2009 Update: Since this article was written six years ago, little has changed for queer women on American TV – the storylines of virtually all adult lesbian/bi couples (and most adult lesbian/bi characters) have revolved around getting pregnant, having a baby, or parenting, except on The L Word. For recent examples, see ABC’s Cashmere Mafia, Logo’s Exes & Ohs, and CBS’s daytime drama Guiding Light. The sole exception – for now, anyway – is ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy.
In 1993, Meredith Baxter received an Emmy nomination for her role in the CBS afterschool special Other Mothers, a controversial episode about a teenage boy with lesbian parents. At the time, it was a unique and bold initiative, as it was extremely rare to see lesbians on television, let alone lesbian parents; most people thought “lesbian” and “mother” were incompatible.
In the ten years since then, the number of lesbian characters on TV whose storylines revolve around their role as a mother (or desire to be a mother) has grown to such epidemic proportions, it now appears that all lesbians do is have and raise children – when they’re not losing custody of them and fighting to get them back.
COMING OUT, CONCEPTION, AND CUSTODY BATTLES Some TV series lesbian characters are clearly positioned as mothers from the beginning, such as Carol and Susan on Friends (1994), Laurie Manning on Ellen (1997), and Melanie and Lindsay on Queer as Folk (1999). Motherhood is introduced early on as defining characteristics of these characters, and most of their storylines revolve around parenting in some way.A more recent trend in ensemble series is the lesbian-insemination storyline. While it was unique when Norma Lear on Sisters first did it in 1993, it’s now such an oft-used plot device it’s downright boring.
From Det. Abby Sullivan and her partner on NYPD Blue in 1996 to Dr. Kerry Weaver’s decision to have a child with her girlfriend on ER to Sharon Stone and Ellen DeGeneres’ wacky insemination antics in the 2000 Showtime movie If These Walls Could Talk 2, it’s a trend that will not die.Even Showtime’s new lesbian series The L Word, premiering next summer, includes a couple trying to get pregnant.
Another popular plot device in recent years is to make the mother of a main character gay, such as Roseanne’s mother on Roseanne (1996), Steve’s mother on Beverly Hills 90210 (1999), Harrison’s mother on Popular (1999) or Raina’s mothers (played by Sally Struthers and Debbie Allen) on The Division.
There have also been numerous television movies about revolve around lesbian parents. Some focus on lesbian parents fighting for custody of their children, beginning with 1978’s A Question of Love, then Two Mothers for Zachary (1996) and What Makes a Family (2001), or coping with unexpected parenthood, as in Bobbie’s Girl (2002), or dealing with the implications on your children of coming out, as in Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammerymeyer Story (1994) and the upcoming movie An Unexpected Love (2003), which Lifetime describes as a movie about “a mother dealing with divorce and her sexuality.”
The only broadcast or cable television movie in recent years about a lesbian who isn’t a mother is The Truth About Jane (2000), and that’s only because the gay character is a teenager.
In fact, teenage lesbians are about the only other kind of lesbian character you will find on television besides the Lesbian Mother.WHAT’S WRONG WITH LESBIAN MOMS? Obviously, there’s nothing inherently wrong with storylines about lesbian mothers.
In fact, they would be welcome if they were well written (which they usually aren’t) and just one of a variety of different storylines about lesbians on TV – but they’re not.
Trying to conceive, adopt, get custody, or otherwise deal with children are virtually the only stories adult lesbians get on TV anymore (besides coming out), and the reason TV writers fall back on this storyline is less about exploring the joys of motherhood than it is about desexualizing lesbians and making them more palatable for straight viewers.
Although television has always been about finding a good idea and beating it to death, the lesbian-as-mother trend has lasted longer than most because it is rooted in deep-seated stereotypes about women and lesbians.
IT’S ABOUT SEXISM The first is the notion that “woman” is synonymous with “mother.” The endurance of this stereotype has resulted in a persistent double-standard in television roles for men and women – male roles only sometimes revolve around parenting issues, while roles for women overwhelmingly do
This is slowly changing with the popularity of shows like Everwood and 8 Rules for Dating My Daughter, which revolve heavily around fatherhood, and the proliferation of shows like Law and Order, Alias, and ER, which feature women in roles that focus primarily on their professional life. But it’s still hardly a level playing field.
It isn’t even that so many of the lesbian characters are mothers that is the problem – it’s that their storylines revolve around their role as a mother as if it defined them exclusively.
There are some exceptions, such as Dr. Weaver’s role of as physician on ER and, occasionally, Melanie’s role as a lawyer on Queer as Folk, but for the most part, the storylines for lesbian characters who are mothers overwhelmingly focus on issues related to motherhood.
IT’S ABOUT HOMOPHOBIA 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, the underlying belief 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 less 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. So 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.
IT’S ABOUT LAZY, UNINFORMED WRITING Another factor contributing to the persistence of this trend is that most TV writers don’t actually watch TV, so they all think they’ve come up with something new and groundbreaking with these lesbian motherhood storylines.Even when they do know, they don’t necessarily care. Employing a lesbian parenting storyline on an ensemble show is an easy way to intertwine the storyline of the lesbian/bi characters with those of other characters on the show. Lesbian(s) are sometimes saddled with a boring, stereotypical storyline simply because it serves the show’s larger narrative arc, or advances the storylines of other (straight) characters.
The lesbian moms on Friends are a prominent example of this lesbian-mom-as-plot-device, although perhaps not a fair one, since Carol and Susan were never meant to exist anywhere but on the periphery. Better examples are the lesbian insemination storyline on NYPD Blue, and most of Lindsay and Melanie’s storyline on Queer as Folk.
A BLEAK HORIZON This lesbian-as-mother trend has gotten so out of control that there is currently only one recurrent adult lesbian character on broadcast or cable television who is not a mother – Willow of Buffy the Vampire Slayer – and that is probably because she is only a few years out of her teens. If Buffy lasts beyond this season, I won’t be at all surprised to see a storyline next year in which Willow and potential new girlfriend Kennedy ask Xander to be the father of their child.
There have been a few other adult lesbian characters in recent years without children, like Original Cindy of Dark Angel and Rhonda on Relativity in 1996, but these characters are historically far outnumbered by the ones who have children (or are in the process of trying to have them).
Subscription channels like HBO and Showtime are the only place on television where you can consistently find dynamic, multi-dimensional adult lesbian characters who are not all full-time mothers, on shows like The Wire and The L Word and in original movies like Gia, Common Ground, If These Walls Could Talk 2, and A Girl Thing. But these channels are too expensive for many and not available to some, so they are not an adequate solution to the problem.
Since everyone copies everyone else in Hollywood, it is possible that the success enjoyed by HBO and Showtime with shows and movies that dare to present multi-dimensional lesbian characters will convince network television to give it a try.
In the meantime, I’ll be expecting the “good news” from Willow any day now – since on television, biology is destiny, after all.
