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The fact that whenever lesbian mothers on television have children who are still minors (as opposed to children who are already adults), they are almost always boys is a reflection of more stereotypes at work--namely, that gay parents are more likely to raise gay children (especially when the child is of the same gender), and that homosexuals are prone to pedophilia, or some combination of both. This includes the children in A Question of Love, Other Mothers, Friends, NYPD Blue, Two Mothers For Zachary, Popular, and Queer as Folk, among others.

The only two exceptions--Laurie Manning's daughter on Ellen and Brooke Shields' and Cherry Jones' daughter in What Makes a Family--were in projects that were produced by women who are among the most outspoken gay advocates in Hollywood: Ellen DeGeneres (Ellen), and Whoopi Goldberg and Barbara Streisand (What Makes a Family). This is hardly a coincidence.

The networks clearly presume it is less threatening to (straight) television viewers if they show lesbian mothers raising boys instead of girls (since there is little public fear that lesbians will produce gay sons or molest little boys.)

One way television series offset the potentially controversial image of lesbian parents is by making TV lesbian mothers extremely conventional--more conventional, in fact, than most of the heterosexual parents or couples on television these days.

Straight parents and mothers can be unconventional or in unconventional relationships--such as just-friends Ross and Rachel on Friends, Sydney's double-agent parents on Alias, Phoebe the witch and her demonic husband on Charmed, or single Ally McBeal as, well, herself on Ally McBeal.

But lesbian mothers usually resemble a same-gender Ozzie and Harriet, with a few quirks but no serious dysfunction allowed. Jane Alexander and Gina Rowlands in A Question of Love, Brooke Shields and Cherry Jones in What Makes a Family, and Sharon Stone and Ellen Degeneres in If These Walls Could Talk Two all play couples who are closer to perfect that almost any other couple on television, as are Abby Sullivan and her partner on NYPD Blue and Kerry and Sandy on ER (although Kerry is shown to be a multi-dimensional person in the workplace).

Melanie and Lindsay are perhaps allowed more room to have flaws in their relationship than most couples, but this is partly because they are on a series entirely about gay people.

This strategy, as Suzanna Danuta Walters asserts in her book "All The Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in American," "visually asserts the absolute ordinariness of the family life as a precursor to the introduction of the gay theme" which functions to "invite the 'sympathy' of the viewer" before introducing their sexuality (221).

In other words, the strategy is to make the lesbian characters so "normal" and easy to identify with, viewers will almost forget that they're gay.

It is clear that most television shows do not yet know what to do with lesbian characters after the "struggling with their sexuality" storyline, which can only be strung out for so long. Instead of risking potential controversy by exploring other aspects of being a lesbian--or just being a person who happens to be a lesbian--they fall back on the one storyline they know will resonate with a majority of their audience: motherhood.