Mothers & In A Family Way
Book Review, May 1995

It seems the lesbian-headed household has finally made it through the gauntlet of pathologizing studies and screaming trash-talk shows and into the culture at large. Proof positive: the recent New Yorker cartoon, in which a harried-looking woman warns a sulky little boy, "You just wait until your other mother gets home, young man!" And now lesbian parenting is the subject of two well-intentioned, enjoyable if amateurish first novels-each written by a heterosexual woman with an explicit anti-homophobia agenda.

Mothers, by former ad exec Jax Peters Lowell, is compelling and jarring for the same reason: its narrator is Willy, the son born in 1965 to Claire and Theo, a couple of upscale Manhattan lesbians. Interesting idea, to tell the story from Willy's perspective, but a bit of a stretch for a writer who is neither a boy nor a lesbian. So, while Mothers makes a convincing defense of the non-traditional family, its characters are less convincing. Eleven-year-old Willy sounds like a six-year-old on one page and an adult on the next. His classmates taunt him in rhymes no real kid would ever concoct. ("Willy, Willy, poor little tyke, he's gotta be a fag, 'cause his mothers are dykes!") And unlike many real-life lesbian mothers-who tend to be an exceptionally introspective bunch, subjected as they are to the harsh scrutiny of their detractors-Claire and Theo thoughtlessly treat their son like a tiny adult. They enmesh him in the details of their careers and relationships; they don't correct him, help him individuate from them, when he says, "We're lesbians," or, "Are we getting a divorce?"

Poor Willy is burdened with describing not only the events of his own life-his idyllic Upper West Side childhood, surrounded by Claire and Theo's artsy friends; the painful disintegration of his mothers' relationship; the custody battle that tears him, briefly, away from both of them-but also events he couldn't have witnessed. It's fascinating to read about Theo's lifelong struggle with her homophobic parents, Claire and Theo's courtship and process of deciding to have a child, the emotions and dalliances each of them experiences during their separation. We only wish Claire and Theo, not Willy, were telling us about it.

In a Family Way also sacrifices believability in the interest of making its point. The myriad crises that befall Janice and Sonya and their friends-being rejected by family of origin, gay-bashed, refused medical treatment because of HIV, being sued or forced to sue for custody of one's own child-certainly do happen to lesbians and gay men. But not every day, and not to every lesbian and gay man. It seems that Schwab-the mother of a lesbian, and a member of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG)-tried to cram every circumstance known to lesbian moms and gay dads and birth parents and adoptive parents into the lives of the few characters who inhabit her novel, causing the reader to wonder how these people can brush their teeth, let alone raise a child, with so much going on.

Paradoxically, its overloaded story line also makes In a Family Way a vivid evocation of family life, and a real page-turner. You can hardly wait to find out whether Keith really will sue Sonya, Aaron really will break up with Keith, Janice's parents really will get custody of Heather, or anyone will have time to stop and pick up a box of Pampers. And, in and around their frantic efforts to overcome the particular adversities that keep them from living 'normal' lives, Schwab's characters do convey a real and universal sense of relationship. They work hard to be true to themselves and each other, to face down bigotry with commitment and love, to build healthy families that satisfy the human longing for intimate connection. In doing so they demonstrate what, unfortunately, still needs proving: lesbians and gay men are not so different from their heterosexual counterparts.

The existence and the content of these books remind us that neither Father, nor Newt, nor Governor Wilson (who launched his Presidential campaign by revoking lesbians' and gay men's right to adopt children) knows best. This ain't great literature, folks, but both Mothers and In A Family Way are fun to read, and good social medicine as well.