Gender, Families and Social Change

Abstract

Bell & Binnie (2000) argue that all citizenship is sexual citizenship. In other words, citizenship is mediated by sexual identity. The ability to have your partnership legally recognised, to seek redress for sexual orientation discrimination in the workplace, to become an adoptive parent, to feel safe in expressing your sexual identity in public spaces — through words, physical affection with a partner, or appearance: all of these are mediated by the nation-state context in which you live. Narratives of citizenship often assume a heterosexual citizen (Valentine, 2001). Thus, welfare states traditionally developed policies that catered largely to a heterosexual nuclear family. Discussions of family, particularly references to ‘the family’ often assume that the two parent model of kinship is an inevitable expression of biological reproduction. Yet, as Schneider (1984: 75) pointed out, kinship is an ‘empirical question’, not a ‘universal fact’. Stacey (1990: 2) similarly described family as ‘a locus not of residence, but of meaning and relationships’. Cross-cultural studies have illustrated the variety of understandings of kinship in place (Herdt, 1984; Bauer & Thompson, 2006). The heterosexual nuclear family model is one type of family form but many others have and do exist across time and place. Welfare states and public policy are increasingly forced to respond to the plurality and individuality of kinship forms in contemporary society.