Call me a spoilsport but I’m glad my dad wasn’t a lesbian
Jeremy Clarkson
When it comes to sweeping generalisations, I am the daddy. All Germans have no sense of humour, all instruction manuals are pointless, all cruise ships are ghastly, every single American is fat, all golfers are boring and all Peugeots are driven by people you wouldn’t have round for dinner.
Of course, I’m well aware that most generalisations are nonsense. I know several very funny Germans, and Obama Barrack is actually quite skinny. But without generalisations, anecdotes would take two years, points would never get made, comedy would suffer and everyone would sound like James May: “Actually, 42.7% of instruction manuals are quite useful; but first let me quantify ‘useful’ . . .”
Life would be a terribly dreary assault course if every fact had to be precise, but, that said, generalisations have no place in serious scientific research, which is why I was a bit startled to read last week that a government adviser from the National Academy for Parenting Practitioners said lesbians made better parents than what we can no longer call “normal couples”.
I’m not sure this is quite right because, so far as I can remember, a woman is not able to have a child after having sexual relations with another woman. Unless that woman is from an athletics squad.
In order for a lesbian couple to have had a child, either a turkey baster must have been involved — which is not how most people would like to imagine they came into the world — or they must have visited the state-sponsored British Association for Adoption & Fostering, which thinks that anyone who objects to same-sex parents is a “retarded homophobe”.
Happily, I’m a bit more sensible than this. I do not think that someone who objects to homosexual parents is a retarded homophobe. I believe they have an opinion. But, that said, I emphatically don’t agree that lesbians necessarily make better parents than me. It is impossible to say that someone will make a better parent because she fancies other girls. There will be some lesbians who’ll go out all night and take drugs and there will be some who’ll read a child a bedtime story and be excellent.
I have done some checking on this, and the only evidence I can find comes from research endorsed by the national academy itself. The study examined children raised by just 27 single mothers, 20 lesbian couples and 36, er, differently genital-ed parents and concluded that those raised by women grew up with a better psychological wellbeing.
You can’t possibly draw any conclusions after testing 20 lesbians. Test 20 Italians and you could well end up concluding the whole nation was full of calm, incorruptible dullards with no interest in sex. Test temperatures over just 20 years and you’d end up concluding the world’s climate was changing.
I like lesbians, especially proper ones in stockings that you find on the internet. Certainly, I think more women should try lesbianism. It’d be great. But on a personal note, and please don’t call me a retarded homophobe, I’m not sure I’d have been very happy if my mum had been one.
I like to imagine that Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron sometimes get it on under the covers, but my mother and Peggy from the tennis club? No. And the idea that Peggy from the tennis club would have been a better dad than my actual dad is laughable. Nearly as laughable, in fact, as the alarming news that the country has a parenting academy looking into this sort of thing.
All of us think that the way we bring up our children is correct and that the way everyone else brings up their children is completely wrong. They’re too strict. Too lax. Too open. Too closed. Too heterosexual. No one gets it as right as you do.
And that’s the thing. Bringing up a child is personal, and there is really no space in the nature and nurture debate for a bunch of frizzy-haired lunatics running around making political points at our expense about lesbians. If the government is looking for savings, it should think very hard about disbanding an organisation that tells people what to tell parents.
There are many things I need to know that I do not. How to contact someone at Facebook. How to get to Bournemouth when the main road is closed for a worm removal programme. If the government provided advice on these things, that would be wonderful. But instead it tells me what time my daughter should go to bed at night and what she should have for breakfast. And how she would grow up to be a more rounded human being if only my wife would invite a girlfriend round for the night and slip into something see-through.
Yes, there are fat women in the north who need to be told their kids may not skip school and experiment with crystal meth until they are at least eight. But we already have an organisation in place to deal with this sort of thing: it’s called the police.
And if the police are unable to help, we have another. It’s called social services. Social workers go in, see the child is off its head on heroin and all covered in sick, and put it in a home. You don’t need a national academy telling them what sort of home it should be because it’s blindingly obvious to anyone with half a brain.
This is the problem we face here. I don’t like the idea that lesbians, even the weird, big sort in dungarees, should be excluded from adopting a baby. They grew up with a predilection for members of the same genital group but that doesn’t stop them being good parents.
Banning a lesbian from parenting would be as cruel as banning someone because they had an interest in golf, which is what I’d do if I were in charge. Or because they had ginger hair. However, I’m afraid we must think about the children. Having two mums, whether you like it or not, is going to cause a spot of bother in the playground. But that’s just my view and I’m only a parent. What do I know?
