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I’ve spent a lot of time in the last few years examining how my upbringing has shaped me into the person I am today. Like most people, I know that my family and friends played an integral role in my development, but only recently did I realize, and accept, the extent that my parents influenced my core self. I can trace my relationships, my career choice, and my fundamental beliefs directly back to my mother and father and the way they lived.

I wanted to explore this personal realization further and find out how it applies to a growing social demographic in this country. Same-sex couples have been raising children for decades, but this family dynamic has been thrust to the forefront of our culture in the last few years.

When I began my relationship with the Huddlestonsmith family, it only took a few visits to conclude this family was no different from any other family I had met in Midwestern America. They welcomed me in, insisted I join them at the dinner table, and shared their home with me in every way. But as familiar as this household was to me, I often heard about the discrimination David Huddlestonsmith, his partner, Dave, and David’s 11-year-old daughter, Katie, experienced living as a same-sex family. This was something very foreign to me.

I wanted to understand what it was like to live in the shadow of discrimination. More importantly though, I wanted to find out what effect this discrimination had on Katie, a child feeling the societal response to her father and his partner’s lifestyle.  

I quickly found out Katie had adapted her life as a result of her unique upbringing.  David, Dave, and Katie had very open relationships, sharing all aspects of each other’s lives with one another. Katie, however, was much less open with people outside of her family. Aside from her teachers, a few friends, and their parents, she didn’t volunteer information about her gay father and his partner. She once said, “I know at least five boys [at school] that would tease me if they knew.”

I worked on the project, off and on, for about a month and a half. In that time, I saw the love the Huddlestonsmith family expresses. I saw the struggles David dealt with living as a gay man. And I saw Katie’s success in the classroom, and the admiration she has for her father and his partner. But I only scratched the surface. Katie’s development will evolve as our society does, and her future is dependent on our cultural willingness to accept her as a child of a same-sex couple.

In The Fray Contributor