In Clubby World of SF Mothers, Men Need Not Apply
The city's dominant parenting organization is gender-specific
For your consideration, one upwardly mobile San Franciscan’s CV:
Wharton M.B.A.: Check. Happily married: Check. Good job at a white-shoe firm: Check. Nice house in Noe Valley: Check. Adorable baby son: Check.
Ability to enroll said son in the popular play groups run by the Golden Gate Mothers Group: Nil.
This young banker, who didn’t want his name used because his employer has a strict no-media policy, would hardly seem the sketchy type that a well-meaning private club would bar.
But he and his husband are men. As such, they and their little boy are personae non gratae at the Golden Gate Mothers Group, which since its founding in 1996 has grown to an organization of 4,000. Members must live in San Francisco, have children younger than kindergarten age and be mothers — of the strict-constructionist female variety.
The group, which takes in revenue north of $300,000 annually, mostly from dues, is by far the dominant parenting organization in town. (The latest census data show only about 40,000 young children in the city.) G.G.M.G. offers three core benefits to members. It acts as an information exchange, where pediatrician recommendations, hiring of nannies and admission tips to private preschools are particularly popular topics. It negotiates discounts for members at local retailers and service providers.
And perhaps most important, G.G.M.G. assigns members’ children to play groups, where the pre-preschoolers forge their first social connections.
G.G.M.G. assumes a particularly important role in the lives of first-time parents, like our young banker, who are often high-achieving young professionals intent on optimizing both their experience as parents and their children’s experience as, well, children. So shortly after taking home his new son in February, the banker sought to join the group. “Everyone who knows about it talks about how great it is,” he said in an interview.
He was rebuffed. An e-mail signed by the G.G.M.G. Membership Committee informed him that “to be a member, you must be a woman.”
In his email to the group, the banker argued that "my child is being prevented from benefiting from the wealth of information and knowledge available to your parent network why does Golden Gate Mothers choose to be sexist in its operations?"
Sumi Das, a spokeswoman for the group, said that a gay father applies — and is rejected — about every other month. “We are the Golden Gate Mothers Group,” Das said in an interview. The group maintains that women’s ability to be frank and comfortable in their interactions would be inhibited by the presence of men.
There are G.G.M.G. play groups for a long list of affinity groups, including lesbians, Farsi speakers, children with food allergies, vegetarians, former New Yorkers — even “nerdy” types who like to knit Yoda hats.
But men, of any affinity, are out of the question.
Bevan Dufty, a former city supervisor and current mayoral candidate, was aghast when told the young banker’s story. “I cannot imagine that this isn’t gender discrimination,” said Dufty, who is gay. “It seems to me that the club is straight up denying public accommodation provided to other individuals.”
Private social clubs are generally allowed to include or exclude anyone they please. But when challenged in court, exclusivity often yields. San Francisco’s men-only Olympic Club, for example, was forced to admit women 20 years ago after Louise Renne, the city attorney at the time, sued on the grounds that the club leased a public golf course from the city.
Sharon Vinick, a Harvard-trained lawyer and a leading local authority on civil rights law, said that a 2000 United States Supreme Court ruling on the Boy Scouts allowed private clubs to discriminate, but that this right applied only if admitting the shunned individuals would “affect in a significant way” the “fundamental characteristics” of the club’s activities. Barring members “simply on gender seems problematic, especially if the group merely provides social activities for tots and parenting advice to adults,” she said.
It is hard to imagine that the tenor of a G.G.M.G. play group would be spoiled by the presence of a gay dad or two.
The young father/banker is hardly the rabble-rousing type and seems resigned to the snub. Which is not to say that it doesn’t sting.
In San Francisco, being gay and married and adopting a baby is hardly controversial. But even the most credentialed of that set are finding that for the alpha mommy play group, they just don’t measure up.
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