A British woman raised by a lesbian couple has warned of the potential for “irreparable, long-term damage to a child” by such an arrangement following her own “damaging and confusing” upbringing.
Actress Hetty Baynes Russell said she had spent years in therapy “trying to make sense” of her familial situation once her father had been removed from her life, allowing her mother, Margot, to bring her lesbian partner into the lives of her five children.
In an interview with the Daily Mail newspaper, Russell asserts that “far from being a healthy, nurturing state of affairs, this arrangement — where I was caught in a destructive, triangular battle for my mother’s affection with another woman, while forced to watch helplessly as my father was emasculated and airbrushed from our lives — was simultaneously damaging and confusing”.
For Russell, her confusion would, in her teenage years, lead to bouts of depression as well as anorexia.
“That has been the problem for me all of my life,” she insists. “Despite the enormous amount of privilege I enjoyed, it was a life of confusion and a lack of emotional security. And that is why I was in therapy for so many years, trying to make sense of it all”.
Russell went on to issue a stark warning.
“Sometimes, frighteningly often, in fact,” she said, “unconventional parental relationships end up being hotbeds of jealousy and confusion that are damaging to children.”
