So, ok, I’m going to go on a small rant here, one that some may have an issue with since I’m not a parent. But, I’m a child and I have that prospective on this issue.

So, you may have heard that a college football player on the verge of being drafted into the NFL came out earlier this week. Michael Sam, a defensive end for Missouri and likely to be picked in the 3rd-5th round of the NFL draft, came out to the media (and the rest of us). He was already out to his teammates and others he was close to. He is, in some ways, an unlikely candidate to be the first openly gay athlete entering his pro career. He is one of 8 children, one who drowned as a 2-year old, one who was shot and killed at 15 breaking into a house, and one who disappeared in 1998 and hasn’t been heard from since. Two of his living brothers are in prison. Suffice it to say that his plan to go to college with his football prowess was predicated on his desire to get out of his hometown and try to stay alive. More power to him, but my peeve is only tangentially related to him.

Yesterday on NPR’s Here and Now, a former NFL player who has since come out as gay, Wade Davis, was being interviewed on the situation. He was at Sam’s press conference supporting his decision. But in response to some comments that Sam’s father had made to the effect that he was uncomfortable with a gay player in the NLF, even if it was his son, Wade said the following;

A lot of people won’t like me to say this, but I’m OK with that. You know, when I came out to my family, it was about three to four years of a really tough time. But I think that we have to sit back and go, like, what is the life of a parent like when their child announces that they’re LGBT.

Oftentimes our parents’ dreams die. So for my mother, when I told her I was gay, this dream that she had for her son has now died. So parents need to time to kind of grieve and to mourn, and everyone grieves very, very differently.

So, here’s my peeve. The idea that parents need time to ‘grieve’ when the dreams they have for their children ‘die’ is a crock of shit. Children are not born to be the repository of their parents hopes and dreams. I’ll give parents two dreams for their children – 1)that they are healthy and 2) that they find satisfaction with their lives. Beyond that, the idea that your children are on this planet to do anything other than live the lives they choose, and that you should somehow need time to mourn that their not doing what you had hoped, is ridiculous. How many bridezillas are created by mothers who are trying to have the wedding that they wanted from their mothers? How many boys (not only but mostly) are pushed into sports by dads who always wanted to be the star quarterback or point guard when the kid wants to participate in band or chess or poetry? How many couples are hounded by their parents and called selfish when they consider that they aren’t interested in having children?

And considering that Sam’s father has lost 5 children to death and prison, how is he grieving his one child that appears to have escaped the toxic environment that he helped create? (It’s possible that he’s not and that Wade is putting words into the father’s mouth, but I’ve heard that line many times about children who decide to reveal that they are gay.)

Parents need to help children find those things that they love, it’s part of growing up. Seeing a child you love find great joy in something they love had to be a wonderful feeling for a parent. But grieving that Sally won’t be a prima ballerina and Scott won’t play football on Friday nights is going a bit crazy. Grieving is something that is part of life, but it should be reserved for things that are really important – like death. And we are entering a world where members of the LGBT community have the same choices to have spouses and families as us boring heteronormative people do. What part of their lives are we supposed to be ‘grieving,’ except the possible discrimination they will suffer from idiots they encounter?

I was lucky that my family was more interested in me finding my place in the world than having me take the place that they had always wanted. But I saw other kids pushed around by their parents (including college students who were told what to major in). Having a child isn’t like creating a robot that you’re got programmed for life; it’s closer to throwing a rock in a pond and watching the ripples play across the surface.

(And, if you’re interested in reading a book about raising children with identities different from their parents, I heartily recommend “Far from the Tree:Parents, Children and the Search for Identity.” It’s a long book, but the insights are deep.)