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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Tuesday, 10 February 2004) . . Page.. 90 ..

arrangement would suffice there. There is another group who might benefit most from this type of law—

Mr Stanhope: The children.

MR STEFANIAK: No. The children do not, Jon, and that is part of the problem. In the example of a lesbian relationship where there is a child, it is very hard to imagine that the absent parent would consent to an adoption. If a man runs off with another woman or another man, or if a woman leaves with another man or another woman, the partner who does not have custody of the child is very unlikely to give up their rights in relation to that child. This is not something we will see much of at all, and the Chief Minister is simply going down this path of, “Yes, it’s social engineering.” But a lot of people who might expect much from this legislation will find themselves disappointed because of the practicalities of it.

A number of articles have been written on this issue. I will read from one on the role that mothers and fathers play in bringing up children. It is an article by Dr Dailey, a senior fellow in culture studies at the Family Research Council, who earned his PhD at Marquette University. He refers to and quotes an American academic from New York, Mr Blankenhorn. Dr Dailey writes:

Homosexual or lesbian households are no substitute for a family: Children also need both a mother and a father. Blankenhorn discusses the different but necessarily roles that mothers and fathers play in children’s lives. “If mothers are likely to devote special attention to their children’s present physical and emotional needs, fathers are likely to devote special attention to their character traits necessary for the future, especially qualities such as independence, self-reliance, and the willingness to test limits and take risks.” Blackenhorn further explains:

Compared to a mother’s love, a father’s love is frequently more expectant, more instrumental, and significantly less conditional…For the child, from the beginning, the mother’s love is an unquestioned source of comfort and the foundation of human attachment. But the father’s love is almost a bit further away, more distant and contingent. Compared to the mother’s love, the father’s must frequently be sought after, deserved, earned through achievement.

They are very different roles. Dailey continues:

Parents also discipline their children differently: “While mothers provide an important flexibility and sympathy in their discipline, fathers provide ultimate predictability and consistency. Both dimensions are critical for an efficient, balanced, and humane child-rearing regime. The complementary aspects of parenting that mothers and fathers contribute to the rearing of children are rooted in the innate differences of the sexes, and can no more be arbitrarily substituted than can the very nature of male and female. Accusations of sexism and homophobia notwithstanding, along with attempts to deny the importance of both mothers and fathers in the rearing of children, the oldest family structure of all turns out to be the best.

As I said earlier, marriages do not always last, and many end in divorce. That is not the issue here. We are not talking about broken marriages and broken homes; we are talking about adoption, about a small number of children who are entitled to have their rights

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