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This book studies the growing number of lesbian women embarking on parenthood after coming out. Theoretical debates about lesbian motherhood often consider its assimilative or transgressive dimensions. This book offers a different approach, contextualising lesbian motherhood in relation to sexual citizenship and hegemonic discourses of kinship
How do lesbians decide to become mothers or remain childfree? Why do new families form at particular historical moments? These questions are at the heart of Nancy J. Mezey’s New Choices, New Families. Researchers, politicians, and society at large continue to debate the changing American family, especially nontraditional families that emerge from divorce, remarriage, grandparents-as-parents, and adoption. This ongoing discussion also engages the controversy surrounding the parental rights of same-sex couples and their families. New Choices, New Families enters into this conversation. Mezey asks why lesbians are forming families at this particular historical moment and wonders how race, class, sexual identity, and family history factor into the decision-making process. Drawing heavily from personal interviews, Mezey’s groundbreaking analysis gives voice to groups long underrepresented in similar studies—black, Latina, working class, and childfree lesbians. Some chapters examine how childhood experiences contribute to the desire to become a mother, while others consider the influence of women’s partners and careers. New Choices, New Families provides thoughtful insights into questions about sexual identity, social and cultural expectations, and what and who constitute a family.
The issue of gay and lesbian parenting has been the focus of much controversy in recent years. The views of politicians, the public, and the clergy have received much media attention, often overshadowing those of the parents themselves. Fiona Nelson attempts to bridge this gap with Lesbian Motherhood, the first study of its kind, which explores the many aspects and stages of lesbian motherhood. Nelson's study is based on over thirty interviews with lesbian mothers in Alberta. The women fall into two groups: those raising children who had been conceived in prior heterosexual relationships and those raising children who had been conceived within lesbian relationships. The two groups provide a valuable comparison because, although the effects of the social context can be quite similar for each, their experiences of mothering are often strikingly different. Nelson explores such topics as reproductive decision-making, interacting with other mothers, the effects of the social context in which lesbian mothering is occurring, step-parenting, domestic and parenting roles, and raising boys. The non-supportive social milieu in which they exist is one of the major factors distinguishing lesbian families from many other families. There is some discussion in the book of the political activism that has occurred in Canada around the legal status and equality of lesbian women and their families. There is also a Canadian resource directory for lesbian mothers and prospective mothers.
A unique practical application of poststructuralist theory to lesbian mothers’ narratives, Lesbian Motherhood: Stories of Becoming analyzes the personal stories of 40 lesbian mothers to discover the complex ways their sense of self is constructed in the current legal, political, and social climate. These intimate narratives are examined by using Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s conceptual framework to understand subjectivities by focusing on the many flexible lines of movement that constitute subjectivities, or ‘becomings.’ This unique source reveals deep insight into a lesbian's construction of self through her stories about her own sexuality, parenting, and other experiences in becoming a mother. Lesbian Motherhood: Stories of Becoming challenges the assimilation/resistance perspective typically expressed by scholars of lesbian motherhood. Qualitative interviews reveal startling new perspectives to lesbian mother subjectivities viewed within the context of the legal, political, and social areas that seek to define and regulate contemporary family life. This powerful source explores in detail the discursive strategies through which lesbian subjectivities are created and recreated. Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of ‘becoming’ provides a valuable framework for analyzing the discursive strategies employed by those participating in this study. Lesbian Motherhood: Stories of Becoming offers insightful, powerful information that is indispensable to GLBT scholars, and social theorists.
Lesbian Motherhood in Europe by Kate Griffin,Lisa A. Mulholland Pdf
This important new book is both a narrative account and a comprehensive reference source about lesbian parenting in Western, Central and Eastern Europe. Inspirational stories from women across Europe demonstrate that shifting social, political and religious boundaries have facilitated a new visibility and openness for lesbian mothers. Changing public attitudes are explored in relation to the social, political and economic realities which largely mitigate against lesbian insemination parenting, fostering and adoption. Even in those countries where acceptance of lesbian and gay lifestyles has resulted in legal protection, such as anti-discrimination legislation and the right to register same-sex partnerships, the domain of the family remains reserved exclusively for heterosexuals. The women interviewed discuss how to conceive a child; the effects of children on lesbian relationships; lesbian identity versus motherhood; attitudes of friends, family and colleagues; relationships with the father; role models; and lesbian motherhood as a political act. Profiles of the 28 countries provide information about the political, social and economic climates as well as current details of legislation affecting lesbian access to donor insemination, adoption and fostering, child and family benefits, support groups and networks, and indicators for future change.
Gay and Lesbian Parenting by Jack Drescher,Deborah Glazer Pdf
Find sources of support for raising a nontraditional family in a straight world! The experience of parenting is commonly overlooked in psychological theory, and lesbians and gay men are not typically considered as parents or parents to be. Gay and Lesbian Parenting examines the psychological issues related to developing family and becoming parents for gay men and lesbians. Instead of pathologizing gay and lesbian families, it explores the emotional growth and development issues inherent in child-rearing. Traditionally, coming out as gay or lesbian meant abandoning any hope of becoming a parent or keeping your children if you already had them. But with the “gayby boom” in full swing, more and more gay and lesbian couples are having new babies, adopting children, and continuing to raise the offspring of previous heterosexual relationships. Although gay and lesbian parents still face unique challenges in building and rearing a family, as well as the usual problems heterosexual couples encounter, Gay and Lesbian Parenting unflinchingly examines these concerns and offers positive suggestions and ideas for dealing with the difficulties. This life-affirming book takes a look at the practical and emotional realities of raising children in nontraditional family structures, including: issues of kinship, shared motherhood, and possessiveness in lesbian couples legal issues entailed by the lack of marriage and legal kinship parenthood as a powerful force for personal growth and development fatherhood as a process of creating connectedness in the family, community, and place of worship original empirical research on the mental health of lesbians’children the history of the gay and lesbian movement as it relates to child-rearing Gay and Lesbian Parenting affirms the power of gay and lesbian couples to raise healthy, happy children and to change and grow through their experience of parenting. This book is also essential for mental health professionals from psychiatric nurses to psychiatrists who are working with the gay and lesbian community.
Lesbians & Child Custody by Dolores J. Maggiore Pdf
This work represents a collection of the most pertinent writing of the past fifteen years in the United States and Canada on the topic of lesbians and child custody. Articles were selected on the basis of their relevance, succinctness, and representativeness of the various aspects of child custody involving lesbians. Some of the original psychological studies comparing lesbian mothers to heterosexual mothers were sacrificed in favor of the piece by Patricia Falk, a thorough review of the psychological literature. For others, the length of the manuscript was prohibitive as was the case with the thorough, step-by-step Lesbian Mothers Litigation Manual by Donna Hitchens and Roberta Achtenberg of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.
Lesbian Parenting is an indispensable collection of articles examining the multi-faceted experience of being a lesbian parent. It offers information, inspiration, and support to lesbians considering parenthood, to women involved with lesbian mothers, and to lesbians with children.
For Lesbian Parents by Suzanne M. Johnson,Elizabeth O'Connor Pdf
Raising a child is overwhelming, thrilling, exhausting, terrifying, and joyous--and all at the same time. In addition to the adjustments that any new parents must make, lesbian mothers face numerous special questions and concerns. From "coming out" to your child to coping with the pressures of trying to be a lesbian super-mom, this wise and reassuring book offers information and support for women forging a new path in what it means to be a family. The authors are uniquely qualified for the task as expert developmental psychologists who are also coparenting two young daughters. With clarity and wit, they offer helpful advice on what kids need to know, and at what age; how to help them respond to questions and teasing from peers; ways to foster sensitivity in relatives, teachers, and others; how to talk to teens about their own developing sexuality; how parenting affects couple relationships; and much more. Chapters are packed with the insights and experiences of lesbians who have come to be parents in a variety of ways. Also included are listings of useful web sites, publications, and other resources. Winner--Best Parenting Book, ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year Awards
Within a society that long considered "lesbian motherhood" a contradiction in terms, what were the experiences of lesbian mothers at the end of the twentieth century? In this illuminating book, lesbian mothers tell their stories of how they became mothers; how they see their relationships with their children, relatives, lovers, and friends and with their children’s fathers and sperm donors; how they manage child-care arrangements and financial difficulties; and how they deal with threats to custody. Ellen Lewin’s unprecedented research on lesbian mothers in the San Francisco area captured a vivid portrait of the moment before gay and lesbian parenting moved into the mainstream of U.S. culture. Drawing on interviews with 135 women, Lewin provided her readers with a new understanding of the attitudes of individual women, the choices they made, and the texture of their daily lives.
She Looks Just Like You by Amie Klempnauer Miller Pdf
After ten years of talking about having children, two years of trying (and failing) to conceive, and one shot of donor sperm for her partner, Amie Miller was about to become a mother. Or something like that. Over the next nine months, as her partner became the biological mom-to-be, Miller became . . . what? Mommy’s little helper? A faux dad? As a midwestern, station wagon–driving, stay-at-home mom—and as a nonbiological lesbian mother—Miller both defines and defies the norm. Like new parents everywhere, she wrestled with the anxieties and challenges of first-time parenthood but experienced pregnancy and birth only vicariously. Part love story, part comedy, part quest, Miller’s candid and often humorous memoir is a much-needed cultural roadmap for becoming a parent, even when the usual categories do not fit.
In Transforming Law's Family, Fiona Kelly explores the complex issues encountered by planned lesbian families as they work to define their parental rights, roles, and family structures within the tenets of family law. While Canadian courts recognize lesbian parenthood in some circumstances, a number of issues that are largely unique to planned lesbian families � such as the legal status of known sperm donors and non-biological mothers � remain undefined. Drawing on interviews with lesbian mothers, Fiona Kelly illuminates the changing definitions of family and suggests a model for law reform that would enable the legal recognition of alternative forms of parentage.
