Brenna Harding Vicki Harding and partner Jackie.
Strewth: Playing to the parade
http://theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,12424897%255E28737,00.html
March 03, 2005
SURELY a first. This year's Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade will be led by a six-year-old girl, Brenna Harding, who shot to notoriety last year when she was featured on the ABC's Play School with her two mums, Vicki Harding and partner Jackie.
Vicki told Strewth that the controversy had made them minor celebrities in the gay community and now they were "honoured to lead the parade". No doubt Fred Nile will be beside himself and reaching for his tax-payer funded fax machine. Yesterday he did likewise to let everyone know how happy he is that the Aussie version of the TV show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy has been axed. Fred must be secretly devastated the Fab Five didn't come knocking on his door - why else care? But this is Fred and it's too easy to picture him frothing and shaking while he wrote: "It was just reality TV with a homosexual spin." How insightful. "In the future I hope producers invest more time and resources in developing programs that foster family values and community spirit." Got to tell you, Rev, that doesn't sound like it will rate well either.
ABC Online
Playschool Mums:
[This is the print version of story http://www.abc.net.au/gnt/people/Transcripts/s1209489.htm]
Episode 134
Playschool Mums
Broadcast 6.30pm on 28/09/2004
Playschool Mums, "Family" 28th September, 2004
A young girl and her two mums became the focus of the national media when they were featured on the ABC children's show "Playschool". Jane Cunningham went to meet all three of them to find out what life is like as same sex parents and how they have recovered from the uproar.
GEORGE NEGUS: Now, you may have heard about it at the time because their story got a lot of attention in the media, but a couple of months back now two Sydney women had their very different family relationship well and truly dissected in public. At the time, politicians and the media - surprise, surprise - had a field day. Here's our Jane again.
JANE CUNNINGHAM: 'The Macquarie Dictionary' defines a 'nuclear family' as "the family as a unit of social organisation comprising only parents and children where the children are the responsibility of the parents alone." Well, I wonder what was all the fuss about?
(SEGMENT FROM 'PLAY SCHOOL' PLAYS)
BRENNA: I'm Brenna. That's me in the blue. My mums are taking me and my friend Merryn to an amusement park.
JANE CUNNINGHAM: Brenna and her two mums sparked a national debate when they were shown on the children's program 'Play School'. Suddenly the family were in the media and political spotlight.
JACKIE BRAW: That morning, the story broke on a morning news show. It was just... Yeah, it came as a total surprise. Because we just thought it was a good thing to do, to have a different image of a different type of family on 'Play School'. And that was about it.
JANE CUNNINGHAM: What about Brenna?
VICKI HARDING: She just... She was actually quite excited. I mean, she knew what the issues were and it had come...from some criticism. But she managed to just sort of put that aside and she just thought she was famous, so...
VICKI HARDING: Since the whole 'Play School' thing erupted, I think I've noticed in Brenna she's associated being famous with having two mums, so it's good. (Laughs)
JANE CUNNINGHAM: If you are gay and you want a family, you have to make decisions that most people would take for granted.
VICKI HARDING: I actually wanted to be a parent for a very long time before I had Brenna and had a couple of partners who weren't keen on the idea. So basically I decided that when one relationship finished that I would just do it on my own.
JANE CUNNINGHAM: Jackie came into Vicki and Brenna's life a bit later.
JACKIE BRAW: Vick said, "Jackie's about to move in. Would you like to have two mums? How do you feel about that idea?" And Brenna just got really excited. So that was how we dealt with it. It was very kind of matter-of-fact. "I'm about to move in." Would she like to have two mums?
VICKI HARDING: I just wanted to make sure, I think, at that time that she was comfortable with the idea and the label and everything.
JACKIE BRAW: And Vick had actually asked me too, before I moved in. She said, "Do you want to be Brenna's flatmate or Brenna's mum?"
(Both laugh)
JACKIE BRAW: I thought that was a really cute way of saying it.
VICKI HARDING: I think one of the biggest issues is working out how to talk to your children about it, working out whether to prepare them for the fact that there maybe some backlash about their family or whether to actually let them know everything's OK. And I know that there are families who deal with it in very different ways. What we've done is chosen to tell Brenna everything. And there's the issue of, you know, being concerned that our kids might be picked on at school and trying to make sure that you send them to a school where that's not an issue, where the teachers are going to be supportive and giving them pride in their family. I think they're probably the biggest things. I wouldn't choose to live in the outer suburbs where it may not be as acceptable. I mean, Brenna now feels...she feels special and she feels famous. She could be somewhere else feeling like she's the odd one out. So it's a really big decision, I think, for lesbian parents to...where they live and which schools the kids go to.
JANE CUNNINGHAM: What about high school?
VICKI HARDING: Yeah, high school's a bit of an unknown. So for us it's about building up Brenna's confidence now, dealing with issues as they come up. She was telling us recently that she heard one child call another child...well, refer to him as gay or say "You're so gay" or something. She was very upset. It was the first time she'd ever heard that term used. So it's about, each time one of those situations come up, dealing with the issues, finding out, you know, what it is that has upset her, working out how to address it, giving her some strategies for dealing with it and keeping really open communication so that she'll come home from school and talk to us about those things, so that we can work out what's going on and try to address it, I suppose.
JANE CUNNINGHAM: I haven't sat down and explained to my 5-year-old daughter the nature of my sexual relationship with her father. How do you approach that subject, even the fact that you're a lesbian, to your child?
VICKI HARDING: We've had to talk about conception. But you take sex out of conception and then you're talking about science. And if we have to go anywhere near talking about sex or relationships, we talk about intimacy. We talk about who somebody loves, who they choose to be their partner. I mean, we haven't had an explicit talk about sex. But we do have to talk to her about relationships and people living together and partnerships probably more than straight couples have to because it's just assumed and it's so commonplace, I suppose. But we do spell some of that out. So she's aware of the variety of relationships. Sometimes she mixes up the names, like 'heterosexual' and 'straight'. But she does know that there's all different sorts of relationships, which can only be a good thing, I think.
GEORGE NEGUS: Well, whatever else you may or may not think, Brenna looks pretty happy with her family situation, if you ask me.
© 2005 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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