Gay Uncles Face Off

I didn’t have a gay uncle growing up, but I remember the first one I saw. It was Paul Lynde, playing Samantha’s Uncle Arthur on Bewitched. No one said he was gay, but Arthur’s sneering innuendo, campiness, and suburban gate-crashing had enough cultural signifiers to raise a pink flag in my 9-year-old brain.

These days, real gay uncles are de rigueur. At least a dozen companies sell onesies printed with "I Love My Gay Uncle." A new children’s book called Uncle Bobby’s Wedding explores a young guinea pig’s jealousy when her favorite uncle marries his boyfriend. There are Facebook groups where teens praise their GUs ("I’m not gay, but my Uncle Herb is; yes, I do have a gay uncle!") and a co-ed worthy cocktail called "the gay uncle," made with Jack Daniels, cream, and Tabasco. The Urban Dictionary's definition of the term underscores the ubiquity: "gay uncles -- you either got one, or you are one -- or both!"

As a guncle myself, that seems like a good thing. When my niece Amber heard some schoolmates teasing two girls who were playing "wedding" at recess, she turned on them. “It’s called gay,” she shouted. “Get over it.”

While it’s nice that gay uncles have become integrated into the family circle, what’s our role supposed to be?

I have a master’s degree in early childhood education, and I’ve worked with young kids professionally for 20 years -- as a preschool teacher, school director, and youth researcher. I have seven nieces, and I wrote a book called The Gay Uncle’s Guide to Parenting. (Of course, being an expert is different from putting it into practice: The shoemaker’s kids go barefoot. Child psychologists are insane parents. You get the idea.)

When I was doing publicity for my book, interviewers consistently used a line that seemed to offer a clue: "Gays are the new grandmas."

At first the phrase confounded me. Was it a slight on my prematurely graying hair? My fashion sense? Eventually, I demanded an explanation.

My interrogator explained that it had to do with advancing maternal age, and its correlative impact on grand-maternal age. My mom -- exceptional in many ways -- was only 20 when she had her first kid, making her mom a grandparent at age 39. But many of my friends didn’t even start thinking about pregnancy until they were nearing 40, and their parents are all significantly older than mine.

If you do the math, you’ll realize that many modern grandparents are beginning this career change in their 70s. Even with recent advances in joint replacement, plastic surgery, and mental-robics, the current generation of grannies is, quite simply, old. Where my grandma taught us gin rummy, took us biking and swimming, and out to concerts -- I saw the Cars with her in ‘84; she and my sister hit the Jacksons' Victory tour that same year -- today’s nanas are more physically and mentally frail: forgetful of any child-rearing tricks they once had, and more likely to be using a walker than moon-walking.