» N. i 1 1 r 4. a. ..c ,. .... ,-,_,. U "R~ ,. «W :4. - l . '7 l 1‘ . ..~ .. '.I--»---. ~-'-.-'-- 22 — OUT IN THE MOUNTAINS — MAY 1998 _l.‘lCl'-i;\'SED CL.1s\=IcAi. SOCIAL WORKER 'IP‘s_rc‘HoriviER.\P\' - CONSULTATION ~_ApL=LTs - ADOLESCENTS l‘l5l n«.1<, VT -(:$_<-)2) 229-5071 l)R()l-’liSSl().\'.~\l C();\‘l‘lI)l-.;\"l'l.-'\l. 802.66t).B396 Diane M. Felicio, Ph.D. mediator constructive conflict resolution with an emphasis on encouragement, relationships clarity, and support. organizations higher education 1 Carol L. Thoyer, M.D. Family Physician PVERMANENTE Community ° Health Plan DIVISION KAISER NOR'I'l~lEAST Georgia Health Center RR#2, ‘Box H60 Fairfax, VT05454 Tel: 802/524-9595 Fax: 802/524-2867 Michael Gigante, Ph.D. Psychosynthesis Counseling 8 Therapy (802) 254-8032 15 Ivlyrtle Street, Bmllleboro VT 05301 Montpelier 2 29-5220 Burlington 860-6360 JQSIE JUHASZ, .\1.A. l.lC. Psychologist - Master LYNN GOYETTE, M.S., M.A. Lic. Clinical Mental Health Counselor AL COUNSELING CENTER or NORTHERN VERMONT 5“dl“9 fee scale insurance accepted M.D. HEALTHWORKER licensed advertiser for OI TM V Serving 5* Supporting the GLBT Community for 13 years. (802) 865-9294 join us in pride. .).,.~_ ; 12,,-.;.~._,.»,..,..,,.. iv ellbeing - Lesbian Mothers and Their Children In the early 1980s lots of lesbians were beginning to fig- ure out ways to have children by donor insemination. Nanette Gartrell, a lesbian psy- chiatrist, was interested in studying these pioneer lesbi- ans. ”We had no money,” she said in a recent interview, "but ._ of course none ofthe work I've ever done has been funded; It's usually too controversial to be funded by any of the tradi- tional sources, such as the Na- tional Institutes of Health. It's years ahead of its time in terms of when such agencies would fund thisikind of research. We ‘decided if we waited for fund- ing agencies to get over their _homophobia to fund this study, we'd be waiting another decade. So we went ahead and funded it ourselves.” Nanette’s study is now the longest-running study of ‘lesbians who’had"cl’1'ildren‘via' ' donor insemination. ”It’s already been well- documented that kids of les- bian moms are healthy,” Nanette told me, ”so we're not trying to re-establish that._ What we're interested in is how they have coped with ho- mophobia.” At the time, Nanette’s major collaborator was living in Washington, DC and Nanette was living in Bos- ton, so they began the research with lesbians in those two cit- ies. Then Nanette moved to San Francisco and included lesbians from the Bay Area. The first step was finding lesbian mothers to participate. Nanette’s research team adver- tised in bookstores and gay and lesbian newspapers. They made up flyers to distribute at lesbian films and community events. They went to all the workshops on choosing chil- dren and told participants about the study. The original study began with 154 mothers. The first interviews took place when the mothers were pregnant. Then the mothers and co-mothers were inter- viewed again when the chil- dren were a year and a half old and when they were five. N anette’s team is currently in- terviewing the families now that the children are 10, and this for the first time includes interviews with the children themselves. Then the families will be interviewed next when the children are 17 and when they are 25. An Interview with Nanette Gartrell by Esther Rothblum ”When we interviewed the mothers at first, when they were pregnant, they antici- pated being out as lesbians,” said Nanette. ”For the most .part they used unknown do- nors, because there was a lot more fear at that time that somehow the: state would come in _and take the children away. By thetime of the next interviews, when the children were toddlers, many of them regretted this and wished they had used a known donor who could have participated in the child's life as a father. Lesbians that we interviewed even a few years later had‘ begun to use known donors. We actually stopped inviting new partici- pants in 1992 because the ‘old’ lesbians differed so much from the ‘new’ ones in terms of do- nor identity.” Not surprisingly, the chil- dren were very much desired. When the lesbians were first interviewed while pregnant, about half the women were in coupled relationships, and had been with their partners from a few months to a decade or more. Others were single mothers. . When Nanette’s team re- interviewed the mothers when the children were a year and a half, they were not surprised to find completely exhausted, harried mothers who had very little time for their own lives other than childrearing and paid employment. One of the . areas of difficulty was the little contact with their partners, and this was often a source of tension. By the time of the in- terviews when the children were five, a number of the couples had broken up. Those couples where the mothers had spent time away from the chil- dren, in order to have more time with each other, were more likely to still be together than the couples that had been most child—focused. Now the team is inter- viewing the ten-year old chil- dren. ”lt’s very exciting to be interviewing the kids for the first time,” said Nanette. ”Be- cause we have these very ar- ticulate kids who are highly educated around issues of di- versity, racism, and homopho- bia.” Doing longitudinal re- search is not easy. When Nanette had a flood in her basement a few years ago, .'.‘ ;‘.\ f A. .' "1. 4’. v'...".‘.‘ .v.i.sit _ www.vtfreetomarry.org DYKE PSYGHE I I some of the file cabinets got wet. ”I was frantically using a hair dryer to dry the pages of the interviews so the data wouldn't be lost,’’ she recalls. Nanette phones all the families each year to see if theyvhave moved, so-she won't lose touch with them. A couple of women who once identified as lesbians are now involved with men; a few women have. died. But Nanette has stayed. in touch with just about all the women from the original sample..=As couples break up and then get involved with new-vpartnens, Nanette incorporates allthese ”step-moms” in the study. ”This means we maybe the only study that has more par- ticipants at the end of the study than at the beg'inningl”' she said. More information about the study results can be read in: Nanette Gartrell. et .(.1996), "I'he N ational; Lesbian. Family Study: Interviews With Pro- spective Mothers.’ American Iournal of Orthopsychiatry, vol- ume 66, number 2, pp. 272-281. Esther Rothblum is Professor of Psychology at the University of Vermont and Editor of the Jour- nal of Lesbian Studies. ’DYI