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THIS week mum and Hollywood superstar Jodie Foster came out as a lesbian.

She has two young boys, Charles who is nine and Kit, six. Apparently she has been with producer Cydney Bernard for some years and their relationship has been an open secret in Hollywood.

She has never disclosed how she conceived the two little boys. Then again, she has never needed to do so.

Being a mega-rich A-lister with 50 films to her name she never had to worry about turning to the American version of the CSA to force the bloke who donated his sperm to pay up for their upkeep.

Unlike Terri Arnold and her partner Sharon who have recently done a great disservice to gay mums.

Terri and Sharon were in a civil partnership and wanted children. They didn’t want to pay the prices charged by sperm donor clinics so friendly fireman Andy Bathie stepped in to volunteer his own sperm.

Terri, right, first gave birth to a little girl and then to a little boy. Sharon reportedly legged it.

Terri wanted to stay at home to look after her son who had some digestive problems and reported Andy to the CSA.

Andy now has to pay Terri £400 a month to support the children, while Sharon, who planned the children with Terri has no financial responsibility as she is not their biological mother.

So, the children, born as a result of this couple wanting to play mummies, are left without one of those parents and totally rejected by the biological father who is fighting hard not to have to pay up.

This is a minefield where the law hasn’t had the chance to catch up with the complexity of same sex civil partnerships.

But gay couples can’t have it both ways. If two women are so committed to one another that they want to start a family, great, but they can’t then renege on all responsibilities and drag the – in this case rather naïve – man into the equation and force him to take financial responsibility.

There is nothing wrong with two loving women raising children. Historically, women have often brought up children together.

During war-time in the last century, thousands of kids knew very little about having a man around the house.

In fact, the notion that a father must be active as a role model is fairly new, a concept that developed as women gained more independence.

What children need is love and stability, and it doesn’t matter if the parents are two women in a relationship.

It is probably far better for the child to be raised by two women in a loving relationship than by the traditional man and woman in a difficult, strained or even abusive relationship.

Civil partnerships for same sex couples has been a natural progression in a civilised world. But couples such as Terri and Sharon must now grow up, too. Playing at being married and having kids isn’t good enough.

The rules for Terri and Sharon must be the same as the rest of us.

Have a child, and you are responsible for their financial wellbeing. Being a lesbian, and not its biological parent is not an excuse.

And the price of parenting

AT LAST, it’s official.

Mothers who are stuck at home with the baby are less satisfied with life than mums who go out to work.

Worse than that, if you are a mum at home with a small child, then your husband or partner will suffer from a ‘significantly reduced’ sense of satisfaction.

So he’s not coming home happy, either.

The new study, published this week by the Institute for Social & Economic Research in Colchester, examined people’s job satisfaction, lifestyle situation and work-life balance.

They followed 4,000 couples over a period of seven years, so it has to be taken as a serious study.

But there is nothing here that we didn’t know already.

Most mothers, and certainly very many of those that I know, will tell you that being at home looking after a baby or toddler can be an incredibly lonely experience.

But still it is difficult to get people to talk about it.

To admit to being lonely, depressed or just finding life tough while you’re at home looking after a child is somehow tantamount to admitting that you are some kind of parental failure.

But life does get better as they grow up and become little people and companions, instead of being totally dependent.

Women with children aged five to 15 were happier than those without children.

But they were far happier still if they had a job to go to, which is another bit of information that we all knew anyway.

But we should spare a thought for all the dads out there.

Even children of school age brought no increase in happiness for them.

I bet it’s because they never bother to immerse themselves in their children’s lives as mothers do.

And it’s quite nice to know that there is an upside after all to all that constant juggling that’s always left to the mum.

Wedi to go!

NEXT week we’ll be looking ahead to Christmas on Wedi 7.

Opera singer Gwyn Hughes Jones will be singing a carol on Thursday, with Angharad Brinn, Welsh band Frizbee and Deiniol Rees also entertaining us.

Singer Deiniol is my Monday guest. He judged in this year’s Urdd National Eisteddfod and gave second prize to X-Factor star Rhydian Roberts, so he’ll be answering some tricky questions tomorrow, then.