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This website is being renovated throughout 2008. Pages and the content of pages will continue to change until the end of the year and there may be some inconsistencies and missing links. Please do not quote from or link to specific pages (apart from the home page) without contacting the webmaster first. Mom loves you so much ... ... but it's still not enough By © Martin Foreman Word Count: 794 words Publication date: December 17, 2006 The news that Mary Cheney and her partner are expecting a baby – the vice-president’s six grandchild – is not being greeted with unalloyed joy by everyone on the right of the political spectrum. According to CNN, Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America described the pregnancy as "unconscionable," adding “it's very disappointing that a celebrity couple like this would deliberately bring into the world a child that will never have a father. They are encouraging people who don't have the advantages they have." Carrie Gordon Earll from Focus on the Family commented, "just because you can conceive a child outside a one-woman, one-man marriage doesn't mean it's a good idea. Love can't replace a mother and a father." I’m not sure I follow Crouse’s logic about encouraging people who don’t have Cheney’s advantages, but that may be my fault rather than hers. Meanwhile, Gordon Earll’s knee-jerk reaction suggests that she and the organization she represents are willing to sacrifice a child’s well-being for the sake of principle. Where parents are abusive, most people would argue that love from other adults is preferable to emotional or physical damage at the hand of one’s parents. That said, I have to come out of my occasionally conservative closet and add my disapproval of Cheney’s and her partner’s decision, particularly because there is no mention of a father. As regular readers know, I’m not a fan of children in general. One of the biggest mistakes in my life was the sixteen or so years that I spent as an infant and child. When small, children are noisy, smelly and unable to reason. Larger versions tend to be expensive and argumentative. Worst of all, children grow into adults who place further strain on the world’s limited resources of fossil fuels and undisturbed environments. But that is true of all children, and my focus today is on children denied one or both biological parents. My objection to the Cheney pregnancy is based on personal experience as much as principle. My father died before my second birthday. I was brought up by a loving, competent mother who never failed to provide me with love and emotional support. We lived in a home that lacked luxuries but was nonetheless welcoming and comfortable. I spent my early childhood unaware of any deprivation. As I grew older, however, I became increasingly aware that other boys had fathers and I did not. A close friend even had that wondrous father of myth – a man who had built an extensive model railroad in his attic where his son could play every day. Then as a teenager I had occasional dreams in which I was at home and the doorbell rang. I went to open it and there stood my father, returned after years of absence. As my mind flooded with relief, joy and love, I inevitably woke up to the reality of a single parent. On a conscious level, these dreams did not disturb me. I accepted that we all have advantages and disadvantages in life. I happened to lack a father; others were motherless, homeless, physcially handicapped or suffered in some other way. The best response was to accept what had happened and get on with life. Subconsciously, my reaction was different. I never asked my mother about my father and years later she asked why I was silent. Forced to think about it, I realized that to talk about him would be to reopen a wound that had healed. As I thought more about it, I realized that underlying the scar was anger at my father for having abandoned me. That anger was best left undisturbed. What if my father had not died? What if my mother had driven him out of my life and made him impossible for me to find? I am sure my anger would have surfaced, directed not at him, but at the woman who had decided, without consulting me, that I did not need him. I am sure many children of single or lesbian mothers are untroubled by the fact that do not know their father; the same is true of many children who have no contact with their mothers. But many others who want to know both parents - even if they later reject them - are unable to do so. Mary Cheney and her partner may be lucky. Their son or daughter may grow up with no interest in their biological father. Alternately, he or she will grow up with a sense of alienation from which neither child nor parents will recover. Love is an essential element in parenting. But so too is the right of children to know their biological heritage. And no matter how strong one is, it can never compensate for the other.
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