Shouild Same-Sex Parents Be Featured In School Books?

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10171005/Same-sex-parents-should-be-featured-in-school-books.html

Would this type of thing be beneficial to children as young as five, or only create confusion?

[anotheoldgit]

jim360

/// Might it not depend on what the children were told a wedding was? ///

I would have thought that most children, even as young as five know what a wedding is.

/// It might be better to perform the test: tell a child a wedding is where a man and women marry,and tell another one a wedding is where two people who are in love marry, and see what the two children then draw. ///

Methinks that they would still draw a male and female.

Tell them to draw two people kissing and still the result would be the same.

[mikey4444]

I can't see the problem about children as young as five being made aware that some people are different but equal. After all, religious drivel is pumped into children at an early age and confusion doesn't seem to be rife there.

[Snafu03]

maybe one of them could be a heroin addict too - as some people live like that. We want 5 year olds to have a true reflection of what society is as a whole.

[joeluke]

and what about when there's more than 2 people in a relationship? Should that be in young kids education books too?

Mam/Dad and the slapper next door Dad's having an affair with

[Mamyalynne]

I fail to see any controversy at all, something is included in a book and is then open to either being queried or in the case of most children , accepted as B00 said 'Yeah boring , move on'

[Sqad]

Zeuhl.....do you really believe that?

Educational books for children at that age illustrate the norm, in my opinion and not the exceptions. Same sex parents are not the norm.
Children need to know that commonest things occur commonest and heterosexual parents are "commonest"..........in my experience.

Once the "basics" are established you can then ay a later stage introduce..........the exceptions.

[ummmm]

Snafu03 - That's just daft.

[Mamyalynne]

Snafu and Joe....lame responses.

[Sharingan]

My gay brother is ten years older than me and when I was around five I recall him having a boyfriend wheras all my other brothers had girlfriends. I accepted this as normal because that is how it was projected to me, and thus I have grown up understanding that gay people exist and should be treated exactly like straight people. Simples.

[jim360]

You're probably right, AOG -- but you should accept that children as young as five will know what a wedding is only from what they are told or see. So if a child starts seeing weddings involving two men or two women they might well start to draw the same thing when asked to draw a wedding. Ditto kissing.

What my point is, is that at the very least you cannot "guarantee" that all children will draw a man and woman at a wedding until you actually go out and test it. And you should also check what the child draws against what they have been told a wedding is, where possible.

[Mamyalynne]

Sqad and most books will still show the 'norm'

[anotheoldgit]

Baldric

/// Betcha these two wouldn't aog! ///

Bet they would, because I don't suppose they call these two "Mummy and Daddy", but "Daddy and Daddy" and how confusing is that?

[maggiebee]

Sorry Snafu03, I simply can't agree with that statement. No way do I want my 5 year old grandson to see junkies shooting up no more than I want him to see drunks falling out of pub doors and fighting. If that's true society (which it no doubt is) then I will try to protect him from it with every breath in my body.

[daffy654]

At age 5 I would have drawn two women walking down the aisle. My mum and dad were divorced by then and my mum had been in a relationship with another woman for a few years.

[Sharingan]

Maybe Mum and Mummy and Dad and Daddy, wonderully inventive things little kids, and not so easily confused as you might imagine.

[B00]

Unless a relationship is illegal, I fail to see why all of them can't be accepted for what they are- two people who have fallen in love and have decided to live together (get married/whatever). No child will make a big deal of it or consider it out of the ordinary unless their parents do.

[ummmm]

That's the point isn't it? To take away any confusion from a young age.

Don't worry AOG, they won't catch gayness!!

[jim360]

Or, in the case of Niel Patrick Harris and his husband, "Daddy and "papa".

[Old_Geezer]

It is not ideal that society encourages abnormal parental relationships, putting the desires of the adults above the best interests of the child. To encourage it as if it were normal by adding them to school books would be another step along the wrong road. It takes two different genders to create another being between them. That should be the image portrayed to the children not some ideological agenda.

[2sp_]

I know a gay couple and the children call them Mummy Anne and Mummy Carol (not their real names).

Of course children should learn about same-sex parents, just as they should learn about single parents and separated parents.