For a lot of parents, watching their children grow from kids to teens and begin dating is a dreaded moment in life. But for Cynthia Bailey, it wasn’t just the fact that her 14-year-old daughter, Noelle, recently came of age to date, it’s who she wanted to date as well that worried her.
“Noelle just started high school and she likes boys and boys like her, which is totally expected and normal,” Bailey said a recent interview with RadarOnline.
However, Bailey says that she was concerned about whether or not her daughter was attracted to boys or girls, the latter of which she implies would’ve been problematic for her.
“It’s interesting because she has girlfriends who like girls, so I’m like, ‘Alrighty then.’ There’s nothing wrong with that, but on the flip side, I’m like, ‘Are you ready to like boys?’” said Bailey.
“Okay, at least it is boys that you like. At least I do not have to deal with the fact that you like girls,” she added.
Bailey explains that teens now have it as bad, if not worse, than the kids do when she was a teen and that she wants to foster the kind of open relationship with her daughter that she did not have with her own mother.
“It’s a lot raising a teenager in this day in time,” Cynthia said. “When I started to be curious when I entered high school, my mom was not the kind of mom [who was] like, ‘Honey, just tell me everything. Let’s be best friends.’ I never had any of that.”
The “RHOA” star says that she and Noelle have an open dialogue about the boys in her life and they even go on double dates with her husband, Peter, to help stay connected to Noelle.
“I may get a lot of flak from some moms who may think, ‘she’s too young, or what are you doing?’” Cynthia said. “But on the other hand, a lot of mothers are going to love the fact that my only goal is that I make sure I know what’s going on with Noelle.”
We’re glad that Bailey and her daughter connect so well with each other. It may be unfortunate that she mentioned it would be a problem if Noelle were gay. It’s similar to unnecessarily putting a negative connotation around an arbitrary characteristic like skin tone (“At least my daughter isn’t dark skinned”) or weight (“At least my daughter isn’t fat”). Neither children nor parents get to choose a child’s sexuality – nor should they be able to – and, not saying that Bailey doesn’t love her daughter, it’s clear she does, but something else you shouldn’t have a preference or choice about is loving and accepting your child unconditionally, regardless of how difficult it makes the task of parenting seem.
Check out some other parents who embrace and accept their LGBT kids below. – nicholas robinson
