Queer Family Research Articles

Procreative Possibilities: Analyzing The Philosophical And Ethical Dimensions Of Queer Couples Raising Children

Families are what matters the most, so how do queer families handle their roles? This research paper addresses the metaphysical aspects of queer couples raising children, going against traditional family roles. It also examines the ethics of parenthood, the associated moral considerations when queer couples decide to become parents and questions how responsibilities are perceived in queer households. It examines the ethical, social and legal implications of Aided Reproductive Technologies (ART) and adoption policies. Queer people have existed for centuries although these types of families are rather modern concepts. “Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) parents raise well-adjusted children” .The study endeavors to explore conventional beliefs about gender, sexuality, and the nuclear family by referencing feminist, queer, and intersectional theories. We wish to understand what prejudices are held against the children of these queer couples and how they handle such issues. In particular, the research focuses on the duties and ethical issues of persons who abandon past relationships or familial commitments to form queer families. It also explores the philosophical and ethical aspects of moving from a heterosexual lifestyle to a queer one. And in abandoning these responsibilities how these individuals disrupt the conventional family structures. It also looks at the positive ways in which such parenting can impact our societies and fundamentally change the way we look at diversity, equality and justice. In a changing society where traditional ideas of family are being reinvented, this research is crucial. It offers a thorough philosophical examination that can improve social fairness, guide public policy, and advance a more accepting conception of parenthood and family variety. Through an analysis of modern discussions and case studies, this paper seeks to enhance the understanding of family and parenthood to be more inclusive in the 21st century.

Finding Mother, Finding Ourselves: An Essay Inspired by Vissing’s “The Impact of Negation of the Maternal Body”

This paper places maternal subjectivity in an embodied, intersubjective context through the use of personal narrative. In response to the work of Helena Vissing (this issue), who lodges a critique of how psychoanalysis has negated aspects of maternal experience, it both extends and challenges her ideas, reacting to the disembodied nature of her critique and relocating it into the realm of an autobiographical story. It also problematizes cis-heteronormative biases in scholarship around maternal subjectivity through the inclusion of queer experience and queer family configurations in the narrative.

The Paradox of Play: A Conversation with Ken Corbett and Maggie Nelson

ABSTRACT In this conversation, Ken Corbett and Maggie Nelson address motherhood, the question of the family and the precarity of the present. Drawing from lived experience, clinical work, and writing endeavors, they engage with our cultural moment through a discussion of precocity and precarity, parenting discourses and impossible safety, psychoanalysis, queer families and queer children, and the looming presence of overwhelming societal challenges. By playing with the paradox around questions of impossibility, they each, in their own way, speak to what is possible.

Unreproductive citizenship: Social sterilisation of queer and trans people in Poland

This paper offers the term unreproductive citizenship to characterise the social positionality of LGBTQ people in Poland. Unreproductive citizenship is brought about by means of social sterilisation: while queer and trans people are ‘tolerated,’ they are not treated as reproductive subjects with a potential to participate in social reproduction. Drawing on Polish and international literature on queer families, reproductive politics, and forced sterilisation, as well as research including interviews, political speeches and auto-ethnography, I argue that the discursive and political framing of LGBTQ people as unreproductive subjects is eugenic. Leading political figures representing Poland's robust political right-wing, as well as the majority of Poles, have expressed fears that LGBTQ reproduction could somehow ‘contaminate’ future generations and therefore poses a threat to the nation's moral order. The social sterilisation of queer Polish people as ‘unreproductive citizens’ illustrates how the logics of reproductive righteousness operate in contemporary Poland.

Family‐building desires among adopted adolescents with lesbian, gay, and heterosexual parents

AbstractObjectiveThis study qualitatively examined family‐building desires of diverse adopted adolescents.BackgroundResearch on parenting aspirations has rarely included youth with LGBTQ+ parents and/or from adoptive families. Understanding diverse adopted adolescents' feelings about parenthood may yield insights regarding identity and ideas about family.MethodsWe conducted a thematic analysis of interview data from 48 adopted adolescents (27 were LGBTQ+) in the United States, aged 13 to 18, from lesbian, gay, and heterosexual two‐parent families.ResultsMost adolescents desired future parenthood, after achieving other normative milestones, and they typically did not feel familial or societal pressure to become parents. LGBTQ+ participants showed a preference for adoption while transracially adopted adolescents preferred biological parenthood.ConclusionGuided by developmental approaches about identity and adoption, as well as queer family theory, we found that teenagers adopted by lesbian, gay, and heterosexual couples generally envisioned parenthood for themselves. Plans to do so varied by minoritized gender, sexual, and racial/ethnic identities. Thus, an intersectional perspective is imperative to understand youths' thoughts about family building.ImplicationsOur findings reveal insights into adopted adolescents' constructed future identities. Practitioners' understanding of adopted adolescents' development and future planning may be enhanced when adolescents' perspectives are considered.

Queering Family Violence: Introduction to Queer Family Violence Studies

Queering Family Violence: Introduction to Queer Family Violence Studies

RIFNET. A new agenda for the Irish family: messy realities & messier lives

ABSTRACT This special issue introduces new research on historical approaches to the Irish family. The articles in this collection have grown out of the Reconstituting the Irish Family Research Network (RIFNET), an interdisciplinary research cluster of scholars working on the Irish family. Covering families and family life from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, the issue explores several themes, including marriage, divorce, and separation; queer families and queer approaches to the family; pets, kinship, and non-human families; sibling relationships and migrating families. The publication of this special issue provides a timely reassessment of meanings and experiences of family in Ireland, coinciding with the March 2024 referendum on the Irish Constitution. The articles in this collection stand testament to the rich diversity of family forms and family experiences in Ireland, both past and present, and chart new pathways to guide future research.

Multi-Generation Queer Families: Foregrounding the LGBTQ Children of LGBTQ People

Multi-Generation Queer Families: Foregrounding the LGBTQ Children of LGBTQ People

Queer Reproductive Decision-Making in Saskatoon

This article is a plain writing summary of a master’s thesis researched and written in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Saskatchewan between 2020-2023. This thesis examined how eighteen queer people living in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan made their reproductive decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic by asking what meanings do queer people in Saskatoon find in their reproductive decision-making processes, and how do those meanings influence those processes during the COVID-19 pandemic? Three themes emerged from these interviews. The first was how queer family structures are formed, including an analysis of the nuclear family and the ways that approach does or does not work for queer families and the gendered problems queer people face when contemplating pregnancy. The second centres on safety, with people born and raised in Saskatchewan prioritizing social safety and people born in different, sometimes less queer-supporting countries prioritizing physical safety when making reproductive decisions. The third is the relationship between COVID-19 and place, dissecting how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the meanings of place through social distancing and isolation, and how the space between places (i.e., travel and remote connection software like Zoom) has changed meaning during this pandemic. This research has implications for informing institutional responses to Canada’s declining population levels and to better support queer people in making their reproductive decisions.

Challenging Gender Norms: Exploring the Role of Reproductive Technology in Queer Family Building

Challenging Gender Norms: Exploring the Role of Reproductive Technology in Queer Family Building

Family abuse targeting queer family members: An argument to address problems of visibility in local services and civic life

Abstract Purpose To draw attention to the invisibility of family abuse victimisation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or trans folk and its impacts; and the lack of appropriate, confident, skilled, formal responses to family abuse victimisation. In addition to argue that local strategic commitment is required to address structural discrimination faced by queer folk and to positively invite those victimised to seek help from local services. Method A multi-method local study in a Central Bedfordshire, a County in England was conducted with an online survey, interviews and focus groups with local LGBT+ communities and practitioners. Results The data suggests worryingly high reporting of family abuse particularly for trans participants. At the same time our data, in line with others, shows help-seeking to be low other than to informal sources of help especially friends. In addition professionals appear underconfident about how to respond appropriately. Conclusions Family abuse targeting queer folk is a significant problem and under-recognised. This is in part due to the mainstream domestic abuse sector associating family abuse with racially minoritised and/or faith communities and particular forms of violence such as “honour” abuse, forced marriage and female genital mutilation. Family abuse victimising queer folk is relatively invisible despite profound social, mental and physical health impacts. Practitioners in this study describe a lack of confidence, skills and knowledge about their practice responses to queer folk which needs to be addressed through training. However, we also conclude that the wider civic context can also play a part in sending messages to local queer folk that local services are for them and that there is a role for civic leaders to improve the visibility and confidence of local queer folk as citizens.

Violence in Queer Families: Symbolic Recognition of Same-Sex Relationships in Russian Law

PurposeThis paper deals with criminal court cases of intimate partner violence in queer families (IPV) in Russia. It aims to uncover ways for these families to be recognized in law, even if only for the purposes of deciding cases of violence among LGBT + partners.MethodsThe study deploys methods of discourse analysis to uncover powers which produce the texts of court rulings. The article is based on close examination of nine cases of IPV occurred in various places across Russia. Eight cases concern bisexual and lesbian women; one case is about men in a same-sex partnership.ResultsThe analysis suggests that only the most severe cases of IPV reach criminal courts in Russia (murder, manslaughter, and serious injuries). As courts deal with violence among intimate same-sex partners, they have to discuss LGBT + identities, queer sexualities, and same-sex families more broadly, as well as such forms of violence which are not criminalized but build up to the ultimate violent act (psychological and financial violence, battery).ConclusionsRegardless of reluctance to recognize queer families in family law, same-sex relationships are already recognized in the legal discourse with the help of various categories for the purposes of processing criminal cases. However, this recognition casts queer families as subordinate and pathological, especially through the widespread invocation of traditional values rhetoric.

Monsters with family and tradition: queering family in Central Russia’s Vampires

ABSTRACT This article analyses the web series Central Russia’s Vampires (streaming platform Start, since 2021) as a site of articulating queerness on screen in contemporary Russia. I zoom in on the layers of family and tradition that lie at the core of the show and argue that by exploring them through the trope of the vampire – an immortal, subversive, queer figure – the show offers a non-normative spin on the patriarchal treatment of these topics in contemporary Russian hegemonic discourse. I demonstrate that the queering of family and tradition in the show happens on three levels. First, the series delivers a complex cartography of intertextual and multimedia references and produces a queer family with a cultural tradition of media presence that extends far beyond the show. Second, the series queers the idea of ‘traditional families’ that animates current Russian hegemonic discourse by portraying a family of Others – the vampires – who fit into majority scripts and are literally part of Russia’s tradition due to their centuries-old age. Finally, Central Russia’s Vampires queers the family and tradition on the level of genre, by producing a special New Year episode that normalises families of Others within Russian holiday-season films.

Visual methods in family and sexuality research: Picturing the everyday, the imaginary, and the void

Engaging with visual methodology literature and the concept of ‘family display’, this article examines how visual methods can generate new ways of understanding the (in)visibility of queer family life. Engaging Chinese lesbians in image-making and photo-elicitation interviews, I illustrate how visual methods give access to different ways of making sense of ‘family’, including the ‘everyday’, the ‘imaginary’, and the ‘void’. By exploring the image-maker’s intentions, the presence or absence of the image-maker, and diverse ways of displaying family, I show how visual methods can facilitate the display of family ties, tensions, and ideals. Adopted in an open format that allows flexibility and creativity, visual methods generate space for participants to communicate the unrealisable and unseeable and for researchers to examine how dominant heteronormative representations and discourses around the ‘family’ restrict possibilities of displaying family. I highlight the importance of maintaining openness and sensitivity to cultural peculiarities when adopting visual methods.

The Game of Queer Family Life: Exploring 2SLGBTQI+ Parents’ Experiences of Cisheteronormativity, Racism, and Colonialism Through Digital Storytelling in Ontario, Canada

ABSTRACT In this article we describe and analyze five videos created through an arts-informed research project, Precarious Inclusion: Studying Ontarian 2SLGBTQI+ parents’ experiences childrearing in a post-legal parity framework. Precarious Inclusion used interviews and digital storytelling to investigate Ontario 2SLGBTQI+ parents’ current experiences of inclusion and exclusion when navigating institutional and social interactions in everyday life in a post-legal parity context. The study centrally explored how intersecting identities with regards to sexuality, gender, geography, disability, class, race, Indigeneity, and ethnicity intersect with structural forces to influence 2SLGBTQI+ parents’ inclusion and exclusion experiences. We examine research creation activities that supported 2SLGBTQI+ parents in making short videos about their experiences of parenting. Our analysis of the five videos created by Indigenous, racialized, trans, nonbinary, Two-Spirit, and disabled parents show how consistent experiences of exclusion mark 2SLGBTQI+ parents’ everyday lives. We deepen theorizations of the material and psychological impacts of exclusion for 2SLGBTQI+ families through foregrounding three themes: 1) the operations of racism, white supremacy, and colonialism in makers’ lives; 2) misrecognition and its psychic effects of bifurcation and disjuncture; and 3) love, joy, and multi-species kinship as powerful sites of healing and belonging. We further demonstrate how parents used their videos as self-advocacy for resisting precarious inclusion.

An ambivalent story: Queer children’s literature in Israel between 1986 and 2022

Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, only 23 Queer literary works have been published for children and adolescents in Hebrew. This paper examines the characteristics of these works in light of the ambivalent and controversial status of the LGBTQ+ community in Israel. The findings show that the few works that have been published and that present same-sex families or LGBTQ+ characters, and the manner in which Queer themes are presented in those texts, are in line with how these issues are perceived and addressed by Israeli society. Moreover, this article divides the Queer Israeli literature for children and youth into three categories: implied Queer literature that hides the Queer existence through the allegoric genre; Queer-phobic literature that seemingly presents the Queer family but in actual fact promotes homophobic stereotypes; and Queer literature that places the LGBTQ+ character or family in the center of the story without passing judgment or criticism.

On Dankwa's Gift

On Dankwa's Gift

"I'm Not Just the Nonbiological Parent": Encountering, Strategizing, and Resisting Asymmetry and Invalidation in Genetic/ Gestational Parent Status Among LGBTQ Parents.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) families have expanded our understanding of who counts as family, to include legal as well as chosen ties. Yet, nonbiological parents in LGBTQ families are vulnerable to invalidation and erasure in social institutions, including health care, legal, and educational settings, where genetic and gestational linkages are privileged. The current study was guided by a queer phenomenological perspective to examine how LGBTQ parents experience and respond to dominant norms related to family relatedness and membership and thus queer the family. This mixed-methods study sampled 250 LGBTQ parents (including cisgender women and trans/nonbinary participants) to examine the question: In what ways does genetic asymmetry matter for families? The qualitative and quantitative analyses yielded three primary findings that revealed experiences of erasure and discrimination, as well as proactive strategies and active resistance used to counteract these difficulties. Themes were organized by (a) encountering marginalization and invalidation: health care, schools, and beyond; (b) strategic actions and discursive practices toward parental equality; and (c) confronting and resisting the need for legal, symbolic, and parenting strategies. This study documents ways in which nonbiological LGBTQ parents, in particular, embrace and resist societal norms for biological connectedness. Implications for nursing professionals include our finding that reproductive and perinatal contexts were particular sites of invalidation, necessitating education about the range of queer, nonbiological, and trans/nonbinary parents so that all parents are included in professional health care encounters.

Cambodian American Listening as Memory Work

Cambodian American Listening as Memory Work

Family Pictures: The Queer Relationalities of Multigenerational Queer Family

ABSTRACT Combining queer theorizing, autoethnography, and relational dialectics theory (RDT), this essay examines how my lesbian mothers and donor struggle to define family, queer family, and their emerging familial identities as grandparents to my own donor-conceived daughter through the competing discourses of biology and history. I further explore how my parents engage their relational history as queer parents as salient models for understanding their emergent familial identities as queer grandparents, as well as how they talk about an anticipated queer grandparent relationship with my daughter in the future. Ultimately, this essay works to articulate a queer(spawn) relationality—one that possibly exists at the (non-)intersection of multiple liminalities—as a means of building on earlier mappings of queer relationality.