a 4 year old in on these kind of details?

We know 3- 2 men,2 women,2 women. Both of the female marriages have children.

My dc only know our neighbours well enough to understand. We live in Devon. I'm surprised,nobody is bothered/interested in the slightest down here-really they're not.

ooops, gay not gapy.

Do your neighbours have children Milamae?

No they're quite young lads and have a nice life holidays etc. Actually I think my 3 may well have put them off for life

My dc are aware of gay parents as i said I know a lot of gay couples and out of them 5 are parents. ds1 is obviously aware and ds2 will be as he grows up.

misunderstood Ladymuck, no we don't know any gay parents...

LOL Mila, lend your dc to them for a fortnight that will help them make their minds up for sure

i don't see how gay love is more complex than hetero love. Just because your dc has not personal experience of it doesn't make it more complex. My ds has no personal experience of lions but he still know what they are.

I live in rural Yorkshire. There are children with gay parents in the school my children go to, one of the governors is gay and a father, there were children of gay parents in the pre-school playgroup, and there are gay teachers at a local school, but not at my children's school. There was also a gay mum at my antenatal class.

LadyMuck - in answer to your question, yes my dc will grow up having many gay "uncles" and "aunts" - some of whom are in long term relationships and some who aren't. I do think it's become a normal part of life in the UK and I'd be pretty upset if ds' nursery told him that women couldn't marry women and men couldn't marry men as it's not the truth - complex differences between marriages and civil partnerships aside.

And also, what SGB says.

Oh - none of the gay couples we know are parents, although one couple are in the middle of the adoption process.

Actually I think it's job done they have a beautiful garden next to ours(we share a fence)they like to entertain bbq's etc. My lot are shall we say your typical rowdy 4 and 5 year olds they must so spoil the ambiance but they're lovely lads and never complain.

We're very lucky they really are the sort of neighbours you'd love to have-kind,tolerant and would always help in an emergency I'm sure.

And I guess to add the balance are there any other children who like mine do not know any children with gay parents (please note I am looking at the normality of children knowing gay parents).

All our friends are married/hetero couples and although I don't know for sure, I'd be very surprised if any of the kids at DD's nursery had gay parents.

If it comes up again I will make sure I explain it all to DD in more detail, as a couple of posters have suggested - she's quite bright for 4 (IMO) so would probably get her head round it fine, and then we'll all be happy!

I don't think my children know any gay parents. They know gay people with partners, but not parents I don't think.

Flight - I think that's called a 'civil wedding' - as opposed to a church wedding.

Ladymuck - there was a gay couple in our ante natal NCT class, and another in the tea group, so DS knows both those families, one of his best friends at school has a 'two aunty' family of aunties, and he was a pageboy at thier CP ceremony, and the friend had already commented, by yr 2, that my DS is a friend who is 'cool' about his aunty, and that other people say 'silly' things that are 'not nice' so he doesn't talk to them about it. I also have a close fried who has adopted a child with his partner, of which DS is vaguely aware, but hasn't met. Both of his god-free parents happen to be gay - he is aware that one is (was invited to his CP)but not the other (she isn't in a relationship so it hasn't come up). So it's very common in DS's life, and he is already well aware of homophobia and well equipped to not fall in with the nonsense - has big arguments with his cousins who parrot 'eergh yuk' incessantly. We live in London, but the bf's aunty is in Yorkhire.

But again blu, I'm looking at whether your children know gay parents, not gay people. So would your children just know one set of children with gay parents (the antenatal group family?)

HollyCherry, I think you are definitely best placed to go into detail about it, because you will be able to explain what marriage means to you in a religious sense, which will be specific to your particular denomination. I think that is probably quite a nice conversation to have, as it really about what love and family mean to you. The different types of relationships had by people outside of your family are very much of secondary importance, because your child lives with you.

At four, my children really thought of adult relationships more as mums and dads, not husbands and wives. That is the child perspective though I suppose!

Blu - your ds sounds awesome!

Ladymuck - the antenatal and tea group fmailies - so two. And knows OF another.

SuburbanDryad - after a discussion in which my neices spouted primary school 'gay, yuk' stuff, and DS told them it wasn't horrible for people to love each other and they shouldn't say 'yuk' about people he loves, we calmed the argument down and sent them to play with Lego. My sister (NOT the mother of my neeces, i hasten to add - DP is responsible fo them ) went to ask what they were all building:
Neice 1 - a stable
neice 2 - a fairy castle
DS (in a defiant 'stick that in your pipe' tone) I'm building a sculpture for GAY PEOPLE!

It is a non-issue in my eyes. Same sex marriages are a fact and a reality of our world. You OP should have told your daughter that marrying a parent is not - though what your DD said is perfectly normal for a child to say and sweet.

A slight side issue here: do people still really only know couples once they become parents? What do you do when someone in your social circle or neighbourhood loses a partner (whether to death or splitting up)? Blank them? Refuse to socialise with them? Because I can't imagine raising a child in a world where everyone walks two-by-two like breeding pairs... Do you all marry your cousins at puberty or something?

SGSB, sorry, I don't understand what you mean. Who was saying they only met couples after they become parents?

Well HOllycherry says 'all our friends are married/heterosexual couples' and someone else said something similar further up the thread. SO I wondered what happened to her or her partner's friends if they resisted couplehood or escaped it? I think it's an odd and unrealistic worldview to give a child, anyway - that every adult is actually only half a pair rather than an individual.

I haven't read the whole thread, but YABU. It wouldn't bother me, it is true.

Also, she is 4, if she wants to marry you so what? She will learn along the way that she can't actually do this!