Lesbian And Gay Parenting

Through the voices of lesbian and gay parents and their children talking about their experiences, Martin shows how to build the kind of support network that all parents need.

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.

In their own words, children of different ages talk about how and when they learned of their gay or lesbian parent's sexual orientation, and the effect it has had on them.

The past several decades have seen increasing controversies over lesbian and gay parenthood. More same sex couples than ever are becoming parents, building their families while others debate their legal rights pertaining to marriage and parenthood. Against this sociopolitical backdrop, how do same sex couples transition to parenthood, and what are their experiences as parents? Furthermore, what are the experiences of their children? This book provides a comprehensive overview of the research on same sex parenthood, exploring ways in which lesbian and gay parents resist, accommodate, and transform fundamental notions of gender, parenting, and family. The book takes a family life cycle approach, beginning with research on how same sex couples meet and build healthy relationships, then describing how and why same sex couples decide to have children and how they grapple with the changing roles each partner must adopt. Their experiences raising children through young adulthood are explored, including the challenges of interacting with their children's schools and teachers. In the end, the book considers the perspectives of the children themselves, as young adults and adults speak out about their experiences having lesbian or gay parents. Integrating both qualitative and quantitative research, this book incorporates a range of disciplines, including psychology, sociology, sexuality/gender studies, and human development. It also highlights understudied aspects of same sex parenting, such as termination of couple relationships. With practical recommendations in every chapter, this book is a resource for those who research lesbian and gay mental health and family issues, as well as those who provide services to lesbian and gay parents and parents-to-be.

A new, multidisciplinary look at GLBT parenting Over the past 30 years, research on gay and lesbian parents has produced findings that challenge deeply rooted beliefs in child psychology about the processes through which parents influence the development of their children. Gay and Lesbian Parenting: New Directions builds on this important research with a detailed multidisciplinary examination of established knowledge and emerging information. In addition to evaluating already substantiated findings, this innovative collection marks a turning point in the field by showcasing a new wave of research that examines the dynamics of same-sex parenting and addresses questions about newly emerging concerns such as the consequences of different routes to same-sex parenthood and the effects of social perceptions on gay and lesbian family life. Gay and Lesbian Parenting: New Directions presents an overview of significant developments and suggests future directions for the field. Arranged in four sections, this unique text offers cutting-edge information gathered from both quantitative and qualitative research methods. Section one considers gay and lesbian family formation and the may routes through which lesbians and gay men have become parents. Section two reviews family relationships from parents', and their children's, perspective. The contributions to the third section discuss how gay and lesbian families describe themselves to others. The final section examines the public perceptions held by heterosexuals about lesbian and gay parenting and looks toward possibilities for the future. Chapters in Gay and Lesbian Parenting: New Directions: look at established research and the perspective of gay and lesbian parents and their children on family life explore methodological advances in the research field define the demographics of gay and lesbian parenting and the comparisons of lesbians, gay men, heterosexual women, and heterosexual men without children consider the decisions involved in and the systemic process of donor insemination and surrogacy study gay and lesbian adoptive parents investigate representations of diversity in storybooks for children of gay and lesbian parents situate gay men’s journeys into fatherhood within the sociohistorical context of developments in the United States tell personal stories about the prospect of gay fatherhood present a consideration of the different identities that lesbian and heterosexual mothers construct critically consider the terminology used both within and outside lesbian-parented families to describe a wide variety of co-parenting relationships give an introduction to critical psychology and deconstruct the debate over the importance of paternal influence report findings from a large community survey in Australia on attitudes toward same-sex parenting and beliefs about developmental outcomes and much more! Accessible and detailed, with numerous case studies, bibliographies, tables, and figures, Gay and Lesbian Parenting: New Directions is an ideal resource for students and educators, researchers and professionals working in GLBT and Queer Studies, family therapists, counselors, psychotherapists, social workers, and psychiatrists.

In America today, more than 10 million children have gay or lesbian parents. Reinventing the Family is the first in-depth look at the joys, challenges, and issues facing these nontraditional families. It offers invaluable insight to gay and lesbian people who are choosing children, fighting for custody, and challenging our view of "family values".

Much current work on lesbian and gay kinship still overlooks the significance of socio-economic status. This book explores the intersections between class and sexuality in lesbians' and gay men's experiences of parenting and the everyday pathways navigated therein, from initial routes into parenting and household divisions of labour, to location preferences, schooling choice and community supports. In a context of international legal changes, this study seeks to situate parents as both sexual and classed subjects, interrogating the relevance of class and sexual (dis)advantages. Frequently lesbian and gay families are positioned at the vanguard of transformations in intimacy while often empirically absent in such declarations: they are misplaced in this dual over-emphasis (as agents of social change) and sidelining (under-investigated when compared to the research on heterosexual families). This book utilizes the concept of social capital, combining a Bourdieusian notion of capital as specifically classed, alongside that evidenced in the 'families of choice' literature. The theoretical opposition of different frameworks of 'social capital' advances class conceptualisations, exploring too the ways that (middle) classed capitals sometimes do not pay off, as a result of occupying non-normative sexualities.