Queer Stepfamilies

Abstract

This work examines the social and legal experiences of lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer stepparent families. The data come from fifty-one interviews with origin and/or stepparents from forty-three different families formed after a heterosexual or same-sex relationship dissolved. Study families lived in eighteen states, with most residing in the South. Respondents became parents in a variety of ways. While the stepparents became parents through their romantic partnerships, the origin parents had a wider range of experiences. Some origin parents became parents as teenagers or in their early twenties within heterosexual relationships or nonromantic encounters that led to pregnancy. Others became parents later in life while in a heterosexual marriage. Still others became parents within a same-sex relationship (through birth or adoption). Regardless of their various paths to parenthood, the respondents share the experience of raising in a same-sex family children who were conceived or adopted in a different family structure. In most study families, the parents raising these children engage in various degrees of plural parenting. Queer Stepfamilies is about the complex dynamics that influence parenting under these circumstances and highlights the ingenious ways respondents make their families work. In this book Acosta asks: How do lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer stepparent families forge a path toward plural parenting? How do state family laws shape the respondent families’ parent-child relationships? Are lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer stepparent families formed after a heterosexual relationship dissolved different from those formed after a same-sex relationship dissolved?