U.S. Schools Adapt to Changing Families

May 11 -- When President Woodrow Wilson declared the second Sunday of May Mother's Day more than 80 years ago, he probably had no idea how beloved the national holiday would become.

He probably also never imagined that honoring mothers could become controversial.

Yet, a lot has changed since 1914, and that includes the structure of the American family. So when a Manhattan school "banned" Mother's — and Father's — Day earlier this week, it kicked up a furor, with an article published in the New York Post.

Parents of children at the Rodeph Sholom Day School, the daily reported, were in an uproar over the new policy, which was aimed at protecting the feelings of children raised by same-sex couples.

The "ban" was a case of political correctness running amok, the paper suggested, and opponents of the move, such as Stanley Kurtz, a columnist at the National Review, called it an attack on the very institution of motherhood.

Even some children of gay and lesbian parents thought it was a tad excessive.

"Give me a break," said Meema Spadola, director of the public television documentary, Our House: A Very Real Document About Kids of Gay and Lesbian Parents, and daughter of a lesbian mother. "I think their heart is in the right place, but instead of getting rid of Mother's Day, it would have been a terrific opportunity to use it instead to describe different family structures."

We, a Family

Certainly the American family is not what it used to be. Approximately 30 years ago, a traditional U.S. household invariably meant a dad, mom and the children.

Today, over half of all American children do not live in so-called traditional two-parent nuclear families.

According to Congressional Research Service reports, nearly 500,000 American children live in foster care at any one time and approximately a million children in the United States live with adoptive parents.

Estimates of children of gay, lesbian and bisexual parents in the United States vary from 6 to 10 million according to COLAGE (Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere).