The wisdom of Mma Ramotswe / sexism in adoption.

While I was on holiday I caught up with a few books I’d been meaning to read for a while. One of them was The Miracle at Speedy Motors, the 9th volume in the Number 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall-Smith. The main character, Mma Ramotswe, adopted two orphans, and in one chapter the boy she adopted is struggling with his identity and with the fact that he is adopted. After reassuring him, she realises that she has now come to the point where she considers herself his mother and thinks: “We could all be a mother, all of us; even a man could be a mother.”

I just liked the line when I read it and thought I’d share it. Even though the line itself is not about gay adoption, the implication of saying that a man could be a mother is that a man can do just as good a job as a woman in raising children. I have discussed before how many people’s prejudices about gay men adopting are not necessarily about the gay bit (although there are plenty who have a problem with that), but about men in general adopting. I have personally never encountered among my friends and acquaintances anyone who has expressed any reservations about us adopting because of being gay (at least to our faces), but on a couple of occasions people have expressed quite sexist opinions (“a child needs a mum”). I think this is one of those areas where same-sex adoption differs for gay men and lesbians: being raised without a father is acceptable (plenty of single mothers out there to prove the point), but being raised without a mother is perceived as unfair on the children, or at least putting them at a disadvantage.