(Wall of text/Long post warning)
I've always hated when I'd be around a group of people and the topic of parents came up. I grew up with a lesbian mother and had no male figure in my life at all. On top of that, my mother was a die-hard feminist who was very vocal about how the "Patriarchy" was a horrible thing and anything male/masculine was vilified by her. On top of that, she was also bi-polar, manic-depressive, and insanely co-dependent with the classic care-taker personality.

Unfortunately, when I used to be more open about how I was raised, i'd basically have people tell me they're surprised I'm so well-mannered and polite, and I didn't turn out to be a delinquent who hated women/abused them, or didn't get in trouble with the law, seeing how I was raised by a "typical man-hating, lesbian femi-nazi". When I think about it, I can see how she did fit that disgusting stereotype... hell, my mom refused to even let me have a male figure in my life, as I recall a time I over-heard her talking to her friends one time and she mentioned she refused to let any male "patriarichal influence get to me" and she was gonna raise a son that "understood women". I only remember the conversation because being 9-20 years old, I thought she was talking about a parrot(bird) influencing me so I had to look up what it meant. After hearing that about half a dozen times I've just limited my description to her being a single parent and leave it at that. I'd rather not deal with those out there that'd drone on about how my mom was wrong to raise me, or have me for that matter, or try and vilify her being lesbian as a way to say "Hah, I knew it! See! Gay people shouldn't have kids! Look how bad it was for you!"

Seriously, I've been told that. It pisses me off to no end that they can't see how bad she was as a mother and have to equate it to the "LGBT's and children" debate. Not to mention getting in to the whole discussion of HOW she even had me, as I don't want to get in to how i'm considered a bastard because (I had come to learn from her last ex-partner/girlfriend) I was the result of an open-marriage relationship with another man, and I learned that she kept me a secret from him in fear of him taking me from her to be with a "normal" family as apparently back in the late 70's in the small-town Minnesota areas, I would've been taken by CPS for this or some crap? I dunno.. I guess the non-nuclear family model was looked down upon then in that area.

Sadly, I'll probably never know the truth 100% about the why or how my mother and father came together as I can only go on what my mom's ex has told me, and I won't talk to and I refuse to talk to my mother now, and it's something i'll have to live with. As I look back on my life and up-bringing though, there's so much that I see that has helped me realize that I am who I am and I am the way I am on so many things partly because how of how I was brought up/raised, and how I don't ever want to be like my mother in any way. I do envy people who had two parents steadily together, or at least in a person's life.