BUT SOMETIMES THEY ARE AWESOME
* CHAPTER 5 *
How to React if You Think Your Child Might Be Gay (Hint: Celebrate)
Sometimes you can tell. Your son likes "girl toys," or your daughter doesn't. Your husband doesn't want to talk about it, but your Spidey sense is telling you that your kid might be gay. What do you do?
Pop the champagne!
Your gay kid may be the best thing that ever happened to you.
GO WITH IT.
If you can be fully supportive of your gay child, you will be loved. Loved, adored, and worshipped. (And possibly impersonated in a drag show.) And your gay kid's gay friends will wish you were their mom. They will remember you on Mother's Day, and after your death, your funeral will be jam-packed with good-looking men and strong-shouldered women.
DON'T TRY TO "STRAIGHTEN" YOUR GAY CHILD.
Not only will she remain gay, but one day she may write a scathing memoir about her childhood. When it's turned into a movie, the "mom" will be played by someone who is shorter, fatter, and more wrinkled than you are.
CLOSETED GAYS ARE NOT HAPPY PEOPLE.
Forcing your gay kid to live a lie will backfire. Kids who repress their homosexuality often grow up to become disgraced pastors (Ted Haggard), hypocritical lawyers (Roy Cohn), insane dictators (Adolf Hitler, according to some sources), or Scientologists (no example provided due to potential litigation).
Your child deserves better.
PREPARE FOR BATTLE.
It's likely that the five-year-old boy who looks so adorable wearing your sleep bra will, in his teen years, be bullied by an asshole. It's wrong and it's unfair, but it's common. Sh*tty Mom believes that, like Israel, gay kids should be allowed to preemptively strike if they feel threatened. Gay bashing would end quickly if gangs of tough gay kids were allowed to roam the streets, beating the crap out of problematic straight kids.
Try to interest your kid in some kind of martial arts. If he can enter middle school with a black belt, the school bully might skip him and move on to the kid who's really asking for it: the nerd.
(FYI: Nerds should remain closeted until they are accepted into Stanford.)
ADAM AND STEVE CAN'T MAKE A BABY EVE.
What the Christian right hates about gay couples is what parents should love: They can't procreate. Unlike your sister, whose straight daughter will be alarmingly boy crazy when she's fourteen, you won't be up nights, worrying that your gay kid is legs up in the backseat of a truck somewhere, getting pregnant.
Gay people have to go out of their way to have children. They hire surrogates, they adopt. Some of them will even put David Crosby's sperm in their vaginas (!). All of those procedures are planned and costly. If your gay kid ever does have a baby, at least you won't be stuck raising it while she's out partying instead of studying for her GED.
And what if you are wrong and your kid ends up being straight?
Better luck next time.
Remember: Stereotypes don't come out of nowhere. It's possible that your gay daughter will attend a Division 1 school on a softball scholarship or your gay son will style your hair. Forever. For free.
Kick-ass Moms of Gay Kids
Cher Well, technically Cher's son, Chaz, is a straight male. However, he started out as a lesbian named Chastity, so Cher gets an honorable mention.
Stephanie Seymour The former supermodel has an openly gay son named Peter Brant II. As a twosome, they caused a slight sensation when photographed on a beach in what some people described as a semi-incestuous embrace. In a written defense of his mother, Peter mentioned that he is gay. At the time, he was a senior in high school. It's tough to come out at that age, but we're guessing his mom made it easier.
Alice Hoagland Mark Bingham died on 9/11. He was a rugby player and one of the passengers on United 93. He helped overpower the hijackers, and possibly prevented the plane from crashing into the Capitol Building. Afterwards, his mom, Alice Hoagland, exhibited striking composure and grace while speaking to the media about her son. She didn't make Mark's homosexuality the focal point of her memories, but she also didn't shy away from it.
Betty DeGeneres Ellen's mom, Betty, wrote a book with her daughter, and they talked about the coming-out process. Betty also appears frequently on Ellen, and she was the first nongay spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign's Coming Out Project.
* CHAPTER 6 *
When Your Kid Is a Different
Race/Ethnicity Than You
First of all, scoot over. You have a story to tell and Sh*tty Mom is all ears. As far as we can tell, one of the following scenarios must have gone down:
YOU HAD SEX WITH AN OTHER-RACE MAN.
Well, aren't you the naughty one. Giving your parents a heart attack when you dragged home that black/ white/ Asian/
Hispanic/ Arab/ Indian/ Jewish/ Native American/ Pacific Islander guy from college.
You are ahead of the curve. Sometime in the middle of the twenty-first century, America will cease to be a white majority country. Your nonwhite or half-white or Hispanic-but-no-one-thinks-that's-white kids will be the majority. An added bonus is that mixed race kids are often gorgeous. They take the best features from both parents and chuck the rest. The addition of new DNA is like restarting a frozen family tree.
America is a small country. This fact is illuminated during almost every election cycle when genealogists discover that the candidates are related. George W. Bush and John Kerry are ninth cousins, twice removed. Dick Cheney and Barack Obama are eighth cousins. Look, if those two are related, we're all related. Dipping your toe in a new gene pool may prevent you from accidentally banging a cousin. (Because if you're going to bang your cousin, it should be on purpose.)
Good for you.
SOMEONE'S GREAT-GREAT-GRANDMOTHER HAD SEX WITH AN OTHER-RACE MAN AND IT'S JUST SHOWING UP NOW.
Way back when, one of your grannies got around. The evidence lay dormant for a few generations until, one day, out came your baby with different textured hair, or lighter or darker skin. The difference between you and your kid may not be as obvious, but you'll still get the occasional odd look when your brown kid shouts "Mom!" at the park, and pale, freckle-faced you shows up, saying, "What?"
YOU HAVE ADOPTED.
Hello, hero. Here's what strangers know about you: You're patient, generous, and good-hearted. They know you waited for a baby and that one day you got a call that changed your life. More than anyone, they know you wanted that baby. What strangers don't know is where you got your other-race child and, my, are they curious! They'll crack open Google Maps and rattle off Pacific Rim countries that are a potential match for your Asian daughter.
"China? Korea? Vietnam? Cambodia? Thailand?"
Only you can put them out of their Rand-McMisery and say, "San Francisco."
Now you are an expert on a culture that you'd previously only encountered at parades or restaurants. There is only one thing left to learn:
HOW TO STYLE YOUR KID'S HAIR.
You might be able to wing it with Caucasian or Asian hair, but African hair is serious business and must not be taken lightly. (See the Chris Rock documentary Good Hair.) Right behind it in degree of difficulty is red hair, depending on the curl. (Sorry to the Gingers that "red" isn't capitalized like "Caucasian," "Asian," and "African." And it probably doesn't help that "Ginger" is.)
Depending on where you live, head uptown or downtown to an appropriate beauty salon. Bring your kid and let a stylist show you what to do.
Remember: There's no better way to show your child that you love her unconditionally than to learn how to comb her hair.
My Kids, My Husband, and I Are the Same Race/Ethnicity. Am I from the 1950s?
No, you are still of this millennium. But understand that Sh*tty Mom's Mexican-Irish son is coming for your Jewish daughter, and you can't stop him.
* CHAPTER 7 *
It's Come to Your Attention That Your Kid Is Merely Average
Your kid is three, maybe four years old. During playdates, you've noticed that he isn't the intellectual pack leader. He's not dumb, but he's not as quick with the puzzles. He knows his A-B-Ds. He is able to count to ten if you don't include six. You're close to admitting that your child may not be fast-tracked into the gifted program.
You luck out.
Based purely on anecdotal evidence, average kids grow up to be normal and well-adjusted adults. Just going by recent high school reunions, it's apparent that the class fuckups overwhelmingly hail from one of two groups: kids from bad families and kids from the gifted program. In fact, this chapter should be called "What If Your Child Is Gifted?" Because those are the moms who ought to be worried.
When you tell gifted kids they can be president, they'll calculate the odds with their big brains and say no. Soon they'll stop believing anything you say. You're just another upbeat liar who can't comprehend even basic statistics. But dumb kids will believe you every time.
Ronald Reagan was a C student. Did his mother panic and send him to Kumon four times a week? No. She accepted that he was a charmer with good hair, and understood that was enough.
But if you're reading this book, you probably don't want a C student. You want an A student. You know: like Ronald Reagan's vice president (and the one-term president) George H. W. Bush. Yes, him. Straight A's look good on paper, but they don't always get you a second term. (Or smart kids.)
Average kids inherently understand that they don't have the goods. They develop other skills precisely because they can't get an A-plus on a paper that was begun the night before it was due. They grow into college students who can study for a test and into competent grown-ups who can install a kitchen backsplash and use a slow cooker.
When an average kid scores 2000 on the new SATs, they are thrilled. Gifted kids are depressed. They think they should've scored a perfect 2400, what with all their gifts and Latin classes. Inevitably, they drift into a life of hopeless ennui, overqualified for their jobs and often working at companies started by an average kid.
How can you recession-proof an average kid's future?
* Team sports. Get them involved in team sports-that's key. Ice hockey, not figure skating. Water polo, not diving. Basketball, not track. The sports team is a laboratory where your average kid can learn how to boss her future employees around. (Note: This advice will be completely contradicted in chapter 12, "Organized Sports Might Be Great for the Kids, but They Suck for You.")
* Guitar lessons. Hey, someone has to be the band's bass player, right? To put it in Van Halen terms, your average kid will never be an Eddie, but he could most certainly be a Michael Anthony.
Of course, many gifted kids are happy, have great jobs, and make lots of money. Play along, we're trying to cheer up the moms of average kids here.
Remember: It's the dumb kids with trust funds that we really need to be worried about.
Is Your Child "Slow" or Is He a Boy?
Moms of boys usually have a stroke when they meet a girl who is the same age as their son. Four-year-old girls speak. And not with guttural tongue-flapping and fart noises, but with language. Girls use words, they create sentences and understand metaphors. Listening to your son after you've spent time with a girl will make you wonder when he became Jodie Foster in Nell.
Don't panic. Your boy could be quite gifted-just not compared to an average girl. Language disparities between boys and girls tend to even out by the time the boys are in their mid-forties (earlier, if they've had therapy).
