Separated Same-Sex Parents: Troubling the Same-Sex Parented Family

Abstract

Same-sex parented family research and academic literature has focused primarily on intact families and/or those created after a heterosexual divorce–their family models, methods of family creation and the fertility process, and the health and well-being of their children. Similarly, separation and divorce research and academic literature has focused primarily on opposite-sex parented families. To date, limited research has explored the experiences of same-sex parents who separated after having children within their relationship. This article reports on findings from a qualitative study of semi-structured in-depth interviews with 22 same-sex parents in Australia who had experienced parental separation and aims to contribute to a new phase of same-sex relationship and parenting research that explores divorce and separation. Participants were acutely aware that their separation and post-separation families troubled the social expectations and mores of the same-sex parented family by appearing to break unwritten rules, threatening to disrupt campaigns for social and political acceptance, and falling off an apparent pedestal that their families and relationships had been placed on. Separated same-sex parents were also concerned that their families would disrupt efforts to achieve social and political acceptance–and this created challenges with recruitment and interviewing techniques with male participants in particular. This article will demonstrate the pressure for same-sex parents to present an idyllic image of family. It will also discuss how, as a consequence of being seen as troubling, same-sex parental separation created experiences of isolation and invisibility for parents during and after their separation.