The Fosters

So I have kinda gotten into a new ABC Family tv show recently entitled The Fosters. I’m sure none of the people that read this watch it, but it is actually pretty good. I was watching the season finale last night and thinking how appreciative I am of this show. Let me explain. 

So the show is about a family, half made up of foster kids, half adopted kids, and one biological son. One parent is a cop, another a school vice principle I believe. It follows the lives of all the kids and the parents and the trouble the kids get into and the dynamic  of the foster kids entering this house and the family having to deal not only with that but just everyday happenings of life and teenagers. I was a little concerned and nervous to watch it at first, because the two parents I have mentioned are both female. I didn’t want this show to end up being the next glee, in that they start to sound all preachy and every episode has to have some sort of social issue and PSA involved. TV shows can be so political sometimes, and while it isn’t a terrible thing to sometimes touch on these topics, sometimes it can be a little much. 

I know for a good amount of this country still, they don’t see this as a normal family. Or don’t accept it or would kinda turn the other way. I know this isn’t the first time TV shows have shown a family with a gay couple, but it is the first of its kind and it has changed my thoughts about my own future. I know there are shows out there like Modern Family and that is greatly successful and sure there are gay characters on shows more often, but this is the first time there has been a show strictly centering around one family that is lead by a gay couple. Think of all the shows that are centered around a certain family, from even the beginning of tv and movies...I Love Lucy, The Cosby Show, Everybody Loves Raymond, The King of Queens, The Middle, you get the point. All about just normal families and everyday life. The thing I love about this show, is that it shows the same thing. There is no difference. We are all just one family. Two people just doing the best they can to raise their kids in a loving, caring household. 

Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely times when politics gets thrown in your face a little bit, but as the deal with life in general. The reason this show has impacted me is because it has shown life with such normalness (which I will now call a word.) When you hear for so long that gay people shouldn’t be able to get married and have kids, maybe sometimes you just believe them and lose the will to even think otherwise anymore. For the past little while, I would say that I’m never getting married and I would probably never have kids either. It all just seemed like such a foreign concept to me. No one would ever approve. Everyone would look at me weird. My family would judge me. Society would judge me. If I ever had kids, what emotional scarring would I alreadyyyyy inflict on a child by me, being gay, being their mom. I just can’t deal with that type of pressure. The thing about this show though, is that it is so normal. They are just like every other family. They love their kids and their kids love them. These kids needed a loving home and with the Fosters, they got one. 

In last nights episode, the 2 moms got married. I felt I was watching what would be my emotions in the character of Steph. She never really wanted to get married. I guess she was a little just bitter about it. Her dad didn’t want to go, and she was having a conversation with him, saying that maybe she didn’t want to get married because she thought it was weird too...two girls standing up there. Who would even walk down the isle? This is silly. But then she realized, she didn’t want to not get married because they were her feelings, but because they were her dads. She believed and had it ingrained in her that 2 females can’t marry and it would be weird. So she lived with that all her life. Here she was, in a loving, long term relationship with 3 kids and 2 foster kids, and yet still couldn’t bring herself to get married. Until she realized she could. That all of those thoughts weren’t hers but those thrown upon her. 

Now I’m not saying this to all of the sudden announce that I am going to have a wedding and raise a heap of kids, but I am saying that I like my life better knowing it is a possibility. That possibly, maybe, someday I would want a normal life too. Being able to settle down with someone I love and maybe even have kids. Invite kids that don’t have a family into mine. Love them like I have been loved. And maybe I am still not keen on the idea of marriage, but maybe one day I will be. And if you don’t believe I should be, then you don’t have to come….as a matter of fact, I wouldn’t want you to come. No offense, but, I guess you can just pick and choose the status updates you like of mine on Facebook and I would just have the people that supported me there. (It’ll never happen, so you can just calm down) 

Anyway, all of this to say, this show has got me thinking. I think it is good for America, it’s good for me, it’s good for everyone in general. And not just for showing a family with 2 moms, but with adopted and fostered kids as well. I have heard a lot of good things from that community about how they are tackling those subjects and how foster kids and adopted kids are happy to finally see some representation of their own on tv. It’s finally widening the scope of visibility for a lot of different people, and I really like that.