Doing families

Gay and Lesbian Family Practices

Edited by Judit Takács & Roman Kuhar

1
Contents

Foreword:
When Parallels Meet: The Family of Sex and the Sexualisation of the Family
(Éric Fassin)

Gays and Lesbians (un)Doing family – An introduction

(Roman Kuhar & Judit Takács)

1. Sex and the Family: Intersections between Family, Gender, Reproduction and Same-Sex
Sexuality in Spain
(José Ignacio Pichardo Galán)

2. Parenting of the Fittest? Lesbian and Gay Family Planning in Germany

(Elke Jensen)

3. (In)Appropriate Mothers – Policy Discourses on Fertility Treatment for Lesbians in

Denmark, Finland and Sweden
(Maria Carbin, Hannele Harjunen, Elin Kvist)

4. LGBT Families, Youth, and Sexuality in the United States

(Guillaume Marche)

5. Homoparentality in Italy: Myth of Stigmatisation?

(Daniela Danna)

6. Grandparenting in French Lesbian and Gay Families

(Martine Gross)

7. Do Families Have Sexual Orientation? An Interview with Judith Stacey

(Roman Kuhar & Judit Takács)

Contributors

Index

2
 Foreword

When Parallels Meet:

The Family of Sex and the Sexualisation of the Family

Not so long ago, in the social sciences, there were two fields of research that never seemed to
intersect: on the one hand, family studies; on the other, sexuality studies. As if to eschew
some kind of incestuous peril, sex and family then belonged in parallel worlds. Think of
Claude Lévi-Strauss’ 1949 Elementary Structures of Kinship: strangely enough, the
structuralist exploration of matrimonial rules in no way encountered the reality of sexuality.
Indeed, the prohibition of incest, which was the foundation of the anthropologist’s argument,
had nothing to do, as far as he was concerned, with sex itself. It only affected kinship: the
exchange of women only mattered in so far as it defined marriage.

It might be tempting to interpret such sexual blindness as a reflection of the child’s anxious
paradox: “My parents don’t have sex, do they? They can’t, since they’re my parents!” But the
denial also served to reinforce a sexual, and thus a social order: on the one hand, families
were implicitly defined by heterosexuality; on the other, sexuality studies tended to focus not
on the heterosexual norm, but on those who had been cast aside, outside the norm – i.e.
queers. The history of sexuality is a case in point: especially in English-language research, it
has often proved to be a history of homosexuality. Such was the division of the world that
prevailed until recently: queers have sex, while straight folks have families.

At first, AIDS just seemed to reinforce this partition. What was first perceived as a “gay
disease” not only identified sexuality with homosexuality; it also reduced gays to their
sexuality. However, the epidemic was soon to undermine such a division in two distinct ways.
First, while the virulent reaction of some parents who rejected their sons afflicted with the
disease only proved that homophobia excludes gays from the family (not that lesbians fare
much better, though), the everyday realities of care in dire times also revealed the vital
importance of an alternative kinship – not the family of origin, but the family of destination,
defined by choice.

This was made visible in the wake of the early years of the epidemic by Kath Weston in her
1991 ethnographic study of Families we choose – i.e. Bay Area families that comprised not
only lovers, but also former lovers, and simply friends (girlfriends as well as boyfriends): the
boundary between kith and kin was erased to mix all those who proved their love by being
there when they were needed. Children were included of course; but they were not necessarily
the cornerstones of these families of choice. Instead, sexuality played a central role in creating
ties. This was not, however, the old reduction of gays (more than lesbians) to their sexual
lives, as pure (hedonistic) individuals. On the contrary: sex turned out to be the foundation of
queer social lives – precisely when it seemed to desert some of these men’s lives. Sexuality
was thus the paradigm that helped think how new, alternative families are created – premised
on choice, not blood.

But AIDS not only revealed the obvious importance of what might be called “the family of
sex”; it also raised the question of the surviving partner whose very existence was all too
often denied – from visiting rights in the hospital to inheritance rights in case of death. This is
the second way in which the epidemic eventually did undermine the division between
sexualised gay individuals and desexualised straight families. The end of the 1980s is the time

3
when the issue of same-sex marriage came to the surface – in particular in Scandinavia, but
also simultaneously in the United States and in France. Thus, the point was not only kinship
norms, but also family laws.

The reality that ensued was quite different from that of families of choice, which provided an
alternative to traditional kinship based on blood ties. In fact, in the same way that same-sex
marriage simply meant opening (implicitly heterosexual) marriage to gays and lesbians, the
lesbian (and gay) baby-boom seemed to offer a mere variation to be included in the norm –
i.e. the “normal” family with a slight difference. French anthropologist Anne Cadoret’s 2002
monograph about gay and lesbian families is significantly entitled: Des parents comme les
autres. At a time when traditional family norms seem to belong to the past, lesbian moms,
first studied in 1993 by American anthropologist Ellen Lewin, before shifting to gay fathers in
2009, are truly parents like all other parents. Indeed, they too discover the dirty secret of
parenthood: sex is not what their lives or even their couples are about any longer…

Does this imply the normalisation, not only of gays and lesbians, but even of queer families?
The fear expressed by those who nostalgically mourn the heyday of countercultural sex may
be exaggerated after all. First, it is worth bearing in mind that homophobia has certainly not
vanished – even around San Francisco or New York. Queer families still look queer to many.
But there is more to this. Or rather: even homophobia needs explaining. The problem with gay
and lesbian families is that, regardless of the intentions of the individuals at stake, they
question the norm. Quite simply, they threaten the barrier that separates straight families from
gay individuals.

A personal anecdote will illustrate this. When in 1997 I first intervened in the French public
debate in support not only of equal marriage and family rights (including access to adoption
and reproductive technologies), I immediately received a long letter from a colleague whose
irritation was summarised in a colloquial phrase: «Les homosexuels veulent le beurre et
l’argent du beurre» – which could translate roughly (though at the cost of ignoring some of
the connotations involved): “they want to have their cake and eat it too.” What this meant was
that queers want to enjoy sex and still benefit from the recognition of the State through
marriage. Or, to put it bluntly: they want to have (asocial) fun, and they still want to reap
(social) rewards.

Of course, what becomes apparent in this instance is that homophobia signals an anxiety that
pertains less to homosexuality itself than to heterosexuality. What would become of the
straight norm if it were not the norm any longer – i.e. would heterosexuality fall apart if
society stopped to institutionalise heterosexuality through marriage laws and norms? Or to put
it differently: is heterosexuality going to lose its seduction if and when it loses its State
privilege? Worse: why should anyone desire to be straight if heterosexuality is not
compulsory any longer? And, in response to such anxiety, what is it that could still hold
together both straight and gay worlds?

Thus, lesbian and gay families still make many uncomfortable – and actually, they themselves
may also feel some sort of “trouble”. The reason is rather obvious: they do not correspond to
the heterosexual norm. Not that “same-sex” families necessarily undermine gender roles
(Maureen Sullivan’s Family of Woman), nor conversely inevitably reiterate them (Christopher
Carrington’s No Place Like Home). More fundamentally still, queer families are confronted
with the experience of questioning obvious norms – the obviousness of norms: they reveal

4
that the world of family has been naturalised; they contribute to its denaturalisation. Family
life is supposed to be obvious, i.e. natural; queer families cannot quite feel like that.

This could be described in negative terms: they are an object of discrimination. But this new
minority can also be apprehended in positive terms. Gay and lesbian families cannot ignore
the democratic condition in which we all live: social norms are not given, once and for all. We
define them, and redefine them. To put it simply – and in sexual terms: we make our own
beds. For this is ultimately what queer families teach all of us: sexuality and family do not
exist in separate worlds; the parallels finally meet. Families are never just asexual; queer
families make us rethink other families as straight. In that sense, while the “family of sex”
may have lost some of its visibility in current discussions, the new importance of queer
families as a minority can be understood as a signal, at a time when some lament (while
others celebrate) the desexualisation of homosexuality, of a paradoxical sexualisation of the
family. The normalisation of homosexuality and the queering of the family may thus go hand
in hand. Strange bedfellows, indeed.

Éric Fassin
École normale supérieure / Iris (CNRS/EHESS)

5
Gays and Lesbians (un)Doing Family – An Introduction

This book is about lesbian and gay families – or more precisely: about specific frameworks
within or without which family practices of gays and lesbians can be lived and interpreted in
Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the United States.

Following an active and practical approach that sees family “less of a noun and more of an
adjective or, possibly, a verb” (Morgan 1999:16), the focus is on how lesbians and gays are
‘doing family’ in certain parts of the world, besides doing class, gender and a lot of other
things all at the same time. However, the scope of our book is also telling in regard to how
gays and lesbians are excluded from doing their own families in most parts of the world as
well as in Europe. At the international conference LGBT Families: The New Minority?, which
took place in Ljubljana, the capital city of Slovenia in the autumn of 2009, where the idea of
this book was originally conceived, for instance, Eastern European experiences to be shared
were quite scarce. The participant from the Ukraine, for example, could report only on the
quite limited possibilities and not at all widespread practices of same-sex partners to live
together and share a household.1 In this presentation the proportion of those was also given
who would wish to enter into same-sex registered partnership arrangements – given that
registration of same-sex partnerships would be allowed, which it is not; and given that one
could establish and maintain an enduring same-sex relationship, which is not very likely in the
highly homophobic Ukrainian social environment.2 Thus the outlook for same-sex partners in
the Ukraine towards doing their families appears quite hopeless for the time being.

Or let’s take a Slovenian example (while keeping in mind that Slovenia is one of the most
Western style non-Western-European country): in 2009 just a few days before the LGBT
Families Conference, the Slovenian Ministry of Labour, Family and Social Affairs publicly
announced the presentation of the new Family Code, which would put heterosexual and
homosexual couples on an equal legal footing, including the right to second parent and joint
adoptions for same-sex couples. Furthermore, the new Family Code would have introduced a
new, inclusive family definition, which extends to all types of families and goes beyond the
classical biological ties, which used to be the constitutive element of a family. The Secretary
General of the Ministry actually joined the conference and gave a very promising speech,
where she explained that “it is important to stress that the new Family Code does not take
away any rights from those families and partnerships which have already been recognised by
the law. The new Family Code only gives the rights to those who have been deprived of these
rights”.3 However, during the more than two years that have passed since this announcement,
these promises have not been kept. Those who have participated in the Slovenian public
debate, defending the new Family Code, became tired, hurt and saddened. On the opposition
side the “Civil initiative for the family and the rights of children” – being in fact organised
and manoeuvred by the Catholic Church, at least according to some – managed to create a
moral panic about homosexuals who would adopt “our” children and corrupt “our” institution
of marriage. This way they also succeeded in bringing to the surface the downtrodden

1
Ponomaryov, S. 2009. An investigation into the status and needs of same-sex partnerships in Ukraine. Paper
presented at the international conference “LGBT Families: The New Minority?” Ljubljana, October 16–17,
2009.
2
According to European Social Survey (ESS) data from 2008, among 26 examined European countries Ukraine
manifested the most homophobic views (Takács – Szalma 2011).
3
Welcome speech by dr. Anja Kopač Mrak given at the international conference “LGBT Families: The New
Minority?” Ljubljana, October 16–17, 2009.

6
homophobia, bubbling underneath the Slovenian culture of political correctness, and it seems
that, similarly to many other countries, the homophobic incitement based moral panic has
worked again.4 The Government eventually decided to come up with a “compromised”
version of the bill, according to which same-sex couples would not be allowed to marry, but
they would be granted the right to “civil partnership”, having the same legal consequences as
marriage; and joint adoption by same-sex couples is not an option any longer, only second
parent adoption would be allowed. To be sure, however, the “Civil initiative for the family
and the rights of children” made an application for a public referendum, which might lead to
the annulment of the Family Code, which has now already been adopted in its moral-panic-
beaten, slightly shredded, present form.

The Slovenian episode in the 21st century history of the debates on same-sex marriage and
families is not a unique one. Homophobic public debates almost always include an
essentialising element of moral expertise on the family: the one real family, as ‘we’ know it,
based on the union of a man and a woman. Here we can certainly refer to one of the many
recent changes introduced in and by the new Hungarian Constitution:5 the adoption of such
restrictive definition of marriage, which “clearly shows that Hungary wants to institutionalise
homophobia in its supreme law”.6

According to the centuries old strategy of “define and conquer”, the power is always with
those who make the definitions in the first place (Weinrich 1987), and in a legal universe it
works even more so. The definition of family has been changing over time, and there has been
ongoing contention over who has the power to define whether ‘we are family’ or not.
However, the family as a main social institution has managed to preserve its value for the
majority of people precisely because it has been flexible enough to suit a variety of lifestyles.
The main problem with essentialist family definitions is therefore their static denial of the
freedom to change – however, these definitions can perfectly fit family policies that are
governed by rigid social norms.

Thus the practical question remains: how to frame the issue of LGBT families in policy
debates to gain legal and social space for them to bud and bloom. At present politically
strategic framing of the issue seems to be too often dictated by the opponents of LGBT
families. This is well-reflected in a sarcastic short advertisement produced by ILGA to
promote same-sex adoptions, where a young man is shown having dinner with his parents.7
During the dinner he comes out as straight – and only at this point can we see that he has been
raised by a same-sex couple, and the narrator says: “Children raised by homosexuals do not
necessarily become homosexuals”. It is clear that this advertisement is successful in targeting
the popular fear that homosexuals will raise new generations of homosexuals. While it is
4
On the history of the debate on and adoption of same-sex legislation in the region (Slovenia and Croatia) see
Kuhar 2011.
5
The New Hungarian Constitution will be in force from January 1st, 2012.
6
New Hungarian Constitution: ILGA-Europe urges Hungarian parliamentarians to uphold European human
rights standards – ILGA-Europe Media Release of 2011 April 14. ILGA-Europe also pointed out that “[w]hile
Hungary already has registered partnership legislation for same-sex partners, such constitutional provision, if
adopted, will mean that same-sex partners will be deprived from enjoying full legal equality as different sex
partners. Additionally, such restrictive definition of marriage would create serious restrictions in terms of the
implementation of the EU free movement directive as same-sex partners married in other EU countries would
not be recognised as married in Hungary”. See: <http://www.ilga-
europe.org/home/news/for_media/media_releases/new_hungarian_constitution_ilga_europe_urges_hungarian_p
arliamentarians_to_uphold_european_human_rights_standards> (8 November 2011).
7
Adoption for same-sex couples (ILGA’s TV advertisement, 2005). See: <http://ilga.org/ilga/en/article/724> (8
November 2011).

7
important and politically strategic to reject such ideas, it is also important to be sensitive to
the unwanted messages that might be communicated when fighting for LGBT rights.

Emphasising that same-sex families (most probably) will not raise new generations of
homosexuals can easily contribute to the reproduction of heteronormative assumptions,
including that there must be something wrong if a child, raised by gay parents, turns out to be
gay. Strategic framing of the issue in mainstream discourse can in this way implicitly push the
LGBT community into the reproduction of a normalising discourse with the ultimate
unacceptability of homosexuality.

These dilemmas can also characterise local political arenas, especially in countries with
limited LGBT rights legislation, when the interests of gay and lesbian families are sacrificed
in order to gain at least some rights for same-sex couples. In these contexts it is often believed
that the claims for same-sex adoption rights and legal recognition of gay and lesbian families
would result in the overall rejection of any proposed ‘pro-gay’ bill, aiming to provide at least
some rights for same-sex couples. This discreet charm of opportunism can create a new
minority within a minority, when LGBT family issues are swept aside by saying that there is
no need to rush, society is not ready for this, not yet ...

In other countries, where same-sex families can exist as legal entities, other problematic
aspects of heteronormative social functioning may emerge. American filmmaker, Johnny
Symons, a gay dad himself, said in an interview that one of the most important differences
between straight and gay families is that straight parents get much more reinforcement as
parents for being parents from society.8 Streams of approval and validation come not only
from family and friends but also from strangers in public space, from accidental people
looking at them, while smiling and commenting: “Oh, your child looks so much like you!” –
But what if your child does not look like you? And what if there is no female role model
present in a gay family? Being perceived as different, being a queer fish, can create curiosity,
which can also feel oppressive, and lead to labelling or stigmatisation. While we can see that
legal changes are slowly, or sometimes surprisingly swiftly taking place, we cannot expect
that social change will follow automatically – not to mention the possibility of legal and social
setbacks …

We hope that this book, by bringing together a variety of academic accounts from mostly
European countries on factors inciting, restricting, straining, training, discouraging and
encouraging gay and lesbian family practices, and presenting research findings previously not
available for English speaking audiences, can contribute to the still ongoing9 epistemological
and moral debates about the meaning(s) of family life. Our hope is that such debates can
contribute to the development of a more inclusive society – by worrying less about socially
(non-)desired family types and concentrating more on everyday family practices and the lived,
sometimes indeed fluid, reality of family relations to be not only legally but also socially
recognised, supported and respected.

During at least the last two decades one of the main questions of family sociology has been
whether, borrowing Judith Stacey’s (1991) term, we are brave enough for doing brave new
families. The authors of this book certainly believe so.

8
Kuhar, R. 2008. Ati in oči: intervju z Johnnyjem Symonsom (Daddy and Papa: An interview with Johnny
Symons). Narobe 5, 6–9. <http://www.narobe.si/stevilka-5/intervju-johnny-symons> (8 November 2011).
9
In 1999 Elizabeth B. Silva and Carol Smart noted that “[t]here is ongoing both an epistemological and a moral
debate about what the family is and what the family ought to be” (Silva and Smart 1999:1).

8
Roman Kuhar and Judit Takács
Ljubljana – Budapest, November 2011

References

Kuhar, R. 2011. Resisting change: Same-sex partnership policy debates in Croatia and
Slovenia. Südosteuropa. Zeitschrift für Politik und Gesellschaft 59(1): 25–49.

Morgan, D. H. J. 1999. Risk and family practices: Accounting for change and fluidity in
family life. In The New Family?, eds. E. B. Silva and C. Smart, 13–30. London: Sage.

Silva, E. B., and C. Smart. 1999. The ‘new’ practices and politics of family life. In The New
Family?, eds. E. B. Silva and C. Smart, 1–12. London: Sage.

Stacey, J. 1991. Brave New Families. New York: Basic Book.

Takács, J., and I. Szalma. 2011. Homophobia and same-sex partnership legislation in Europe.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal 30(5): 356–378.

Weinrich, J. 1987. Sexual landscapes: Why we are what we are, why we love who we love.
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

9
José Ignacio Pichardo Galán

<H1> Sex and the family: intersections between family, gender, reproduction and same-
sex sexuality in Spain

<H2> Introduction and methodology

Since the transition to democracy began in the second half of the seventies there have been
many important legislative changes regarding familial and sexual relations in Spain. The
approval of the Spanish Constitution of 1978 brought with it a battery of legislative reforms
seeking to create more democratic and egalitarian concepts of the family in legislation: new
divorce (1981), abortion (1985), adoption (1987) and assisted reproduction (1988) laws.
Beginning in the late 1990s, and even more so during the years 2000, Spain has seen a second
wave of legal reforms seeking to, once again, adjust the legal apparatus to the changes in
familial, sexual, and gender relationships over the last decades of the twentieth century.
Included in these reforms were the recognition of registered partnerships in different regions
(1998–2005) and the legalisation of same-sex marriage nationally (2005).

This article reports the results of a qualitative research study, conducted from June 2004 to
August 2005, the objective of which was to assess how the issues faced by and practices of
queer people affect social conceptions of the family (Pichardo 2009). By “queer people” I
mean homosexuals, non-heterosexual people or gays, lesbians and bisexuals. I will use these
terms interchangeably throughout the text. This qualitative study consisted of an ethnographic
approach based on the use of the following research methods:
- Review of printed and audiovisual materials (Bibliography, legal texts, media, and LGBTQ
associations’ publications).
- Participatory observation in different activities, gatherings and family rituals (weddings and
funerals, for example) in which the informants of this study were participating. I also attended
gay and lesbian meeting places (clubs, associations, demonstrations, reunions, seminars and
so on), including virtual meeting places on the internet (web pages, web fora, distribution
lists, profiles pages...).
- Analysis of statistical data from diverse sources, including the 2001 Census or the National
Institute of Statistics database on marriages. Several reports published by the Spanish

10
National Centre for Sociological Research (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas - CIS) on
the question of family in general and sexuality in particular were studied too.
- Nonetheless, the main input for this research was the rich material gathered through 63 in-
depth interviews with non-heterosexual participants. These interviews were made with 33
men and 30 women ranging from 19 to 78 years old. I have tried to cover as great a socio-
demographic and geographic background as possible, having interviewed people throughout
Spain who were living in villages, small towns, and large cities. These people were recruited
for the study through distributions lists, emails, ads and reports on both LGBT oriented and
general public media, posters at associations, bars, clubs and other LGBT gathering places
and, ultimately, with the use of snowball sampling. More than 264 people who had same-sex
sexual relations or defined themselves as homosexual, bisexual, gay, lesbian or queer
responded to a questionnaire offering themselves to participate in an in-depth interview.
During the interview a range of topics were covered, including identity, homophobia, family,
kinship, sexuality, parenting, love, partners, friendship, economy, rights, gender and care
among others.

The article begins by addressing the questioning of heteronormativity as the main novelty
evoked by queer people within conceptions of family. When in June 2005 same-sex marriage
was legalised, the idea of heterosexuality as the sole foundation of filiation was effectually
debunked, thereby raising important issues and questions. Then some of the ways in which
non-heterosexual people are taking advantage of this new legislation will be presented,
followed by a section with an overview of the resulting changes that have been introduced by
gays and lesbians in the sphere of familial relations, especially on issues of parenting,
sexuality, and the division of domestic chores. The penultimate section reflects upon aspects
in which there are continuities with the traditionally dominant conceptions of family and
therein, the elements that reproduce the prevailing notions regarding the social institution of
family: cohabitation, love, caretaking, and coupling. The article concludes by delving into
some of the questions that remain open to reflection.

<H2> Questioning Heteronormativity

When in the 1970’s Gayle Rubin presented what she then called the sex/gender system she
pointed out that “the social organization of sex rests upon gender, obligatory heterosexuality,
and the constraint of female sexuality” (1975, 179). The social construction of gender

11
differences between men and women is then inextricably tied to compulsory heterosexuality
(Rich 1980). Weeks, Heaphy and Donovan (2001, 41) used the term “heterosexual
assumption” to refer to the all-embracing institutional invalidation of same-sex sexualities and
identities and the constant reinforcement of heterosexuality as a norm, privileging and shoring
up the heterosexual model.

The participants of this study, all of whom either had been, or were actively, in same-sex
relationships, clearly seemed to recognise this heterosexual assumption, as they were forced
to face it their whole lives, whether by reproducing it, questioning it, or avoiding it. This
model, whether challenged or followed, is ever-present and was even defined by some
participants as “the path” that must be followed. This “path” includes having sexual and
emotional heterosexual relationships, falling in love with a boyfriend or girlfriend of the
opposite sex, marrying him/her, living together, maintaining sexual relations with that partner,
being faithful to him/her, getting a good job, buying a house or a car, having children, raising
them, and having the woman take care of the children (whether she works outside of the
house or not). It is interesting to observe that this life timeline does not solely include aspects
related to partnering, sexuality, or reproduction, but that it also includes material aspects, like
gender-based division of labour, and consumerism. Some of the participants of the study
reported having followed this family model by getting married or maintaining a stable
heterosexual relationship, despite being attracted to members of the same sex. In some cases
they simply repressed this desire, while in others they maintained sporadic or stable same-sex
relationships at the same time as their heterosexual families. Other participants reported
having opted for a life of religious service as a means of avoiding the social pressure to
maintain a heterosexual relationship. Remaining single was also mentioned as another
alternative to escape the socio-cultural pressure to form a heterosexual couple.

Nevertheless, the majority of the participants did report feeling like they should not continue
on the path of this heterosexual assumption, at some moment in their lives. Some said that the
same-sex desire they felt precluded them from meeting the expectations of heterosexuality.
Others thought that they would never be happy if they could not pursue their true feelings and
attractions, and that acting otherwise would require them to deceive the person with whom
they entered into a heterosexual relationship. When they reached this moment of truth, so to
speak, many said that, although at first they saw no alternatives, eventually they discovered
the existence of other possibilities. As a result homosexuality, as a lifestyle, became one of

12
the viable options. However, deviating from heteronormativity certainly came at a price in the
form of homophobia and persecution. As one 38 years-old male participant from Madrid
stated, “ I thought that I would be heterosexual and get married to stop being discriminated
against and oppressed by society, friends, neighbours, or by schoolmates. (…) When I
compared myself with a heterosexual, I realised that a heterosexual person was allowed to
live in peace”. Although some may think that these feelings and situations are no longer
relevant currently in Spain, recent research affirms that homophobia is not only still present,
but as strong as ever in certain contexts, such as schools (Pichardo, Molinuevo and Riley
2009).

Queers have developed both individual and collective strategies to overcome this
homophobia, and by extension heteronormativity. Additionally, the efforts of feminism in
challenging the gender division of labour allowed for the socially constructed
“complementary nature” of the masculine and feminine to be overcome, and the sex/gender
system to be dismantled.

One of the main tools that allowed for the cultural denial of the heterosexual assumption is the
creation of identities based on same-sex relationships. However, since these identities tend to
be problematic, fluid, changing, and strategic, the individuals seem to assume them in diverse
ways. Often times, especially in the case of women, they report not always feeling the need to
identify themselves as lesbians, gays, or bisexuals at all (Pichardo 2008).

Once these identities based on same-sex practices are created and spread, those who assume
them become more visible and recognisable by society. Queer people first face the challenge
of turning their practices into an identity, and then making this identity public: “there is an
extra challenge for us: the fight to either hide, or come out. In both cases you need to fight”
(Julián, male 37 years-old). In this sense, coming out, with its associated risks, can even be
seen as an activist effort, a sentiment expressed by one participant when she said, “I think of
visibility as a political act” (Laia, female, 30 years-old).

The creation and visibility of interpersonal networks made up of people who share these queer
identities helped found the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) liberation
movement in the last part of the 20th Century, which ultimately achieved the legalisation of

13
same-sex marriage in Spain. The next section will analyse how same-sex couples are utilising
this legal institution.

<H2> Same-sex Marriage

The legalisation of same-sex marriage provides some insight into the reality of same-sex
couples in the form of official statistics, collected yearly through civil registries. However,
obviously not all couples marry, whether hetero- or homosexual. The next census, in 2011
will provide statistics on the number of unmarried couples living together. The National
Institute of Statistics reports that in the first four and a half years since the law was passed
15,381 same-sex couples have married. Of these marriages, 10,318 were between two men
and 5,063 were between two women.

Man+man Woman+woman Total same-sex Percentage of

Year marriages marriages marriages total marriages
2005 914 355 1.269 0.61 %
2006 3.000 1.313 4.313 2.08 %
2007 2.141 1.052 3.193 1.56 %
2008 2.051 1.143 3.194 1.62 %
2009 2.212 1.200 3.412 1.94 %
TOTAL 10.318 5.063 15.381 1.55 %

Table 1: Number of same-sex marriages by year

Source: Author’s calculations based on data published on the National Statistics Institute’s website
(http://www.ine.es/inebmenu/mnu_mnp.htm).

The percentage of same-sex marriages between two women has increased slightly to just over
35% of the total number of same-sex marriages in 2008 and 2009, from 28% in 2005. This
means that, although they remain only a third of the total, the percentage increase has been
sustained.

Table 1 shows that in 2007 there was a slight decrease in the number of same-sex couples
who married. This could be explained by the fact that most of the people who had been
waiting their whole lives to be able to marry probably did so immediately after the law was
passed, thereby causing the initial figures to be unrepresentatively high. In 2009 the number

14
of same-sex marriages increased slightly, reaching 3,412 couples and in that year same-sex
marriages accounted for 2% of the total. The Ministry of Justice reported 382 divorces of
same-sex couples in the first five years of same-sex marriage, but as this figure is only from
computerised civil registries, it can be expected to represent incomplete data.

According to the statistics only 0.064% (approximately 30,000 people) of the Spanish
population is in a same-sex marriage, which suggests a minimum impact of the law in
quantitative terms. On the other hand, the legalisation of same-sex marriage has certainly had
a huge impact in cultural, legal, and political terms.

Access to rights and marriage are two intertwined ideas, the latter of which is often associated
with the assurance of full rights to minorities. Paternotte (2008) summarises marriage’s role
for gays and lesbian in Belgium as such, while recalling the following paradox: the institution
which had been considered as one of the pillars of oppression has been converted into a
battlefield, and a potential way to gain access to citizenship, meaning inclusion. The idea of
marriage as a question of citizenship and equality was constantly repeated by the participants
of the study as well. Vita, a 41 years-old female, from a small town in the Mediterranean said,
“It’s a right which any citizen, queer or not, should have. Once they deny it to you, you are
discriminated against”.

Despite these sentiments the majority of gays and lesbians in the general population have not
gotten married, which was also true of the participants of the study. The common trends
among those participants who had gotten married were:
- being in a long-term relationship with common possessions;
- couples in which one of the members was sick or near death, so as to secure rights of
succession for the other partner and widow/widower pension;
- having children, so that one member of the couple could adopt the children of the other,
since in most of the Spanish regions a couple must be married in order to adopt together;
also because the child is less protected in many cases when the other member of the
couple is not legally recognised as a parent;
- couples in which one of the partners was an immigrant and needed to obtain a visa, a
residence- or work permit, or Spanish citizenship;
- couples who married as an activist effort (Arancha, 35 years-old from a small village on
the Mediterranean coast, for example, commented that she never considered marriage

15
 with her heterosexual partner, but now that she is with a woman, she is considering it in
order to vindicate their relationship);
- couples who wanted to get the social recognition they don't get as a same-sex couple due
to homophobic prejudices (Monica, 30 years-old from Valencia, planned to marry her
girlfriend hoping it would garner them recognition as a couple, because even though they
are open about their relationship, their family and friends still insist on treating them as if
they were “friends”).

Though the first motives listed could be common to any heterosexual couple, the last two are
certainly particular to same-sex couples. In addition to the legal consequences of marriage, it
also has a ritual and symbolic value. The commitment of a couple and the public presentation
of it to the community imply recognition and social acceptance that is often lacking otherwise
for same-sex couples.

On the other hand, the participants hardly ever mentioned love as one of the motivations to
marry. Instead they named and explained various practical and material issues, for example,
one participant said, “After 29 years together, my wedding just slipped by. I mean, we didn’t
do it for the wedding; we just did it for the papers. Nothing else” (Esteban, male, 60 years-
old). Abel, male, 29 years-old, married his partner, an immigrant, in order to resolve his legal
situation in Spain. He asserted that without that necessity, they would not have gotten
married, or at least not when they did. However, at the same time he was sure to say, “I
married him because I love him, if I didn’t love him, even if he needed a visa, I wouldn’t
marry him”. The distribution of the nationalities of the members of couples married in 2009 is
shown in the following figure:

16
 Figure 1: Percentage of marriages performed in 2009 by sex and nationality of the spouses.
Source: Author’s calculations based on data published on the National Statistics Institute’s website.

Revealingly, and similar to the numbers from preceding years, the percentage of marriages
between a Spaniard and a foreigner in 2009 was much higher within same-sex marriages,
especially between men, compared with the figures for heterosexual marriages. The number
of same-sex marriages between one Spanish man and one foreigner was equal to the number
of same-sex marriages between two Spanish men. These statistics could represent a necessity
to resolve visa or residential issues, or perhaps reflect a lowered sense of xenophobia among
queers. Additionally, one in ten same-sex marriages between men took place between two
non-Spaniards, which would only make sense if they both lived in Spain, unless they did it for
symbolic reasons, as these marriages would not be recognised in the majority of their native
countries.

Homophobia reportedly acts as a virulent force when it comes to same-sex couples deciding
whether or not to marry. In that vein, numerous same-sex weddings were celebrated without
the presence of family members, like Javier and Gerardo’s, (both males from Madrid) where
the only guests were two friends who served as the witnesses and four neighbours. Esteban
reported that although there were over 200 guests at his wedding, including many members of
both families, he was very hurt that neither his father-in-law nor one of his brothers came,
despite being invited. Another participant, Abel, said that absolutely none of his husband’s
family members attended their wedding because none of them know he is gay.

The very public nature of marriage makes the same-sex relationship visible in many less
obvious contexts, like for example, on legal documents. This increased visibility causes a lot
of couples to decide not to marry, since they do not want to or cannot assume the costs of
universally and uniformly coming out. An example of how costly this procedure can in fact be
is the case of those who come from countries where homosexuality is avidly persecuted. If
these individuals marry a person of the same sex, and that is indicated on their visas or
passports, they are put at risk when crossing the border into their home countries. Also some
couples who were planning to adopt children in foreign nations reported postponing their
decision to wed until after doing so because the majority of the countries that allow adoption
by single individuals would not give a child to a same-sex couple.

17
Finally there are same-sex couples who reported preferring not to marry because, just like
some heterosexual couples, they simply do not share the values, or the legal rights, and duties
that accompany marriage.

Ultimately the individual and collective actions of gays and lesbians and their demands for
both legal and social recognition have brought about new models for organising coupling,
reproduction and intimate life. With these models come new meanings of family and
marriage, which may result in the questioning of heteronormativity. These changes have
allowed homosexuals to challenge the heterosexual assumption, and have effectually spawned
even more transformations, which will be analysed in the next section.

<H2> Changes

After the questioning of the heterosexual foundation of marriage and family, other specific
challenges to these institutions follow. These new possibilities, although not particular to gays
and lesbians, have found an opportune field for development in same-sex couples. The
breaking of the coitus/alliance/filiation continuum becomes official when the filiation of
children with same-sex parents is legalised. In Spain, the heterosexual married couple is no
longer the privileged locus for the reproduction of persons, and more precisely of citizens
(Graham 2004, 27). Individuals and same-sex couples are now also recognised as agents of
biological and social reproduction of citizens as a result of more inclusive laws of adoption
and the development of assisted reproduction methods (Pichardo 2011).

One result of the social debate over same-sex marriage is that it is now common knowledge
that gays and lesbians can have children, and that they already do in fact have them. This
revelation allows all non-heterosexual people to envision a future with children if they so
desire. Being queer no longer means being excluded from the possibility of being a mother or
father. The statistics from the Spanish census of 2001 show that one in four female couples
(28%) and one in ten male couples (9%) had children.10 Also in 2001, long before the
discussion of filiation by same-sex couples had really taken seed in either the public arena or
in Parliament, more than 2,785 children were already living with same-sex couples. Although
ultimately access to maternity and paternity is a right afforded to both hetero- and homosexual

10
See: <http://www.ine.es/censo/es/inicio.jsp> (15 September 2011).

18
 people (see Figure 2), a large disparity still exists in that the process of becoming a parent
proves to be rather meditated for same-sex couples (except for individuals with children from
a previous heterosexual relationship). Since these couples cannot have children through
sexual intercourse within the couple, they must invariably seek the assistance of an outside
party.

PROCEDURE* WOMEN MEN

Previous heterosexual relation
Heterosexual genital sexual intercourse Agreement with someone of the opposite sex
(coitus) Getting pregnant from a sexual
partner without his consent or
knowledge

Anonymous sperm donation Pregnancy with a known woman.

Clinically Assisted
Reproductive Egg donor and surrogacy (same
Insemination Known sperm donation
Techniques woman)**
Egg donor and surrogacy (different
Surrogate pregnancy with couple***
women)**
Home insemination Known sperm donation Donate sperm
Individual or joint adoption
Adoption
Step adoption
Fostering Fostering individually or jointly
*These options can be explored individually, in couples, or within the framework of parenting by more than two individuals.
**Illegal in Spain, but people travel abroad to access it.
***As a result of a legal loophole, performed in Spain only within married, lesbian couples.

Figure 2: Modes of access to maternity and paternity

There is a whole array of options for non-heterosexual people who decide to pursue
reproduction. They have to face a series of important decisions: if they will seek reproduction
individually or as a couple; if the child will be biological or adopted; if it is biological, will it
be conceived through coitus, insemination in a clinic, or self-insemination (“home-
insemination”); whether the donor will be anonymous or someone the would-be parents know
and, in either case, if the legal and social paternity of the third person will be recognised or
not.

Herein, arises the possibility of participating in a co-parenting project between more than two
people, which highlights the glaring distinctions between biological, legal, and social
maternity or paternity (Descoutures 2010). The social aspect of parenting is thereby
acknowledged, despite the fact that the biological nature of the topic never completely
disappears, even in many queer people’s conceptions of family.

19
Accordingly, the participants of the study consistently made reference to the question of
biology within reproduction and parenting. Some of them reported overwhelming interest in
having biogenetic connections with their children and were often completely willing to
dedicate considerable economic and personal efforts to creating them. For example, Marlén, a
40 years old female from Galicia, remarked one of the huge advantages of using self-
insemination to conceive her two children. In case the children ever fall sick and they need to
know their genetic lineage, the situation could be easily resolved, as the donor was her wife’s
brother.

Same-sex couples are also expected to contribute certain innovations to the field of sexuality.
For the majority of gays and lesbians, reproduction has to be achieved without sex. Therefore,
sex is here inextricably no longer linked to reproduction but rather to pleasure, love, and
communication. Rubin (1984) places non-heterosexual people down near the bottom of the
hierarchies of sexuality. As they are already marginalised in terms of sexual norms, this
position could enable them to potentially overcome the constraints of a normative sexuality
centred on procreation and restricted by characterisations like coitus-centrality, ageism,
coupling, monogamy, and others. Nevertheless, same-sex relationships do not necessarily
escape the social pressures to imitate the more prevalent norms of sex: heterosexual, coital, in
partner relationships, monogamous, performed at home, non-commercial, for love, and
between members of the same generation (Rubin 1984). However, some new patterns can be
found among the participants of the study. For example, there appears to be a greater age
difference between homosexual partners than between heterosexual ones (see Figure 3). This
variation could be explained by the fact that the main aim of sexual relations within
homosexual relationships is not reproduction. Therefore the age constrictions related to
fertility that are placed on heterosexual relationships are not relevant to non-heterosexual
pairs.

20
 Figure 3: Age difference between members of a couple by sex of the members
Source: Graphic based on the data of the 2001 Census published on the website of the National Institute of Statistics

Cea, a Spanish sociologist, asserts that sexual monogamy continues characterising the life of
Spanish heterosexual couples, married or not, young or old, and that sexual relationships
outside the couple remains the most censured sexual practice, as it is only accepted by 5% of
the population (2007, 55–57). Faithfulness, on the other hand, is not mandatory in coupling
among the majority of queer people who participated in the study. This condition is usually
agreed upon in the establishment or development of the relationship. That however, does not
mean that all gays and lesbians have sexual relationships outside the couple, just that, for the
majority, it is a topic open to negotiation. Some couples establish a promise of sexual fidelity,
while others opt for a whole array of possibilities that range from tolerance of occasional
instances of sexual infidelity to so-called “open relationships”, in which each partner
maintains sexual relations with other people.

Sexuality has appeared in a veiled form within the discussions of the legalisation of same-sex
marriage in Spain because sex is still thought of as an aspect of private life, not an issue that
should be reflected in debates and public life. However, opposition to the recognition of non-
normative sexualities fuelled most of the arguments against the legalisation of gay marriage.
“What infuriates the opponents of same-sex marriage is the state’s (and by implication, the
nation’s) approval, among other things, of fellatio and anal intercourse between males, and of
cunnilingus and use of dildos by women” (Graham 2004, 25).

21
In order to avoid references to same-sex sexuality that could generate resistance, the concept
of love was often used to legitimise same-sex relationships and queer families. It was meant
to counterbalance the image of queer people as exclusively and insatiably sexual, and as a
strategy to establish equivalencies between hetero- and homosexuals (Villaamil 2004, 69).
Although never mentioned in the legal texts, love has been one of the main supports of the
legalisation of gay marriage, as it is much less controversial to think of two men or two
women loving each other, rather than two men or two women having sex (Graham 2004, 26).

The legalisation of same-sex marriage and filiation not only questions the heteronormativity
of family, but also gender differences, the complementariness of the sexes, and the sexual
division of labour. On a symbolic level it shakes the very foundations of the main system of
discrimination and subordination in our society: the sex/gender system. Since gay marriage
has been legalised, the idea that every family should be made up of a man and a woman is
obviously being negated, along with the radical division of all of society into two genders.

In a same-sex couple, the enactment of gender roles are being reshaped, as either two men or
two women are responsible for nurturing, showing affection and all of the domestic duties
like, working out of the house, cleaning, cooking, and shopping. This trend debunks cultural
constructs such as the idea that women are more apt to caretaking. In these non-heterosexual
couples, gender is not relevant to the question of who should stop working temporarily in
order to take charge of raising a child. For example, Marlén gave birth to her first daughter,
but it was her wife, Manoli, who left work afterwards to care for the child so that Marlén
could continue her professional career, which she says “is a less likely outcome with a man”.

However, just because there are no power struggles based on gender, does not imply that there
is complete equality within same-sex couples. Instead these disparities are based on other
elements such as age, economic power, symbolic capital, and shared possession of the house,
amongst others: “I was 36 years-old, but she was 22. Therefore we were not very equal. Let’s
just say she did what I said, because I was older” (Valentina, female, 65 years-old).

In any case, none of these changes are lineal or unidirectional. Since they seem to bypass the
structural, metaphorical, symbolic, and ideological elements that have historically maintained
the hegemonic models, they also serve to maintain the systems of inequality. Gays and
lesbians do not escape gender socialisation; therefore they too reproduce it. Although within

22
the same-sex couple there can hardly be gender-based division of household duties and
chores, outside of it, they tend to replicate the same gender roles as in the rest of society. For
instance, within their families usually the women, like grandmothers or sometimes hired help,
take on the role of caregivers and are responsible for many domestic chores.

The main elements of change that have occurred in the sexual and familial relationships of the
participants of the study have been reviewed. However, within these changes there are certain
continuities that will be discussed in the following section.

<H2> Continuities

Kinship reflects the need of human groups to guarantee their own survival. The different
systems of kinship result from the various manners in which each culture structures biological
and social reproduction, sexual division of labour, and the organisation of residence, amongst
other aspects. Therefore, analysing the material conditions in which people find themselves
becomes one of the crucial elements for studying the changes and continuities that gays and
lesbians are producing in relation to the family. It is precisely within these conditions that
even more continuities with the pre-existing conceptions of family can be found. The family
remains a basic residential, financial and consumer unit, and above all, the foundation of
biological reproduction, the nucleus of enduring material solidarity, that is, care giving and
receiving. That is to say that the family remains the locus of reproduction of the material
conditions essential to the survival of individuals and social life.

According to Weeks, Heaphy and Donovan (2001, 43), marginalised individuals, in this case,
non-heterosexual people, try to create viable ways of living, feasible in their specific
circumstances. Everyday practical concerns, like sharing a house, the expenses, travels or
rituals, define familial relationships to such a degree that they can sometimes even be
responsible for the dissolution of the couple or family. In order to detect emerging life
experiments and new familial practices, diverse ways of reproducing domestic life were
analysed. Commonplace problems such as “Should we live together?”; “Should we get
married?”; “Should we register ourselves as a couple?”; “How do we deal with the issue of
property ownership?” were closely examined. The participants of the study did not report
intentionally living or re-organising their lives to “redefine the family” or to question “the
heteronormativity of marriage”. However, they did remark that the heterosexual nuclear

23
family model (“the path”) has some practical aspects that inherently exclude most queers,
therefore forcing them to seek out their own alternatives to organise their everyday lives.
Nevertheless, this sentiment did not prevent these dominant conceptions of the family from
influencing the way they actually arranged and interpreted their own lives in the end.

Living together has been, and continues to be one of the basic elements of the Western
definition of familial relationships. It appears to be expressly linked to marriage, as it remains
a prevailing condition of the Mediterranean socio-cultural tradition and is even a requirement
under Spanish law (Bestard 1998, 180–182; Alberdi 1999, 60–61). Cohabitation is also
required for the legal recognition of registered partnerships, either as a pre-existing condition
before registration or as a stipulation they are expected to comply with after registering.
However, emerging changes have been noted in the Basque Country’s registered partnership
law (Law 2/2003, May 7th) where a shared residence is no longer required in order to register.

The participants of the study also assigned living together a leading role in determining what
is and is not a family: “I understand a family to be a couple. […] You should still be
considered a family whether you do or don’t have children, or if you are the same or opposite
sex. We live under the same roof, we share. I mean, we are a family” (Arancha, female, 35
years-old). Living together, however, does not become a requirement sine qua non to be
considered a family. Marina considers herself, her girlfriend, and her girlfriend’s daughter to
be a family because, even though the daughter does not live with them, they share a lot of
expenses related to her. Similarly, Julián and José, despite not living together, do consider
themselves not only a couple, but also a family: “José, my sister, my father and my mother are
my family. They are the people I live with, in distinct spaces and times” (Julián). In fact, Julián
lives in three different cities and spaces, depending on the proximity to his work. Some days
he sleeps and eats in his hometown at his parent’s house, other days he spends at his own
apartment in the capital city of his region, and then he spends weekends or short periods of
time at his boyfriend’s house in Madrid. This arrangement allows him to maintain his partner
relationship without their living together, and while living in multiple houses and cities.

Some of the participants chose, in spite of material conditions or maybe even because of
them, to maintain stable partner relationships living in different spaces Various couples who
participated in the study did not live together despite having been in a long-term relationship
for years. Some of them lived in different cities and expressed no intentions of living together

24
in the near future. They fall into the category of those who consider partnership or family to
be independent of a shared dwelling, also known as “living apart together”. A similar, yet
different situation is that of Juantxo (38 years-old) and his daughter Eleuteria, who have never
lived in the same house, but maintain a parent-child relationship in which he even has the
keys to the house where Eleuteria lives with her mother in Madrid. These types of situations
are common in reconstructed families, both homosexual and heterosexual, and highlight the
symbolic importance of the home and cohabitation as the spaces in which family relations are
built.

People in same-sex relationships usually prefer to live together, make a single consumer unit,
and above all, form units of enduring solidarity in which mutual care is one of the main
expressions not just of love, but also of the existence of a familial bond. Participants
consistently reported in their interviews and during participant observations that they thought
of their family as the people who “are there” when you need them and for whom you are
always available when they need you.

By examining the economical organisation of these families, again both continuity and change
can be found. Not all same-sex couples form a single financial unit where the two members
have a single, common economy with joint income and expenses, as is more commonly the
case with heterosexual couples in Spain (Cea 2007, 312–313). Instead, they manage personal
and shared expenses in a variety of different ways. Some partners maintain entirely separate
accounts; others share some expenses, like rent; others prefer to have both shared and separate
accounts; and still others share all expenses and accounts. On the other hand, as time passes
queer couples and family units seem to move towards a common economy, especially when
joint possessions are acquired or there are underage members of the family.

The participants put a high premium on coupling and expressed very little doubt or issue with
coupling. Most of them considered having a partner to be a vital objective. Being single was
identified with loneliness, which appeared to be one of the greatest fears of the participants.
Similarly, there is no general discourse among queer individuals or LGBTQ associations as to
the ways in which single life could be seen positively or as an enriching or positive way of
living.

25
Finding participants who were in a stable sexual and affective relationship comprised of more
than two people proved to be a challenge. In several ethnographic spaces, various people
commented that they knew three males or three females living together or in a threesome
relationship, but when these people were asked to join the study, most of them not only
refused to, but also became upset with the person who had shared the information about their
relationship. Eventually three people in such a relationship were interviewed, and they made it
abundantly clear that relationships such as theirs remain, in their own words, “in the closet”.

Overall, both the couple and the family, continue to be a reference point for the organisation
of sexuality, biological reproduction, and the everyday life of many queers. The concept of
family remains steadfast, as reflected in the fact that many ritualistic and family events and
celebrations have become spaces for confrontation and discussion of the familial status of
non-heterosexual relationships. Christmas, first communions, baptisms, weddings, funerals,
and hospitalisations were very often mentioned throughout the study as such spaces. When
the recognition of a queer family was a point of contention, these situations tended to become
tense. The question of who is and is not considered family often is at the helm of these
situations. For example, one of the participating couples reported fighting every Christmas,
sometimes even almost reaching the point of breaking up because, while one of the two
wanted to spend the holidays with his biological family, the other did not since he was not
recognised as his partner’s boyfriend by them. For him, Christmas is meant to be spent with
family, and since they were each other’s family, they would have been better off spending it
alone together.

Within Spanish culture a radical rupture from the biological family is generally uncommon, as
is the dichotomy between biological and chosen family that is portrayed in Anglo-Saxon
literature on kinship of gays and lesbians (Weston 1991). The participants of this study
reported attempting to integrate into the biological family, while seeking recognition of their
homosexual identities and relationships. In a society like Spain’s, where the family has such
an important role in the economical, material, and affective support networks, most queers
cannot afford to be ostracised from their families, just as these families cannot afford to
exclude them. This is likely one of the main factors in the acceptance of same-sex
relationships within families in Spain.

26
The debate over “new families” or the existence of “rainbow families” in Spain is certainly
relevant in this nation. There, LGBTQ people and associations were able to appropriate the
concept of family, which enabled the legalisation of gay marriage. However, challenges
certainly remain for these “rainbow families”, which are addressed in the concluding
epigraph.

<H2> Conclusion

Although LGBT organisations constantly assert that same-sex marriage assures legal equality
between homosexual and heterosexual people, this is often not completely true, especially in
the context of kinship. For instance, if a baby is born to a married, lesbian couple, the wife of
the biological mother is not automatically recognised as a parent, as is the case in
heterosexual marriages. Instead, the non-biological mother has to file paperwork before the
baby is born, or adopt him/her afterwards. Similarly, gay couples who use surrogate
pregnancy outside of Spain (since it is not legally permitted in the country) eventually must
face the obstacle of registering their children in the civil registry with two male parents.

Some of these legal problems would disappear if the presumption of paternity were eliminated
and if the voluntary registration of the filial relationship of both parents were always
mandatory in the case of all married or unmarried couples, heterosexuals included. This
would imply that if a baby were born to a married couple, both the biological mother and her
spouse would have to legally recognise that child as their own. The ideology that filiation
relies on the existence of biogenetic link would be broken down, effectively highlighting the
social and voluntary nature of this bond.

However, all of these issues are clearly based on the prevailing symbolic connection between
filiation, heterosexual intercourse, and marriage, which, although disputed, remains a popular
tenet upheld, not just by society at large, but also in the legal and judicial systems. Despite the
changes that have taken place recently in the sexual and familial relationships of LGBT
people, heterosexism still exists at both a legal and a social level.

Ultimately the legalisation of gay marriage has opened up new possibilities, serving as an
example of the way historically dominant ideologies can be successfully overthrown by the

27
action of social actors. However, these social changes show certain continuities with the
prevailing hegemonic models and also run the risk of discriminating those who prefer not to
become a couple or marry. Although no change is ever complete and continuities are always
to be expected, the transformations created by the social and legal recognition of queer
families in Spain that have been explored here have certainly proven to be very significant in
the socio-cultural landscape of that nation.

<H2> References

Alberdi, I. 1999. La nueva familia española (The new Spanish family). Madrid: Taurus.

Bestard, J. 1998. Parentesco y Modernidad (Kinship and modernity). Barcelona: Paidós.

Cea, M. Á. 2007 La deriva del cambio familiar. Hacia formas de convivencia más abiertas y
democráticas (The direction of family changes. Towards new, more open and democratic
ways of living together). Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas – S. XXI.

Descoutures, V. 2010. Les mères lesbiennes (Lesbian Mothers). Paris: Presses Universitaires
de France.

Graham, M. 2004. Gay Marriage: Whiter Sex? Some Thoughts from Europe. Sexuality
Research and Social Policy 1(3): 24–31.

Paternotte, D. 2008. Sociologie politique comparée de l’ouverture du mariage civil aux

couples de même sexe en Belgique, en France et en Espagne: des spécificités nationales aux
convergences transnationales (Comparative political sociology of the opening-up of civil
marriage to same-sex couples in Belgium, France and Spain: from national peculiarities to
transnational convergences). PhD thesis, Université libre de Bruxelles.

Pichardo, J. I. 2008. Lesbianas o no. In Lesbianas. Discursos y representaciones (Lesbians:

Discourses and Representations), ed. R. Platero, 119–138. Barcelona: Melusina.

–––. 2009. Entender la diversidad familiar. Relaciones homosexuales y nuevos modelos de

familia (Understanding familial diversity. Same-sex relations and new models of family).
Barcelona: Bellaterra.

–––. 2011, We are family (or not). Social and legal recognition of same-sex relationships and
lesbian and gay families in Spain. Sexualities 14(5): 544–561.

Pichardo, J. I., B. Molinuevo, and R. Riley. 2009. Achieving real equality: A work in progress
for LGBT youth in Spain. Journal of LGBT Youth 6(2–3): 272–287.

Rich, A. 1980. Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence. Signs: Journal of Women
in Culture and Society 5(4): 631–660.

28
Rubin, G. 1975. The traffic in women. In Toward an anthropology of women, ed. R. Rapp
Reiter, 157–210. New York: Monthly Review Press.

–––. 1984. Thinking sex: Notes for a radical theory of the politics of sexuality. In Pleasure
and Danger, ed. C. Vance, 267–319. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Villaamil, F. 2004. La transformación de la identidad gay en España (The transformation of

gay identity in Spain). Madrid: Catarata.

Weeks, J., B. Heaphy, and C. Donovan. 2001. Same Sex Intimacies. Families of choice and
other life experiments. London: Routledge.

Weston, K. 1991. Families we choose: Lesbians, gays, kinship. New York: Columbia
University Press.

29
 Elke Jansen

<H1> Parenting of the Fittest? Lesbian and Gay Family Planning in Germany

For a long time parenthood and homosexuality seemed not to go well together even for
lesbians and gay men themselves. Today this idea is still reflected in discussions concerning
equal rights for homosexual and heterosexual couples. For example, in October 2010 the
German Minister of Family Affairs, Kristina Schröder, stated in an interview: “There is only
one thing they (lesbian mothers or gay fathers) cannot offer by nature: the opposite gender.
We know that it is important for the development of a child to grow up with both genders.”11
In Germany marriage is still not open to same-sex partners. Since 2001 there is an institution
of “registered partnership” for same-sex couples with a lot of duties but lacking in equal
rights. Same-sex couples have fewer rights in areas like taxation12 and – especially
importantly for families – adoption and child custody.

Conservative politicians in Parliament always try to block or at least slow down legal
processes which would provide equal rights for same-sex couples by arguing that marriage
between a man and a woman is directed towards bringing up children, whereas same-sex
couples cannot become parents.13 Such argumentation does not seem to have a lot in common
with social reality in Germany, where less than 50% of married couples become parents14 and,
as reported by the “BMJ study”15, the first representative study on same sex-parents living in
a registered partnership in Germany, at least 7,000 children grow up in LGBT families (Rupp
2009).16 In the autumn of 2009 the German Federal Constitutional Court also rejected the

11
The European, 20. November 2010, Moderne Familienpolitik, Gespräch mit Kristina Schröder,
<http://www.theeuropean.de/kristina-koehler/4626-moderne-familienpolitik>, author’s translation.
12
In Germany registered same-sex partners are responsible for each otherand have to support their partner in case
of unemployment or disability. This burden, however, cannot be deducted from the income tax. In the area of
income tax registered same-sex partners are treated like strangers, which means that the registered same-sex
partners have to pay a lot more income tax than heterosexual married couples.
13
In the German constitution “marriage and family” is put under special protection (article 6 paragraph 1, special
protection of marriage and family)
14
Statistisches Bundesamt, ed. 2006. Leben in Deutschland. Haushalte, Familien und Gesundheit –
Ergebnisse des Mikrozensus 2005. Wiesbaden.
15
The study is referred to as the “BMJ study” because it was commissioned by the “BundesMinisterium
der Justiz”, the German Federal Ministry of Justice.
16
The study includes data of 1,059 same-sex oriented parents. In some cases both partners were
interviewed, so the data represents a total of 767 families and 852 children. 625 of the 866 individuals or couples
lived in a registered partnership, and 142 couples or 193 individuals lived together without registration. The sub-
sample of couples in a registered partnership should be seen as broadly representative for Germany, since almost
all target individuals could be addressed directly - via letter or phone. The researchers contacted a total of 14,000
same-sex couples living in a registered partnership. The contacts were committed to the research institute by

30
 well-known conservative argument:
“Unequal treatment cannot be justified (…). There are no children in every marriage, and not every
marriage is aimed at having children. (…) There are children living in many registered partnerships,
especially in those formed by two women. (…) According to the study by the State Research Institute
for Family Studies at the University of Bamberg 2,200 children are growing up in the current 13,000
registered partnerships in Germany (…). So the child rate in registered partnerships, although well
17
below those of married couples, is by no means negligible.”

The BMJ study played an important role not only in verifying the existence of LGBT families
in Germany but also in proving that children grow up well when reared by same-sex couples.
Although this has already been shown by mostly Anglo-American research in the past two
decades,18 the conservatives in political debates in Germany often challenged the
transferability of those results. In this chapter we will present the main findings of the BMJ
study concerning child development as well as the political and juridical reactions to the
findings of the study.

<H2> The First Representative Study of Lesbian and Gay Family Life in Germany

In 2006 the German Minister of Justice, Brigitte Zypries, a member of the Social Democratic
Party (SPD), decided to generate reliable data on LGBT families in Germany. She
commissioned the first representative study (BMJ study) on the development and living
conditions of children raised in same-sex families in Germany. To resolve all possible doubts
about the results of the research, the research was conducted by two state-run research
institutes from Bavaria19, a province of Germany, which has been governed by the German
Conservative Coalition (CDU/CSU) for the past 60 years. Furthermore, Bavaria is one of
those German states, which have tried several times to stop legal progress on LGBT rights by
filing lawsuits at the German Federal Constitutional Court. The BMJ study’s results thus

appropriate authorities in the German federal states. In contrast, the comparison group of non-registered same-
sex parents was recruited by voluntary reporting, that includes a higher level of selectivity. However, the two
groups showed neither statistically significant differences nor differences with regard to contents, therefore the
respondents were included in the overall analysis without segregation.
17
Author’s translation of Line 112-113: BVerfG, 1 BvR 1164/07 vom 07.07.2009, Absatz-Nr. 1 – 127, published
22th of October 2009. <http://www.bverfg.de/entscheidungen/rs20090707_1bvr116407.html> (15.09.2010)
The Federal Constitutional Court published its decision referring to the "Retirement Fund of the Federation and
the Provinces (VBL)” and ruling that the Fund must provide the same survivor's pension to a surviving domestic
partner (i.e. same-sex partner) as to a surviving spouse.
18
See, for example: Anderssen et al. 2002, Patterson 2006, Perrin 2002, Stacey and Biblarz 2001, Biblarz and
Stacey 2010.
19
State Institute for Family Research at the University of Bamberg (IFB) and State Institute of Early Childhood
Research (IFPI) in Munich.

31
 made a real difference in the political and public discussions of same-sex family issues in
Germany.

Within the BMJ research 1,059 homosexual parents were interviewed by the State Institute
for Family Research of the University of Bamberg (IFB), including 93% of lesbian mothers
and 7% of gay fathers.20 They participated in the so called “parental study”. 866 parents lived
in a registered partnership and provided information about 693 children (Rupp and
Dürnberger 2009).21 The parent interviews focussed on many themes, including family
development, division of housework, parental care, second parent adoptions and contacts with
parents living outside of the LGBT family, family outing, social discrimination and how the
children deal with it, etc. Parents were also asked to assess their children’s development using
a standardised behaviour-related questionnaire (Dürnberger et al. 2009).

Additionally 95 children, aged 10–18, were also interviewed within a developmental children
study.22 Using standardised questionnaires these children were assessed according to their
psychological adjustment and well-being (e.g. self-esteem, depression or psychosomatic
complaints), dealing with developmental tasks of adolescents, their relationship to their
parents (e.g. concerning autonomy, closeness and conflicts), as well as the appearance of
social discrimination and how they dealt with it (Dürnberger, Rupp and Bergold 2009).23 The
results were compared with available data on heterosexual nuclear families, single mother
families and reconstituted or patchwork families. The data from the developmental children
study proved to be of high quality, as children’s answers showed high scores on the overall

20
The interviews were conducted via CATI (computer assisted phone interviewing). The low percentage
of gay fathers is due to the fact that most children of gay fathers in Germany today originate from a former
heterosexual context, and usually live with their mothers. In the study, however, only those LGBT-families were
included, which share daily life together.
21
32% of the actual 2,200 children being raised in registered partnerships in Germany were “included”
through their parents in the parental survey. The number of male and female children living in registered
partnerships are nearly equal: 52% daughters and 45% sons. 43% of the children were less than 6 years old and
57% were between 6 and 18 years old (Rupp and Bergold 2009, 282ff).
22
Just like the interviews conducted with parents, the interviews with children were also conducted via CATI
(computer assisted phone interview). In order to be able to participate in the research children had to be at least
10 years old. In Germany only a few children born or adopted into a LGBT family are of that age. Consequently
78% of children in the children’s study were born in former heterosexual relationships, while 44% of the
children in the parental study were of such origin (Dürnberger, Rupp and Bergold 2009, 31ff).
23
According to the age of children two different interview manuals were used: For children younger than 13 years
the IFP worked with the BISK, the attachment interview for late childhood (“Bindungsinterview für die späte
Kindheit” in German). With children older than 13 the EAI, the developmental task interview was used
(“Entwicklungsaufgaben-Interviews” in German). For children of all ages the AAI, the adult attachment
interview was used to measure elements of attachment. See more details on the interviewing in Rupp 2009 and
Dürnberger, Rupp and Bergold 2009.

32
consistency of linguistic representation and low idealising tendencies (Becker-Stoll and
Beckh 2009).

The results from both parental and children development studies show that children who grow
up with lesbian or gay parents develop as well in emotional and social functioning as children
whose parents are heterosexual (Jansen 2010; Rupp 2010; Rupp et al. 2009). There were no
signs of “increased vulnerability”, such as a higher tendency to depression or psychosomatic
complaints. They are successful in individuation and most of them share a warm and
supportive relationship with their parents in and outside the LGBT family. They deal very
well with the key challenges of adolescence, the so called developmental tasks like adjusting
to a new physical sense of self, building up first intimate relationships, developing stable and
productive peer relationships as well as achieving emotional independence from parents and
other adults – and in some aspects they do even better than their peers growing up in
heterosexual nuclear families, single mother families or patchwork families: for example, they
plan and organise school and their professional career more in advance and take it much more
seriously (Becker-Stoll and Beckh 2009). This is partly the result of the generally higher
average education level and professional qualifications among the LGBT families compared
to the general population. The BMJ study showed that 60% of the homosexual parents had
medium (“Gymnasium”) level education, compared to 30% of general population; and nearly
every second (45%) had a university degree, compared to 19% in the general population
(Rupp 2009). The parents’ higher educational background was also reflected in their
children’s school career: while in Germany on average 17% of children attend a high school
(secondary school), among LGBT families it is more than twice as much (38%).

The most outstanding results from the survey concerned children’s self development.
Children from LGBT families showed a significantly higher level of self-esteem and
autonomy in the relationship with their parents than children living in heterosexual nuclear
families, single mother families or patchwork families (Rupp 2009). From a health and
especially resilience research point of view they can be assumed to be better off and less
vulnerable by stressful environmental conditions than other peers (van Gelderen et al. 2009;
Greve and Staudinger 2006; Elle 2009).

One of the most often recurring concerns about gay and lesbian parenthood is the idea that
children in LGBT families are discriminated and therefore sustain serious damages

33
concerning their development (Rauchfleisch 2005). The BMJ study showed that less than
50% of the respondents in the children developmental study reported discriminatory incidents
(Dürnberger et al. 2009; Rupp and Bergold 2009). Those children, who reported on having
experienced discrimination, were asked via open ended questions in which way and by whom
they have been discriminated. In the majority of these cases children reported on verbal
discrimination coming from their peers. For example, nearly 13% of the children surveyed
reported that they have been verbally attacked, teased, had to listen to “stupid comments” or
were laughed at (17% rarely experienced such attacks and 67% never). Children who had
personal experiences of discrimination did not suffer any harm, not even in the few isolated
cases of multiple discriminatory incidents. However children who had suffered discrimination
did not rate as splendid in self-esteem as the other kids in the study, but they still showed
values comparable to peers raised up in heterosexual nuclear families. The researchers assume
that the trusting relationship between the children and their parents works against any
negative impact. A regression analysis showed that adjustments in terms of depression, self-
esteem, psychosomatic complaints or aggression, are only negatively affected by experiences
of discrimination when the relationship with parents is simultaneously characterised by high
uncertainty (Becker-Stoll and Beckh 2009).

During the press conference, where the study’s results were presented, the former German
Minister of Justice, Brigitte Zypries, said:
“Today is a good day for those who focus on facts rather than rely on stereotypes – especially in
ideologically charged topics. The investigation confirmed: where kids are loved, they will grow up well.
The parent’s sexual orientation is not essential for a good relationship between children and parents ...
Children living together with two mothers or two fathers develop as well as those in other family
24
structures.”.

One of the immediate practical consequences of presenting these study results was that the
conservative Bavarian government decided to withdraw a complaint of unconstitutionality
against the second parent’s adoption law that was introduced for same-sex couples in 2005.
One month after the study presentation the German Federal Constitutional Court ruled that
homosexual couples should have the right to adopt their partner's biological children and that

24
Bundesministerium der Justiz (23 July 2009). Pressemitteilung “Familie ist dort, wo Kinder sind.
Zypries stellt Forschungsprojekt“.
<http://www.bmj.de/enid/a5ded0b59548eb36f450aa531efeb774,803e69706d635f6964092d0936313035093a097
9656172092d0932303039093a096d6f6e7468092d093037093a095f7472636964092d0936313035/Pressestelle/Pr
essemitteilungen_58.html> (15 September 2010), author’s translation.

34
 25
this right is not unconstitutional. The court overturned a lower court ruling. They argued that
26
social parenthood has to be treated like biological parenthood and that this ruling had to be
applied to same-sex couples as well. The court used this opportunity to point out that
parenthood – as it is specifically protected by the German state – does not only stand for
biological but also for social or legal parenthood. It is not a matter of being a biological
mother or father, but rather of parental care, which makes a person a parent.

Minister Zypries was obviously right when she assessed the study as an “important step on the
path to full social and legal recognition of gay couples”. She closed the press conference with
the following demand: “We should therefore not stop half-way and should now set up the
27
legal requirement for a ‘joint adoption’ by same-sex partners”. The idea of joint adoption
was not perceived without controversy even within the Social Democratic Party (SPD) itself.
In September 2009 a new government was elected in Germany. The Social Democratic Party
failed to be a coallition party, and thus the first definite step to facilitate lesbian and gay
family planning in Germany does seem to have stopped half-way.

Although the liberal party (FDP – Free Democratic Party) had argued for a joint adoption
right for registered partners for many years it did not find its way into the coalition agreement
of the Liberal and Conservative party. In November 2010 the Justice Ministers of all German
States argued consentaneous for a joint adoption right for same-sex couples.28 They appealed
to the Federal Government to allow registered partners to adopt children. This initiative had
no political impact, but what was remarkable was the unanimity of the appeal. It was the first
time ministers from the Conservatives Party advocated for equality of same-sex couples and
heterosexual couples concerning family planning.

25
BVerfG, 1 BvL 15/09 vom 10.08.2009, Absatz-Nr. (1 - 16),
<http://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/entscheidungen/lk20090810_1bvl001509.html> (15 September 2010).
26
Beyond “legal” or “judicial parenthood”, where parents and children are bound by law, two types of parenting
can be distinguished: biological and social parenthood. While “biological parenthood” is founded on procreation
and birth (principle of filiation), “social parenthood” is based on the de facto taking of parental duties. Social
mothers and fathers give care to non biological children and take long-term responsibility for them. Social
parenthood is specific to adoptive families as well as blended families and families, were children were
conceived by donor insemination.
27
Bundesministerium der Justiz (23 July 2009). Pressemitteilung “Familie ist dort, wo Kinder sind.
Zypries stellt Forschungsprojekt“.
<http://www.bmj.de/enid/a5ded0b59548eb36f450aa531efeb774,803e69706d635f6964092d0936313035093a097
9656172092d0932303039093a096d6f6e7468092d093037093a095f7472636964092d0936313035/Pressestelle/Pr
essemitteilungen_58.html> (15 September 2010), author’s translation.
28
See: http://www.jurablogs.com/de/justizminister-fordern-adoptionsrecht-schwule-lesben

35
 <H2> Lesbian and gay family planning: how to become a parent after coming out?

Increasing social acceptance of diversity in sexual orientation allows more gay men and
29
lesbians to come out before forming intimate relationships or becoming parents. According
to the result of a survey conducted in 1998 with 955 gay, lesbian and bisexual respondents in
Germany, every second young lesbian and third young gay man would like to live with
30
children later on in their lives (Anhamm 1998). Over the years an increasing number of
lesbians and gay men are choosing to start families after coming out.

This dynamic is already reflected in the BMJ study. Out of the 2,200 children growing up in
registered partnerships, only half were born in previous heterosexual relationships of their
parents (Rupp 2009). After their coming-out lesbian women and gay men in Germany
31
currently have four ways to build a so called rainbow family. Most lesbians become mothers
by donor insemination (Rupp 2009) or – in the last years more often – they start “queer
32
families” together with gay men. Some lesbian women and gay men offer foster children a
new home, and very few are choosing to adopt children mostly from foreign countries
formally as single persona because joint adoption is not a legal option for same-sex couples.
There are only a few known cases were gay men became biological fathers via surrogacy –
33
mostly through surrogacy agencies in the US (cf. Katzorke 2010). If lesbians and gays
choose one of these ways to start a family, they will generally have to face many more
constraints and challenges than heterosexual couples in Germany or even same-sex couples in

29
According to the “Eurobarometer 66” 42% of the German population agreed in 2006 that “adoption of children
should be authorized for homosexual couples throughout Europe”. In a representative on-line survey in 2010
61% of people surveyed agreed with the “common adoption right” for registered partners in Germany (Mingle-
Trend-Respondi 2010).
30
The adjusted data base included 955 respondents (77.3% homosexual men, 15.8% homosexual
women and 6.9% bisexual people). See also Haag 2010.
31
In Germany a LGBT-family is called “Regenbogenfamilie” (rainbow family). The term is used both in scientific
as well as in media and everyday life language. “Rainbow family“ means a lesbian- or gay-headed family with a
single mother or father or two fathers or mothers; the same-sex parents may live in a registered partnership or
not. According to the BMJ study at least 7,000 children are growing up in rainbow families in Germany.
32
The term “queer family” is used for families where lesbian women and gay men start a family together:
a lesbian woman gives birth to the child and a gay man donates the sperm. In contrast to a lesbian-headed family
created by donor insemination, the gay man is seen as a sperm donor but rather as a father. He takes part in
family life after the child is born. The counselling experiences of last 10 years in the German “Rainbow family
project” show that the children in queer families mostly live with the lesbian mother/mothers. Sometimes the gay
and lesbian couples create a living arrangement with two flats next door or a twin house. Rarely the child grows
up primarily in the gay household.
33
In Germany surrogacy is not illegal – it is neither actionable to act as a surrogate mother nor to appoint a
surrogate mother – but all kind of mediation is illegal. As a consequence there is a lack of laws and provisions or
agencies to make surrogacy agreements safe for all involved parties.

36
some other European countries such as the Netherlands, the Scandinavian countries or Spain,
where same-sex couples have been able to marry since 2005.

<H2> Lesbian Mothers by Donor Insemination

During the last few years an increasing number of lesbian women in Germany have opted for
donor insemination.34 The resulting children are usually born and raised in same-sex
relationships, which means that most often lesbians who opt for donor insemination are in a
same-sex relationship. The BMJ-study showed that 48% of the children in registered
partnerships are born in a same-sex partnership and most of the LGBT families, who wish for
more children (54%), are looking forward to accomplish it by donor insemination.35 Lesbian
women will have to overcome three main difficulties, if they chose to go to a domestic or
foreign fertility centre or look for a private donor. These include problems deriving from a
lack of legal support for using fertility treatment, the German alimony law, and the
regulations of the Federal Medical Association.

There is no legal support for using fertility treatments for non-married couples or singles in
Germany. All legal regulations concerning fertility treatment focus on marriage. Only married
heterosexual women have the guaranty to get a fertility treatment, while registered partners
cannot be sure, if a fertility centre will cooperate with them – it is neither prohibited nor
legally regulated. In some European countries the legal situation is much better for female
singles, including lesbians: since 2007 medically assisted insemination is available to every
woman in Belgium, as well as to lesbian couples in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Netherlands,
Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom (Dethloff 2010).

Alimony and filiation law in Germany makes donor insemination a lot more difficult for
lesbians. Lesbian mothers cannot exempt a donor from child support. If a lesbian mother for
example finds herself in financial difficulties and asks for special financial support for the

34
This assumption is based on the author’s counselling experience in the LSVD project Rainbow family
(www.family.lsvd.de). Furthermore it is reflected in BMJ study’s age structure of children in registered
partnerships: the children in the developmental sub-sample interviewed by the IFB had to be at least 10 years old
according to the survey method. 78% of these children came from previous heterosexual relationships of their
lesbian mothers or gay fathers. In the IFB parent survey, however, 50% of the children are younger than 6 years,
and 49% of the sons and daughters were born in the same-sex partnership.
35
70% of the gay men and 80% of the lesbian mothers in the study think about enlarging the family by
getting more biological children (see: Rupp 2009, 105–107).

37
 child, provided by the state36, the sperm donor would theoretically be liable for this money
(ibid.). Even a physician of a sperm bank could legally be seen as the one who “caused” a
pregnancy by donor insemination and be held to account for alimony, if the mother were to
take him to court. For married heterosexual couples the alimony law does not cause any
trouble concerning donor insemination: A husband is recognised as the child’s legal father
from birth on, even if donor sperm was used.37

German law does not address similar situations (donor insemination) for lesbian couples
living in a registered partnership. These lesbian-headed families where the child was born via
donor insemination are treated like “blended families”, in which one or both women are
understood to have children from a previous relationship, and not like parents, who realise a
shared desire to have a child. The non-biological mother has to take a detour via a second
parent adoption in order to become the child’s legal parent, which is a long and sometimes
problematic way.

A second parent adoption (or the step-child adoption) is a complex process which generally
takes at least six months to one year to be completed. Then there are 12 further months, the
so-called “adoption care period”38, which means that the adoption process usually takes at
least 1.5 to 2 years, during which time the child is legally protected only by a biological
parent. During this process, the mothers will be “assessed” by youth welfare officers as well
as judges. If these people have positive views on adoption by same-sex couples in general, all
might run without problems, even if it takes a while for the adoption to be completed, but if at
least one professional is opposed to it, the mothers may have to face delays, discriminatory
treatment or even unsustainable refusals, which make opposition proceedings necessary
(ibid.).39 All these would be rendered unnecessary, if registered partners were treated like

36
The Germany state provides a financial support for single parents - usually single mothers – to “replace”
the second biological parent or the one who caused the pregnancy (usually the father). It is considered as an “in
advance” child support, in cases where the father is not yet known or is not yet able to pay. The German state
expects to get this money back from the second parent, when he is made known or is able to pay.
37
In Germany children conceived by donor insemination, who are born into a marriage, are legally
considered as the husband’s children (§ 1592 sec 1 No 1 BGB – BGB means Civil Code), even if they were
conceived with the sperm of another man (heterologous insemination). The husband is not even allowed to
contest the paternity, once he agreed to the heterologous insemination (§ 1600 sec 5 BGB). See also Dethloff
2010.
38
The “adoption care time” originates from step-child adoption in heterosexual blended families. It is the period of
time when the potential step-parent has to live together with the child, who will be adopted, to assess whether a
viable social relationship between them has developed and to establish that the adoption serves the best interests
of the child.
39
In the last years the LSVD project “Rainbow family” counselled and supported various complaints,

38
 married couples concerning filiation law. The non-biological mother would be the child’s
legal parent right from the birth on. Unfortunately the claim for equal treatment of social
mothers with married couples was rejected by the German Federal Constitutional Court in the
summer of 2010.40

Although the detour via second-parent adoption for lesbian-headed families created by donor
insemination has its drawbacks explained above, the legislation itself meant a tremendous step
forward for the recognition of lesbian and gay parenthood when it was provided in January
2005. For the first time in Germany a child legally could have two fathers or two mothers.
Furthermore the co-mothers and co-fathers were allowed by law to adopt the biological child
of their registered partners and became legal mothers or fathers of the child including all
rights – e.g. the right of custody – and duties – e.g. the duty to pay alimony for the child. This
also means that lesbian headed families created by donor insemination receive bigger support
for private donors as well as fertility centres: when a mother co-adopts the child of her
registered partner, no one else can be forced to pay alimony. The second parent adoption
therefore seemed to be a suitable answer to the problems caused by German alimony and
filiation law. Whereas until 2005 lesbians, who wanted to have a baby, mostly had to choose
foreign fertility centres, for example in the Netherlands, Belgium or Denmark, from 2005 on a
lot of German fertility centres began to cooperate with lesbian couples – if they were living in
a registered partnership and had signed a paper which said that the co-mother will adopt the
child as soon as possible.41

All went well until the German Federal Medical Association (the “Bundesärztekammer”)
hindered this progress by professional regulations. In 2006 the Association prohibited the

administrative appeals and opposition proceedings against discriminatory treatment of lesbian mothers in the
context of step-child adoptions.
40
BVerfG, 1 BvR 666/10 vom 2.7.2010, http://www.bverfg.de/entscheidungen/rk20100702_1bvr066610.html
(15.09.2010).
Reasoning: A woman - living together with a child’s biological mother in a registered partnership - cannot be the
child’s father already for biological reasons - if she doesn’t apply to be a woman under § 10 transgender law.
Accordingly the statutory presumption on biological parenthood as it is set in 1592 sec. 1 BGB (see footnote 15)
cannot take effect.
This regulation is based on the assumption, that the husband usually is the biological father of a child, which is
born during a marriage.
41
In the LSVD project “Rainbow family” 70% of the counselling requests on phone or via emails focus
on family planning issues and 80% of these family planning requests deal with biological parenthood. The
project does not only give advice and share information. It also collects information, experiences and best or
worst practice examples. ILSE (Initiative Lesbischer und Schwuler Eltern im LSVD), the lesbian and gay family
network within the LSVD, is one of the main sources concerning this “information exchange”. After January
2005 the field reports about fertility centres in Germany increased immediately.

39
 medical support concerning donor insemination for lesbian couples in their “guidelines for
assisted reproduction”. The prohibition did not occur because of the “ethical concerns” or the
“best interest of the child”, as formally claimed by the Association. The actual guidelines
prohibit the medical support in order to protect the doctors from potentially paying alimony.
Due to the fact that the second parent adoption process usually takes at least one year to be
completed, in the meantime there is still a “remaining risk” for a doctor to be held to account
for alimony as the one who “caused” the pregnancy by donor insemination, if a lesbian couple
would take him/her to court. It should be noted, however, that the Federal Medical
Association has confirmed that such a law suit has never occurred.

The “guidelines for assisted reproduction“ are binding only for gynaecologists in those states
of Germany, where the guidelines were adopted by the corresponding State Medical Boards,
which is in all Germany states except from Berlin and Hamburg.42 Consequently during the
last four years a lot of physicians as well as fertility centres stopped supporting lesbians again
and very few sustained the cooperation – maybe because of the State Medical Boards they
belong to, perhaps because of “courage” and also because of economic interests. Nevertheless
it is not surprising that a lot of lesbians in Germany, who opt for donor insemination, still
choose foreign fertility centres or look for a private donor (Jansen 2007).

<H2> Queer families – lesbian mothers and gay fathers together

Since 2002 the Lesbian and Gay Federation in Germany (LSVD) runs a project named
“Rainbow Family”, which provides among others a counselling service for LGBT families,
lesbians and gay men, who want to build up a family, as well as for professionals.43 During
the last nine years the counselling team gave information and advice to about 5,000 clients via
the “family hotline” or by email. This counselling experience shows that since the millennium
more and more lesbians and gay men have chosen to build up a family together and create a

42
In October 2011 the research, conducted by the LSVD, showed that – contrary to the common conviction – none
of the State Medical Boards included the restriction in the binding “guidelines for assisted reproduction“. At the
most the restriction was assumed only in the non-binding comments to the guidelines. Information in detail (in
German language only): www.lsvd.de/1677.0.html.
43
The project “Rainbow Family” aims at enhancing the personal, social and legal status of LGBT-families
in Germany via counselling and networking. The project activities focus on family planning as well as
difficulties of everyday life in LGBT-families. The range of the services includes a counselling hotline, online
and personal counselling for rainbow families and specialists, publishing, lectures, seminars and conferences.
Concerning the counselling requests one out of ten comes from a professional, e.g. staff members of family
information centres or youth welfare offices, medical staff, family counsellors or therapists, teachers, politicians
and journalists. See: www.family.lsvd.de

40
 so called “queer family” (cf. Rupp, Bergold and Dürnberger 2009). In contrast to the lesbian-
headed families created by donor insemination, the gay men in queer families are not seen as
sperm donors but rather as fathers. Consequently in queer families the “parental dyad”
extends to a “multi-parent model”. Children from queer families mostly live together with
their mothers. The father participation can range from playing a “role” only in case of
emergency, e.g. if something happens to both mothers, to arrangements known from
separated families with father-child-days each week and every second weekend up to living
arrangements with two flats up and downstairs or semi-detached houses.

Queer families are faced with one major legal obstacle concerning their family arrangements:
German law allows only two persons for child custody. It fails to support the needs of multi-
parent-models, which are not typical only for queer families but also for most blended or
patchwork families (cf. Dethloff 2004).44 Accordingly it is difficult to find a legal agreement,
which supports the needs of all biological and social parents as well as the child’s needs. For
example, if the co-mother will adopt the child, the gay father has no parental rights any more.
In that case the parents usually make a private contract concerning visitation rights and in
addition give a “written authority” on special custody issues. However such private contracts
can be cancelled at any time. Often queer families choose this model, when the child
primarily lives with her lesbian mothers. On the other hand, if the biological parents decide to
stay legal parents, the co-parents have no parental rights. Under the present German legal
conditions there is no ideal way to solve the problem – there will always be at least one social
or biological parent who will have to give up his/her rights.

While building a queer family includes great psychological challenges it also offers a lot of
innovation potential. In these families fathers and mothers usually do not share sexual or
“partnership” intimacy, the biological father and mother has not even been a couple before.
Mostly that makes the (co-)parents more aware of the fact that they might not know each
other “well enough” to start the “family project” – which is something heterosexual couples
who share intimacy might not consider. Furthermore queer parents cannot assume the

44
A blended family, also known as a patchwork or reconstituted family, is a family in which one or both members
of the couple have children from a previous relationship. The member of the couple to whom the child is not
biologically related is a social parent until the child is co-adopted by him/her. Usually there is a biological
mother or father of this child, who does not belong to this new family. In the case of a second-parent-adoption,
the legal bond between the child and this parent will be cut. Mostly this solution is neither in the interest of all
parents nor the children. The most appreciated solution would allow more than two parents to take official and
equal care for the children.

41
 constellation of their family to last lifelong. The counselling experiences in the project
“rainbow family” show that women and men who are starting a queer family usually need to
talk about a lot of relevant issues concerning their parenthood, such as values, education
ideas, personal limits and strengths, conceptions of family life and visiting arrangements. It is
not only the content of the communication which is important, but also the process: how they
can talk to each other, especially when things are not so comfortable. In the counselling
process at the “rainbow family” project the “parents in progress” are invited to exchange their
views open-headedly – i.e. to talk about their fears, hopes and ideas as well as uncertainties in
order to see if they can find an arrangement that seems to be suitable for all.

<H2> Building a “Rainbow Family” by adopting children

In Germany only very few lesbians and gay men chose to build up a family by adopting
children as adoption is often not available for same-sex couples. The BMJ-study showed that
only 2% of the children in LGBT families in Germany have been adopted. Furthermore only
5% of the mothers and more than 30% of the fathers in LGBT families, who wish for more
children, consider adoption as the way to enlarge their family (Rupp 2009). This is certainly
due to the fact that it is still very difficult for gay men in Germany to become biological
fathers.

In Europe in Belgium and the Netherlands, Iceland, Norway and Sweden as well as in
Andorra, Spain and the United Kingdom same-sex couples are not only eligible to adopt each
other’s biological children but also to jointly apply for a child adoption (Dethloff 2011).45
However in Germany lesbian women and gay men are entitled to adopt children only
individually, but joined adoption is not permitted for registered partners. In Germany – like in
many other European countries – there are many more people who are interested in adopting,

45
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled for the second time in January 2008 against discrimination
in adoption because of sexual orientation. They stated that all relevant laws and regulations who exclude people
from adoption because of their sexual orientation violate article 14 and 8 of the European Human Rights
Convention. See: E.B. v. France, Court's Judgment, 22 January 2008 and Philippe FRETTÉ v. France, Court's
Judgment, 26 February 2002, http://www.ilga-
europe.org/home/what_we_do/litigation/european_court_of_human_rights_and_lgbt (15.09.2010). ILGA-
Europe, the European region of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association
(ILGA), provides information about parental rights of LGBTI in each European country on their homepage. See:
http://www.ilga-europe.org/home/guide/country_by_country
See as well: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. Rechtliche Stellung von gleichgeschlechtlichen Eltern.
<http://www.bpb.de/themen/BXH32F,0,0,Rechtliche_Stellung_von_gleichgeschlechtlichen_Eltern.html> (15
September 2010).

42
than children who are available for adoption. As the child gets two parents only in the case of
joint adoption and both parents are legally required to take care of this child, the German
youth welfare offices usually prefer married couples as adoptive parents.

Being allowed to adopt a child (only) individually, German gay and lesbians, who are going
for adoption, appear to be singles. Looking like a single provides pros as well as cons. If
LGBT parents want to adopt a child, they usually have to turn to foreign countries, where
single parent adoption by foreigners is allowed, and – because they adopt as a single parent –
their homosexual orientation might not necessarily be obvious. Unlike a joined adoption, only
one of the two partners appears in the institution as well as on the papers. Therefore they do
not need to adopt in foreign countries, which formally allow lesbians and gays to adopt
children. On the other hand, countries which allow lesbians and gays to adopt children – like
South Africa, Uruguay or Brasilia, usually prefer joint adoption because of the child’s “safety
benefits”.

There are only few countries in the world, which allow single parent adoptions by foreigners.
For example, some years ago few German lesbians and gays adopted children in Vietnam and
– until 2009 – in the USA as well. That stopped, because Vietnam as well as the USA signed
the “Hague Adoption Convention”.46 The countries, which signed it, obligate themselves to
look first for a suitable adoptive family in the child’s state of origin. There are some Eastern
European countries, for example, Bulgaria and Romania, where adoption by single people is
allowed, but they only cooperate with women and not with single men (Riedle and Gillig-
Riedle 2006). Single men, who want to adopt a child, easily raise the suspicion of
“paedophilia”.47

Additionally, if a same-sex couple lives in a registered partnership, it makes it more difficult

46
The Hague Adoption Convention (“Hague convention on protection of children and co-operation in
respect of inter-country adoption”) is an international convention dealing with international adoption, child
laundering, and child trafficking. The convention is important even though it causes some trouble for lesbians
and gays to go for adoptions, because it establishes safeguards to ensure that inter-country adoptions take place
in the best interests of the child. It was concluded on 29 May 1993,
<http://hcch.e-vision.nl/index_en.php?act=text.display&tid=45> (15 September 2010).
47
A social worker of the Vienna Counselling Centre "Courage" stated in a newspaper interview in 2009
that men still fall out of the socially acceptable “role models”, when they take an active father role. “While a pair
of women's ‘double role’ as mothers would be rather assessed positively, gay fathers often have to face the
stigma of paedophilia in the minds.” See: Die presse.com (21 November 2009) “Adoption: Zwei Mütter für
Janis”, <http://diepresse.com/home/politik/innenpolitik/523317/Adoption_Zwei-Muetter-fuer-Janis> (21
November 2009)

43
 for one of them to go for adoption, because most of the few adoption agencies in Germany do
not support registered partners according to their own information. Often they are afraid that
the information on registration will find its way into the “home story”48, which has to be
handed to the relevant authorities in the child’s country of origin and that this will cause
problems. For example, in 2010 a German agency answered an email-request of a lesbian
couple as follows: “... the adoption of a Bulgarian child is carried out in Bulgaria. There it is
not possible for same-sex couples to adopt a child. Do you live in a registered partnership?
For an adoption, you need a positive social report. If you live in a registered partnership the
social report, which would present you as a single, will not be possible.”49

<H2> Lesbian women and gay men providing foster care

While “joint adoption” is not permitted for registered partners, same-sex couples are
increasingly welcome as foster parents at the same time. That might be because of the fact
that gay or lesbian parents are legally treated as a couple in the context of fostering, or
because of the actual lack of foster parents in Germany in general (Greib 2007). The BMJ-
study showed that in LGBT families there are about 6% of foster children (140 children
nationwide). There are 8% of the mothers and again many more fathers (about 40%), who
wish to enlarge their families by fostering (Rupp 2009).

There is only one, but fairly important obstacle in the way: not all child welfare workers in
Germany, who deal with foster children, are “yet” open to or familiar with the idea of same-
sex foster parenting. They may, for example, remain of the conviction that children need a
mother and a father to grow up well (e.g. to learn adequate gender roles), or maybe they are
afraid that the parents of origin will have a problem with the idea of giving their child to two
fathers or two mothers.50 It means that more awareness should be raised of the benefit of
same-sex parenthood especially among the staff of German youth welfare offices. As some

48
The “home story” is a social report, which is written by the German welfare workers, who assess an
adoption request.
49
In the spring of 2010 a lesbian couple asked adoption agencies in Germany if they were willing to
support them in the process of adoption. 14 agencies answered, only two sent a positive answer – but only if the
couple would not live in a registered partnership. Most argued that the countries they work with do not accept
applications from same-sex couples. Some even said that they will not support such an application, because their
“experiences” show, that “adopted children grow up better with a mother and a father”. Author’s translation.
50
In April 2010 the youth welfare offices in Cologne received a training concerning LGBT families. During the
lecture and discussions on possible concerns about the inclusion of same-sex couples as foster parents such
arguments appeared.

44
youth welfare offices report, parents of origin often react very positively. For example,
mothers appreciate that they continue to be the “only mother”, if their child will be fostered
by two gay fathers. Alternatively if it is a “foster girl” especially the mothers often think that
two lesbian women will be more able to make their daughters strong and self-confident and
protect them against, for example, sexual abuse (Greib 2007).

There are well researched psychological benefits associated with foster parenting provided by
gays and lesbians (Greib 2007; Brooks and Goldberg 2001; Mallon 2006). Lesbians and gays
have their own experiences in dealing with challenging circumstances such as being different
from others and coming out of the closet. It might be easier for them to empathise with foster
children and explain the specifics of the “unusual” life circumstances. Lesbian and gay
couples are mostly highly motivated to give the child a new home, because same-sex couples
do not decide “easily” to share their life with children – it is not a short term decision, as it
includes issues such as coming out as a rainbow family, possible negative reactions in society
and similar – something heterosexual couples do not have to consider as their parenthood is
socially acceptable and expected.51

<H2> Conclusion

The results of the first representative study about LGBT families in Germany could suggest
that gay and lesbian parents are better parents compared to others. However such a conclusion
would be very biased. Previous family research findings indicate that structural elements, like
family size or the parents’ sexual orientation, do not matter too much for the children’s
development. What is important are the processes within the family, such as the quality of
relationships and the continuity of close caregivers (Farr et al. 2010; Golombok 2000; Jansen
and Steffens 2006; Jungbauer and Göttgens 2009; Kershaw 2000).

Strictly speaking it is not a “bias” but, as I assume, it might be a positive selection effect not
concerning the sample but the gay and lesbian parents in general: only gays and lesbians with
the strongest will are able to form their families. In Germany lesbians and gays who want to
start a family after their coming out, have to face many more constraints and challenges than

51
In 2006 the city of Vienna (Austria) set a real good example with a campaign to gain new foster parents.
They posted adverts and posters with same-sex couples and children themed “we bring it together.” See:
http://wien.orf.at/stories/148030/.

45
 heterosexuals. My own counselling experience also shows that the gay and lesbian would-be-
parents have to be very well organised, quite intelligent and determined to find a way through
the jungle of lesbian and gay family planning, which was previously described in this chapter.
It is not really a surprise that the BMJ study showed an above-average education level and
professional qualifications among LGBT families. Maybe it is a kind of “parenting of the
fittest” that takes place in Germany at the moment, caused by the lack of parental rights for
lesbians and gays. This lack of rights does not hinder lesbians and gays to start a family, if
they really want to, but it might act as a kind of selection process promoting only the “best”
same-sex parent candidates.

If conservatives in Germany do not want to help a myth to be born about the “gifted gay
fathers and lesbian mothers”, they might ease lesbian and gay family planning in the way to
be in line with at least no. 24 of the Yogyakarta Principles:52 The right to found a family.53
Until then we cannot repeat these findings frequently enough: Children who grow up with
lesbian or gay parents develop as well in emotional and social functioning as children within
heterosexual families. They are successful in individuation and share a warm and supportive
relationship with most of their gay and lesbian parents in and outside the LGBT family. They
deal very well with the key challenges of adolescence, while they are even better off in
contexts such as school and professional career. Additionally, children in German “rainbow
families” show significantly higher self-esteem and more autonomy in the relationship with
their parents than children who grow up in any other family type. Accordingly we can assume
them to be well appointed and less vulnerable to daily hassles as well as critical life events.

<H2> References

Anderssen, N., C. Amlie, and E. A. Ytteroy. 2002. Outcomes for children with lesbian or gay
parents. A review of studies from 1978 to 2000. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 43(5):
335–351.

Anhamm, U. 1998. Lesbische und schwule Familien. Ergebnisse einer Befragung unter

52
In Yogyakarta in 2006 a group of well known international human rights experts developed the “Yogyakarta
Principles”. It is a set of 29 principles that reflect the application of international human rights law to issues of
sexual orientation and gender identity, http://www.yogyakartaprinciples.org/ (15 September 2010).
53
“Everyone has the right to found a family, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. Families
exist in diverse forms. No family may be subjected to discrimination on the basis of the sexual orientation or
gender identity of any of its members.” Principle 24: “The Yogyakarta Principles. Principles on the application
of international human rights law in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity“. 2007, Page 28,
<http://www.yogyakartaprinciples.org/principles_en.pdf> (15 September 2010).

46
Lesben und Schwulen in NRW (Lesbian and gay families. Results of a survey of lesbian
women and gay men in Northrine-Westfalia). Reihe: Alltagswelten – Expertenwelten. Köln:
Schwules Netzwerk NRW.

Becker-Stoll, F., and K. Beckh. 2009. Die Entwicklung der Kinder – Ergebnisse der
entwicklungspsychologischen Teilstudie (The children’s development – results of the
developmental-psychological substudy). In Die Lebenssituation von Kindern in
gleichgeschlechtlichen Lebensgemeinschaften (The living life situation of children in same-
sex unions), ed. M. Rupp, 233–280. Köln: Bundesanzeiger-VerlagsGesesellschaft.

Biblarz, T. J., and J. Stacey. 2010. How Does the Gender of Parents Matter? Journal of
Marriage and Family 72(1): 3–22.

Brooks, D., and S. Goldberg. 2001. Gay and lesbian adoptive and foster care placements: Can
they meet the needs of waiting children? Families in Society 46(2): 147–157.

Dethloff, N. 2010. Assistierte Reproduktion und rechtliche Elternschaft in

gleichgeschlechtlichen Partnerschaften. Ein rechtsvergleichender Überblick (Assisted
reproduction and legal parenthood in same-sex unions. A review on comparative law). In Die
gleichgeschlechtliche Familie mit Kindern. Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zu einer neuen
Lebensform (The same-sex family with children. Interdisciplinary contributions to a new way
of life), eds. D. Funke and P. Thorn, 161–194. Bielefeld: transscript Verlag.

Dethloff, N. 2011. Rechtliche Rahmenbedingungen für Regenbogenfamilien in Europa.

(Legal frameworks for same-sex families in Europe). Zeitschrift für Familienforschung,
Sonderheft 7, 41–51.

Dethloff, N. 2004. Adoption durch gleichgeschlechtliche Paare (Adoption by same-sex

couples). Zeitschrift für Rechtspolitik 6, 195–200.

Dürnberger, A., M. Rupp and P. Bergold. 2009. Zielsetzung, Studienaufbau und

Mengengerüst (Objectives, study design and statistical framework). In Die Lebenssituation
von Kindern in gleichgeschlechtlichen Lebensgemeinschaften (The living life situation of
children in same-sex unions), ed. M. Rupp, 11–49. Köln: Bundesanzeiger-
VerlagsGesesellschaft.

Elle, M. 2009. Die Synthese von Resilienz und Gesundheit (The synthesis of resilience and
health). Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag.

Farr, R., S. Forssell and C. Patterson. 2010. Parenting and child development in adoptive
families: Does parental sexual orientation matter? Applied Developmental Science 14(3):
164–178.

Golombok, S. 2000. Parenting. What really counts. New York: Routledge.

Greib, A. 2007. Unser Leben mit Kindern teilen – Pflegefamilien. Von Dienstleistern und
Vertragspartner(inne)n (To share our lives with children – foster families. About service
providers and contractual partner). In Regenbogenfamilien – alltäglich und doch anders.
Beratungsführer für lesbische Mütter, schwule Väter und familienbezogenes Fachpersonal

47
(Same-sex families – common and yet different. Advice guide for lesbian mothers, gay fathers
and family-related professionals), 102–112. Köln: Familien- und Sozialverein des LSVD.

Greve, W., and U. M. Staudinger. 2006. Resilience in later adulthood and old age: Ressources
and potentials for successful aging. In Developmental psychopathology (2nd edition, volume
3), eds. D. Cichetti and D. J. Cohen, 796–840. New York: Wiley.

Haag, C. 2010. Kinderwunsch und Vaterschaftspläne homosexueller Männer. Erste

Ergebnisse der ifb-Studie ‘Gleichgeschlechtliche Lebensweisen in Deutschland’ (Fertility and
paternity plans of homosexual men. Initial results of the ifb study about ‘same-sex lifestyles in
Germany’). Diplomarbeit (MA thesis) im Fach Soziologie. Bamberg: Otto-Friedrich-
Universität.
<http://www.ifb.bayern.de/imperia/md/content/stmas/ifb/sonstiges/da_haag_mrz2010.pdf>
(28 February 2011).

Jansen, E. 2007. In einer Regenbogenfamilie geboren – Heterologe Insemination &

Queerfamily (Born in a same-sex families – Heterologous insemination & Queerfamily). In
Regenbogenfamilien – alltäglich und doch anders. Beratungsführer für lesbische Mütter,
schwule Väter und familienbezogenes Fachpersonal (Same-sex families – common and yet
different. Advice guide for lesbian mothers, gay fathers and family-related professionals), 32–
64. Köln: Familien- und Sozialverein des LSVD.

–––. 2010. Wie geht es den Kindern? Die entwicklungspsychologische Teilstudie (How are
the kids? The developmental-psychological substudy). respekt! Zeitschrift für Lesben- und
Schwulenpolitk, 10(1): 11.

Jansen, E., and M. Steffens. 2006. Lesbische Mütter, schwule Väter und ihre Kinder im
Spiegel psychosozialer Forschung (Lesbian mothers, gay fathers and their children as to be
seen in psychosocial research). Verhaltenstherapie & Psychosoziale Praxis 38(3): 643–656.

Jungbauer, J., and C. Göttgens. 2009. Regenbogenfamilien (Rainbow families). In

Familienpsychologie kompakt (Family psychology compact), ed. J. Jungbauer, 84–97.
Weinheim: Beltz Psychologie Verlags Union.

Katzorke, T. 2010. Medizinisch-technische Behandlungsmöglichkeiten für

gleichgeschlechtliche Paare (Medical-technical treatment options for same-sex couples). In
Die gleichgeschlechtliche Familie mit Kindern. Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zu einer neuen
Lebensform (The same-sex family with children. Interdisciplinary contributions to a new way
of life), eds. D. Funke and P. Thorn, 101–111. Bielefeld: transscript Verlag.

Kershaw, S. 2000. Living in a lesbian household: The effects on children. Child and Family
Social Work 5(4): 365–371.

Mallon, G. 2006. Lesbian and gay foster and adoptive parents: Recruiting, assessing, and
supporting an untapped resource for children and youth. Washington: Child Welfare League
of America.

Patterson, C. 2006. Children of Lesbian and Gay Parents. Current Directions in Psychological
Science 15(5): 241–244.

48
Perrin, E., and Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Children and Family Health. 2002.
Technical Report: Coparent or second-parent adoption by same-sex parents. Pediatrics
109(2): 341–344.

Rauchfleisch, U. 2005. Regenbogenfamilien – ganz normal anders (Same-sex families – quite

different from normal). In Regenbogenfamilien – Eine Familie ist eine Familie ist eine
Familie. Dokumentation der LSVD-Vortragsreihe (Same-sex families – A family is a family
is a family. Documentation of a series of lectures by the LSVD), 77–99. Köln: Familien- und
Sozialverein des Lesben- und Schwulenverbandes in Deutschland.

Riedle, H., and B. Gillig-Riedle. 2006. Ratgeber “Auslandsadoption” (Guide “Inter-country

adoption”). Würzburg: TiVan Verlag.

Rupp, M., ed. 2009. Die Lebenssituation von Kindern in gleichgeschlechtlichen

Lebensgemeinschaften (The living life situation of children in same-sex unions). Köln:
Bundesanzeiger-VerlagsGesesellschaft

–––. 2010. Regenbogenfamilien in Deutschland. Ergebnisse der ersten repräsentativen Studie

(Same-sex families in Germany. Results of the first representative study). respekt! Zeitschrift
für Lesben- und Schwulenpolitk, 10(1): 10.

Rupp, M. and P. Bergold. 2009. Zusammenfassung (Summary). In Die Lebenssituation von

Kindern in gleichgeschlechtlichen Lebensgemeinschaften (The living life situation of children
in same-sex unions), ed. M. Rupp, 281–311. Köln: Bundesanzeiger-VerlagsGesesellschaft.

Rupp, M., P. Bergold, and A. Dürnberger. 2009. Kinder in gleichgeschlechtlichen

Paarbeziehungen (Children in same-sex relationships). In Familien in Deutschland: Beiträge
aus familienpsychologischer Sicht (Families in Germany: contributions from a family-
psychological perspective), eds. BDP and K. Schneewind, 36–40. Berlin: Deutscher
Psychologen Verlag.

Rupp, M. and A. Dürnberger. 2009. Regenbogenfamilien in Eingetragenen

Lebenspartnerschaften (Same-sex families in registered civil partnerships). In Die
Lebenssituation von Kindern in gleichgeschlechtlichen Lebensgemeinschaften (The living life
situation of children in same-sex unions), ed. M. Rupp, 51–177. Köln: Bundesanzeiger-
VerlagsGesesellschaft.

Stacey, J. and T. J. Biblarz. 2001. (How) Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?
American Sociological Review 66(2): 159–183.

van Gelderen L., N. Gartrell, H. Bos and J. Hermanns. 2009. Stigmatization and resilience in
adolescent children of lesbian mothers. Journal of GLBT Family Studies 5(3): 268–279.

49
Maria Carbin, Hannele Harjunen and Elin Kvist

<H1> (In)Appropriate Mothers: Policy discourses on Fertility Treatment for Lesbians

in Denmark, Finland and Sweden54

<H2> Introduction

The Nordic countries were among the first to legally recognise and regulate intimate relations
between people of same sex. 55 In 1989, the Danish parliament was the first in the world to
pass an Act that gave same sex partners the right to register their relationship. Norway
followed with a similar Act on registered partnership in 1993, Sweden in 1995, Iceland in
1996, and Finland in 2001 in what has been called “the Danish domino effect” (Rydström
2008, 199). With the registered partnership acts, a separate and very exclusive category of
civil status was introduced (Rydström 2005). Though, despite state intentions to liberalise and
legitimise other family forms and cohabiting forms than the heterosexual marriage, striking
gaps have appeared in relation to the registered partnership acts leaving many family forms
unprotected by law.56 In essence, it could be said that by excluding registered partners from
rights relating to reproduction and parenthood, Nordic countries deemed certain type of
parents unfit and some families unsuitable, and simultaneously enforced the heteronormative
family model as the norm. Danish Scholar Christel Stormhøj goes as far as calling this
restricted form of citizenship “second rate” citizenship (Stormhøj 2002). One of these

54
This chapter is based on the work done and materials collected for the European Union-funded research
project “Quality in Gender + Equality Policies (QUING). Twenty-seven EU countries as well as two applicant
countries participated in the project, which aimed at producing comparative analyses of gender + equality
policies. This article examines policies in the three Nordic EU member states Denmark, Finland and Sweden.
The reason for making a comparison with these three Nordic countries (and not Norway and Iceland) is that they
abolished the bans on assisted insemination for lesbians at about the same time, although the arguments behind
these decisions were slightly different, as will be shown in the analysis.
55
The term “Scandinavia” refers to the region that consists of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. However, in
common usage in English language, “Scandinavia” is sometimes used interchangably with the term the” Nordic
countries”. The term Nordic refers to Denmark, Norway and Sweden as well as Finland and Iceland, and
associated islands. In this article we are not using the term “Scandinavia”, but talking about the “Nordic
countries” in general when we are discussing the similarities in welfare regimes. The article is devoted to the
three Nordic countries that are part of the EU. Thus, debates in Norway and Iceland are not included in this
chapter.
56
In Denmark the Registered Partnership Act includes the right to step-child adoption. A proposal to allow
international adoption was passed recently (B 36/2009 Proposal to access to the right to apply for international
adoption for couples in registered partnerships/ Forslag til folketingsbeslutning om adgang til at ansöge om
fremmedadoption for par i registreret partnerskab). In Sweden both step-child- and international adoption is
possible. In Finland, same-sex partners do not yet have right to international adoption. However, so-called
“internal adoption” became possible in the autumn of 2009. (Government Bill HE 198/2008 vp).

50
obvious restrictions in citizenship status concerned the access to fertility treatment for lesbian
couples. In Sweden and Denmark access to fertility treatment was prohibited up until recently
for lesbians, whereas for quite a long time Finland was the only Nordic country to grant non-
heterosexual women access to fertility treatment (only due to the lack of regulation). Thus, for
a long time, in the three Nordic countries Denmark, Sweden and Finland, ‘the lesbian’ was
either non-existing in policy discourses on fertility treatment or articulated as an inappropriate
or unthinkable mother (Bryld 2001). Today, in all three countries, fertility treatment for
lesbian couples is allowed as part of the free healthcare system.57 The respective laws were
passed in 2005 in Sweden and a year later in 2006 in Denmark and Finland.

In this chapter we examine the political struggles and the arguments leading to the
introduction of new rights for lesbian couples and single women in Denmark, Sweden and
Finland. The laws were passed after heated parliamentary debates that in some cases, as for
example in Denmark, divided both the Liberal-Conservative government as well as some of
the political parties. Our intention is to analyse the arguments and discursive struggles behind
the laws and the debates leading to the passing of these laws. However, the aim is not only to
point out the possibilities of the newly won rights to access to fertility treatment for lesbians
and women who do not live in heterosexual relationships. We are interested in the ambiguity
of the policies – how the policies both recognise lesbian families, but at the same time restrict
the appropriate ways to become pregnant for lesbians. The laws and debates on fertility
treatment exclude gay couples as well as four-parent constellations, which are seen as even
less legitimate as parents. The newly won rights can thus be seen as both enabling and
restricting; How do political debates on fertility treatment in the three Nordic countries both
contest and re-inforce norms regarding the relationship of sexuality, gender and parenthood?
How are “appropriate” and “inappropriate mothers” constructed? Thus, the analysis highlights
how norms regarding sexuality and gender are both contested and confirmed in policy debates
in the respective countries.

Over the past twenty years equal access to fertility treatment for lesbian couples and single
women has been a greatly debated issue in Denmark, Finland and Sweden. In Denmark, in
1996, a Government Bill on fertility treatment caused major controversy and raised moral

57
In Denmark, however, as part of a general financial reduction plan by the liberal-conservative government
together with the right-wing party, the free access to assisted reproduction technology is abolished for all groups
and from 2011 childless people have to pay for treatment.

51
concerns regarding the prospect that children would be born and raised without a father
(Stormhøj 2002, 45). Originally the bill would have allowed fertility treatment regardless of
sexuality and marital status, but an amendment to prohibit treatment of lesbians and single
women was submitted and passed. The law from 1996 therefore stated that fertility treatment
by doctors would only be allowed for married women or women living in a “marriage-like”
situation. Due to a loophole in the legislation midwives could still provide treatment for
lesbians and single women. Ten years later, in 2006 the ban for doctors was lifted after an
intense parliamentary debate, and both single women and lesbian couples were given equal
access to the treatment.

Fertility treatment has also caused controversy in Sweden and it has been a highly debated
issue in parliament. The Swedish Insemination Act that entered into force in 1985 only
allowed women living in marriage-like circumstances with a man to be treated.58 Debated at
the time was the unique provision in the Act that gave a donor-conceived child the right to
obtain identifying information on the donor. The possibility of identifying the donor would
emphasise the legal protection of the child, but also give the child the right to know his or her
origin. The abolishment of donor anonymity caused intense debate; many, infertility doctors
in particular, feared an imminent and irreversible decline in the number of sperm donors.
After the Act was introduced there was a decrease in sperm donations, but that might partly
have been due to infertility doctors recommending that their patients travel to Denmark for
treatment in order to avoid known donors (Burrell 2006).

In Finland, contrary to the examples of Denmark and Sweden, fertility treatment for lesbians
or single women was never prohibited. This was due to the lack of legislation: until 2006
there was no regulative legislation concerning fertility treatment in Finland. This lack of
regulation meant that doctors and healthcare personnel providing the treatment were
responsible for the decisions involved, and in effect, self-regulated the availability of
treatment. The unregulated situation however gave rise to some problems: the legal position
and rights of children born via fertility treatment was unclear. In a sense, the lack of
legislation meant that lesbian mothers did not exist either. The first proposal for legislation on
fertility treatment was made already in 1984, but the proposed bill was not passed at that time.
Since the mid 1980s, the issue emerged every few years. The possibility of legislation for fertility

58
Governmental Bill 1984/85:2 On artificial inseminations/Om artificiella inseminationer.

52
treatment was also examined in the late 1980s and early 90s, but the legislation process did not
proceed further at the time due to lack of support.

There are also clear differences in how policies concerning fertility treatment have been
constructed in the three countries: in Sweden only lesbian couples are allowed to get
treatment, which means that all single women whether they are homo- or heterosexual are
excluded59, whereas in Denmark and Finland single women have equal access to treatment.
The age of the woman to be treated is yet another issue that has been of concern in policy
debates on fertility treatment. In Denmark and Sweden the age limit is not regulated in law,
but is left for physicians and other healthcare workers to decide upon. This means that, for
example, in Sweden in some counties the maximum age for a woman to be treated is 37,
whereas in other counties it is 40. In Finland, after the woman has turned 39, the state does
not subsidise the cost of the treatment any longer, women over 39 thus have to pay for
subsequent treatment themselves. In debates concerning fertility treatment the issue of
surrogacy has been mostly absent up until recently.60
Another important issue in debates on fertility treatment for lesbians concerns how to regulate
and recognise the status of the donor. As mentioned above, the Swedish law stipulates that a
child who is conceived through assisted insemination has the right as a young adult to find out
the identity of the donor. In Denmark, as opposed to Sweden, the law that was in place before
the debates in 2006 stipulated full anonymity of the donor and this was not amended in the
new legislation. In Finland, the anonymity of the donor was lifted by the Act on Fertility
treatments.61

There is also significant variation in the legislation that regulates the position of the lesbian
social mother in the fertility treatment process and after it. In Sweden the legislation of 2005

59
In later years this issue has been debated in the Swedish parliament on many occasions, the argument against
allowing fertility treatment for single women has been “that children have the right to have two parents”.
60
During 2009–2010 several of the political parties and MPs in the Swedish parliament (MPs from the Green
Party; Gunvor G Ericson, Helena Leander, Ulf Holm, Mats Pertoft, Thomas Nihlén, Jan Lindholm, MPs from
the Left party Birgitta Ohlsson and Barbro Westerholm, MP social democrats Carina Hägg, MP Centre party
Fredrick Federley, MP Left party Tasso Stafilidis) have urged that a governmental report should be
commissioned to investigate the issue of surrogacy but so far these proposals have been rejected by the
Parliament. In Finland surrogacy was allowed for heterosexual couples until the new legislation concerning
fertility treatments came into effect in 2007. In the spring of 2011 the Minister of Justice Tuija Brax announced
that the Ministry of Justice is looking into the possibility of allowing surrogacy again. Whether surrogacy will be
allowed for both heterosexual and same-sex couples remains an issue for debate.
61
The Act on fertility treatments (1237/2006).

53
allows lesbian couples to be inseminated and recognises social mothers as legal parents if
insemination takes place at a state clinic. The provision of the Act was put into place to satisfy
and safeguard the needs and interests of the child (Burrell 2005). In Denmark and Finland the
position of the social mother is more ambivalent. In Finland, registered lesbian partners still
do not automatically become parents of the child as a couple. In Denmark, the legal position
of the social mother in a lesbian relationship, and the interest of the child was not included in
the first amendment of the law, which led to new parliamentary debates. These debates
regarding the position of the social mother are analysed and described further below.

<H2> Methodological points of departure

The question we want to broach in this chapter concerns how meaning is negotiated within
debates on fertility treatments.62 We conduct a discourse analysis of the processes by which
the acts regulating fertility treatments were passed in Denmark, Finland and Sweden. The
intent is to pinpoint problem representations and discursive strategies underlying the policy
arguments. In order to conduct the analysis we have used the so-called “what’s the problem
approach” (Bacchi 1999). In other words, it is an inquiry into the articulation processes of
significations such as: how the problem of- as well as the solution to fertility treatment are
represented; how different identity categories constructed in policies on fertility treatment;
what norms or discourses can be found underneath the problem representations and what the
effects of these representations are.

The concept of policy discourse is similar to that of “policy frame” that derives from Critical
Frame Analysis (Verloo and Lombardo 2007). The concept of policy frame is defined by
Mieke Verloo as an “organizing principle that transforms fragmentary or incidental
information into a structured and meaningful problem, in which a solution is implicitly or
explicitly included” (Verloo 2005, 20). In this chapter however the concept “policy discourse”
is used since we want to indicate that policies contribute to constitute subjects in particular
ways. A discourse can be defined as a network of utterances which provide a language for
talking about or a way of representing a topic that at the same time forms the objects of which
it speaks (Hall 1992). Given this approach, we intend to analyse how (in)appropriate mothers

62
There is variation in terminology that is used to refer to fertility treatment among the three national discourses.
In Sweden and Denmark the term ‘assisted insemination’ is used. In Denmark the concept of artificial
fertilisation ‘kunstig befrugtning’ is also used. In this article, we speak generally of fertility treatment, but in
cases when we refer to a specific national law, national terminology is used.

54
are constructed within debates on fertility treatment in Denmark, Finland and Sweden.
Contrasting the three policy debates can shed light on the problems and loop holes of both
current and preceding legislation in the three countries. This kind of comparative approach
furthermore enables us to trace out what is absent in specific policy processes and consider
discourses that are dominant in one context and not in another (Kantola 2006).

This article has sprung out of the European project Quing (Quality in gender + equality
policies) and draws from material collected and analysed in the project. The material sampled
consists of parliamentary debates leading to the passing of the laws in 2005 and 2006
respectively, government bills, laws, and texts produced by civil society actors concerning
fertility treatment for lesbians and single (heterosexual) women. Added to these documents
we have also included more recent debates regarding the lack of legal recognition of social
mothers.63

In the Quing project a particular textual analysis was developed with the help of a software
program developed within the project. Documents were entered into an online database
containing full texts of the documents as well as codes describing various aspects of the
document. The content of the documents was recorded through the help of qualitative coding
following a coding scheme. The coding scheme included questions regarding how the
problem is defined as well as what type of solutions are offered. Furthermore, the software
allowed for answering questions regarding the argumentation used in the document such as
the list of objectives and policy actions, the way problem descriptions refer to social groups
creating and suffering from the given problem.64 From the codes we could find some major
ways of representing the problem, which we have called policy discourses.65 In the following
the main policy discourses that are found in debates leading to passing the laws on equal
access to fertility treatment for lesbians are described and analysed.

63
In the Danish case, we have analysed parliamentary debates and civil society comments in relation to
Government Bill L 151/2006 Proposal to amendments of law on artifical reproduction/ Forslag til lov om
aendring af lov om kunstig befrugtning i forbindelse med laegelig behandling, diagnostic og forskning and
Parliamentary proposal L 67/2008 Proposal to amend Marriage Act and abolish Act on registered
partnership/Forlsag til lov om aendring af lov om aegteskabs indgpelse of oplosning of forskellige andre love
samt ophaevelse af lov om registreret parnetskab. In Finland the material consists of parliamentary debates
related to the passing of the bill (HE 3/2006) on Act on Fertility treatment. In Sweden the government bill
2004/05:137 Assisted fertilisation and parenthood/Assisterad befruktning och föräldraskap. and corresponding
Comments and parliamentary debates, Riksdagens protokoll 2004/05:133, are analysed.
64
See www.quing.eu for more information on the exact methodologies used in the project.
65
We want to thank Tamás Dombos, Martin Jaígma and Roman Kuhar for their work on developing frames from
the codes in the software.

55
<H2> Main policy discourses

In examining the political debates, two major policy discourses have been identified that are
important in relation to constructions of problems with fertility treatments. These are, “the
well-being of the child” and “the rights of the individual”. “The best interest of the child" or
“the well-being of the child” is a central discourse drawn upon in all three countries – and by
both sides for and against fertility treatment for lesbians in the polarised debates. It is
frequently emphasised that children’s interests must come before the rights of adults. The
well-being of the child is however defined in very different ways, and can be seen as an
empty concept the content of which is open to political debate. For example, some of those
opposed to allowing equal access to fertility treatment to all women (no matter marital status
or sexuality) use “the well-being of the child” to argue that children need “parents of both
sexes”, whereas others use “the well-being of the child” to argue that already existing family
forms (such as lesbian couples with children) need to be recognised and protected by law.
Another problem representation that is relatively common is the “lacking father”. This
representation of the “lacking father” is here seen as part of a larger discourse named as “the
importance of the father” and it is linked both to the discourse of the well-being of the child,
as well as to the individual rights of biological fathers to their offspring. In the following we
are going to discuss how these three policy discourses – the well-being of the child, the rights
of the individual, as well as the importance of the father are drawn upon and filled with
meaning in the three countries respectively. The focus is on how these discourses were used
in order to argue for and against the right to fertility treatment for women who do not live in
heterosexual relationships.

<H3> The Well-being of the Child

Over the past 20 years the argument of the well-being of the child has been strong and it has
primarily been used to exclude lesbians and single women from equal access to fertility
treatment in medical clinics. In all three countries adversaries have proclaimed heterosexual
family ideals and at the same time constructing the lesbian as an “unnatural mother” (Bryld
2001, 301). The opponents, mainly from the conservative-, right-winged and the Christian

56
democrat parties argued along these lines.66 The argument of the well-being of the child has
however proved to be relatively strong also in the debates that lead to the new laws allowing
for lesbians access to fertility treatments, especially in Sweden and Finland.

In Finland, opponents of the bill that passed in 2006 stated that fertility treatments should be
limited to heterosexual couples, because children's best interests require an involvement of a
father. The opponents argued that fatherlessness as well as two-mother families create
problems for the psychological development of the child. Helena Hirvonen (2006), who
studied the previous government bill of 2002, which has not passed yet, notes that the
argument of the best interest of the child was primarily used to support biologist and
heteronormative values to the point of idealisation of the heterosexual family unit. Hirvonen
concludes that this did not ultimately promote children’s best interests in the sense that it
failed to promote equal rights for all children. In the Danish debates likewise some MPs
argued in the interest of the child within a discourse claiming that children need a mother and
a father. This discourse was especially strong during the parliamentary debate of 1996 when
the ban on assisted insemination was introduced (Stormhøj 2002).

In Sweden opponents of the bill, primarily the Christian Democrats, constructed the problem
to be that children will be denied their “natural right” to a father:67

The most natural right in the world to a little child is to grow up with both their
parents, with their father and mother, to have a male and a female role model to
identify with. This natural right will be denied some children, those children conceived
through artificial insemination of lesbian women. (Ingemar Vänerlöv (Christian
Democratic Party)).68

In this quote from a Christian Democrat MP, “the natural right” of children is said to be two
parents of different sexes. Thus, in all three countries, those who opposed granting access to
fertility treatment to lesbian couples and single women interpreted the best interest of the
child as the heterosexual nuclear family. It is however noteworthy that the discourse of the

66
In Nordic countries there are many small parties represented in parliaments, which means that there are several
different bourgeois parties. Conservative parties include in Denmark “Det konservative folkeparti”, in Sweden
“Moderaterna” and in Finland “Kokoomus”. The Christian Democrats include in Denmark
“Kristendemokraterne”, in Sweden “Kristdemokraterna” and in Finland “Kristillisdemokraatit”. Added to this,
Denmark has a populist right-wing party called “Dansk Folkeparti”.
67
Parliamentary debate on Governmental Bill 2004/05:137 Assisted insemination and parenthood.
68
Parliamentary debate on assisted insemination and parenthood, 2004/05:133, 20050603.

57
well-being of the child is also drawn upon by the proponents of these bills. The best interest
of the child is then understood to be achieved through granting all children equal legal rights
independently of what their family looks like. Within this discourse it is also argued that the
state should recognise the already existing diversity of family forms, and that the laws should
follow this reality.

The goal of the left party is a legislation that gives all children equal rights independently of
whether their parents are homo-, bi-, or heterosexual.(Tasso Stafilidis (Left party)).69

This discourse of the well-being of the child proved to be especially strong in Sweden. The
best interest of the child proved to be a strategic argument leading to legal changes; the
problem was claimed to be that existing family laws did not reflect the actual diversity of
family forms, and this leaves already existing children without legal protection. One Swedish
MP from the Conservative party argued in the debate:

Through the laws we are about to legislate we give these children (children born in homosexual
relationships) a juridical safety with the focus on the best interest of the child. The child is
entitled to information about their biological origin, as I said before. The child has the right to
two parents, and the conception of the child is performed under medical and psychological
control (Inger René (the Moderate party)).70.

As is evident in the quote above, one of the reasons for the Bill to pass in Swedish parliament
was that it was constructed as a matter of “the best interest of the child” as opposed to a
matter of rights for lesbian and single women. In the Finnish discussion, proponents of the
passing of the 2006 bill in the parliament and particularly NGOs promoting GLBT rights also
brought up the question of security of those children who already live in so-called “rainbow
families”. In the Finnish context the term “rainbow families” refers to families with same-sex
parents.71 All in all, the proponents – both the governmental and civil society actors – drew
from research that shows that children in same-sex families are not harmed by it.72 It proved
to be strategic to show that the well being of children can be safeguarded in same-sex
families, despite the fact that this could be seen as a relatively defensive argument.

69
Parliamentary debate on assisted insemination and parenthood, 2004/05:133; 20050603.
70
Parliamentary debate on assisted insemination and parenthood, 2004/05:133; 20050603.
71
Statement of Finnish NGO Sateenkaariperheet-Regnbågnfamiljer ry on the Committee on special issues related
to registered relationships Report. 20.11.2003. See also the chapter by Elke Jensen in this collection.
72
E.g. Swedish government Governmental Bill 2004/2005:137 and the Danish National Association of Gays &
Lesbians comments on the proposal L151/2006 in LBL: Vedr. 2005–2006 – L151.

58
<H3> The rights of the individual

In all three countries rights for lesbians and single women to equal access to medical
treatment are articulated by the proponents (primarily the National GLBT organisations, the
left parties, the Social Democrats and the Social Liberals) in the debates. In the Danish
parliamentary debate in 2006 when the parliament voted for equal access to fertility treatment
equality between groups of women and individual rights was a major argument. The argument
of rights was put forward by the parliamentary opposition – the Social Democrats, the left
parties and the Social Liberals. One of the Social Democrat MPs argued:

No one should doubt that the Social Democrat group finds that there should be equality among
women, no matter marital status or sexual orientation …(Karen J. Klint (S), First debate on
Proposal L 151/Forste behandling af lovforslag L 151).

The discourse of rights not only involves norms of anti-discrimination, as in the quote above,
but is also combined with a narrative of modernization and progressiveness. In this case
arguments of individual rights are linked with the Danish self-perception: the Danish national
identity is said to be built upon an idea of being progressive and tolerant towards sexual
minorities (Lüttichau 2004; Stormhøj 2007).73 The participant from the Liberal Party Jorgen
Winter puts it like this:

There are many different opinions in Venstre – Denmark’s Liberal Party – on the issue of
artificial fertilisation. In such an apparently ethical area, we don’t want to press one another.
That is our tradition in Venstre. Let me now try to explain the current situation in Venstre. Some
members are still of the opinion that only couples consisting of a man and a woman should be
allowed to get medical treatment. But it is also my firm conviction that a large majority in the
parliamentary group is supportive of my idea that a doctor in a private hospital is welcome to
assist lesbians and single women. The Danish liberal party is namely a modern party. We don’t
74
need to have the same opinion in a hundred years.

73
For example, Social Liberals argue that Denmark has to regain its position as international leader in B 76/2007
(as proposed): Proposal to introduce Marriage for homosexuals/ Forslag til folketingsbeslutning om at indføre en
ægteskabslovgivning, som ligestiller homoseksuelle med heteroseksuelle.
74
See the liberal participant Jørgen Winther in the second debate on L 151/2006.

59
Those who wanted to keep the ban on assisted fertilisation were indirectly understood as
being backwards and not modern individuals. In the Danish parliamentary debates in 2006
this discourse of individual rights and modernisation thus appeared as essential and had effect
in the sense that several members of the Liberal Party voted for lifting the ban on assisted
insemination for single women and lesbians (see also Nebeling Petersen 2009). The Swedish
minister for Justice also claimed in the parliamentary debate that “times have changed” and
that: “We have got a more open, more liberal and more modern view of homosexuals.”
(Parliamentary debate /Lagutskottets betänkande 2004/05: LU25). Since the Nordic welfare
states usually aim at providing universal rights for their citizens, the argument is a forceful
one. However, the significance of the rights discourse varies and seems to be most important
in Denmark and less significant in Sweden.

In the Swedish debate access to fertility treatment for lesbians was as already pointed out
primarily discussed within a discourse of the best interests of the child. In the government bill
On Assisted Insemination and Parenthood the right to fertility treatment was proposed for
lesbian women, but single women’s right to fertility treatment was denied with reference to
the argument that children need two parents.75 After the bill was passed single women’s right
to fertility treatment was articulated as a matter of equal rights also in Swedish debates. As
late as in February 2009 fertility treatment for single women was on the agenda in the
Swedish parliament. However, it was decided that single women’s fertility treatment needed
further investigation. This decision compels single Swedish women who want to become
pregnant through fertility treatment to travel to Finland or Denmark or to other countries were
fertility treatment for single women is allowed.

In Finland especially those who wanted to allow fertility treatment for lesbian couples and
single women referred to equal rights and to non-discrimination legislation. Added to this, in
Finland it has been a long-standing practice to refer to the example of other Nordic countries
when arguing for legislative reforms or changes. Sweden in particular is often used as a
normative example in Finnish policy- and law-making, especially in the fields of social and
family law (Bradley 1998).

75
Government Bill 2004/05: 137Assisted Insemination and Parenthood.

60
<H3> The importance of the father

In the policy debates analysed concerning fertility treatment the position of the father –
whether biological or social – is emphasised in all three countries. This is here named as the
importance of the father discourse. The importance of the father is closely related to the
discourse of the best interest of the child since it is argued that the well-being of the child is
dependent on the child having a father. Especially Conservatives, right-wing parties and
Christian Democrats, who opposed giving access to fertility treatment to lesbians and single
women, considered fatherless families as a “threat” to the heterosexual nuclear family (See
also Stormhøj 2002). One Swedish Christian Democrat articulated the threat in the following
way:

I feel deeply concerned over the decision that will be made today which will force even more
children to grow up without their biological father. We just have to take a look at all our prisons
in this country. We can do interviews. We can talk to the staff and psychologist and others.
Many times it becomes clear that a lack of a father figure during childhood have caused these
wrong behaviours. I don´t say that it is the only reason, but it is an important reason.
Experiences show that it will have negative effects if a child doesn’t grow up with their
biological parents. As a Christian democrat I don´t want to experience that. (Chatrine Pålsson
(Christian Democratic Party))76.

The importance of the father is articulated both in debates on equal access to fertility
treatment, but also in the following debates on the recognition of the social mother. With the
new laws, the issue of how to legally recognise the non-biological mother emerged both in
Finland and in Denmark since the already existing laws proved to be insufficient. In Denmark
a lesbian social mother was not automatically recognised as parent, and thus, could not take
the two weeks “paternal” leave together with the mother giving birth. This is due to the fact
that the two weeks paternal leave are ear marked for fathers and can only be used within the
first three months of the child’s life. As it happened non-biological mothers could only apply
for adoption three months after the birth. In 2008 it was proposed that the “co-mother”, as she
is called in Denmark, would be legally recognised as a parent directly at birth.77 The only

76
Parliamentary debate on assisted insemination and parenthood, 2004/05:133, 20050603.
77
It was a proposal to abolish the registered partnership act and introduce same sex marriage. Same sex couples
would then also be granted the right to international adoption. The Government did not support the proposal as a
whole (First debate on Proposal L 67/2008).

61
party against recognising co-mothers in 2008 when the issue was taken up in the parliament
was the right-wing Danish People’s party. The Liberal-Conservative government admitted
that the legal situation for newborn babies in lesbian relationships had to be regulated better.
Nevertheless, the Minister of Justice argued that if there was a known biological father, he
should have a chance to acknowledge the child. The minister of justice argued in parliament
that:

I am still certain that as a starting point, the best for the child is to have both a mother and a
father. If it happens that there is a biological father to the child, who knows that he has
contributed to create a new life, then I think that it is reasonable, that this father has the
opportunity to say: I actually wish to acknowledge that the child is mine. (Minister for Justice
Lene Espersen. 1. behandling af lovforslag nr. L 67: Forlsag til lov om aendring af lov om
aegteskabs indgpelse of oplosning of forskellige andre love samt ophaevelse af lov om
registreret parnetskab. (1. Debate on Law Proposal L67))

The government then put forward a proposal that promised to give the non-biological mother
a possibility to adopt the child directly at birth, if the child was conceived via assisted
fertilisation with an anonymous donor. This formulation guaranteed that the rights of the
biological father were not threatened.78 The underlying idea being that there can only be two
legally recognised parents. However, lesbian social mothers still have to adopt the child,
which means that parenthood is not automatically established as is the case for heterosexual
couples. If the donor is known, the legal situation of confirmation of parenthood is still
unclear. Several MPs were uneasy about the legal recognition of social mothers. This is
reflected in another comment in the parliamentary debate by the Liberal chair:

The law proposal has the consequence that a child who is born to a woman married to another
woman will get a co-mother instead of a father, despite the fact that the fertilisation was the
result of a sexual relationship. This means that the right of the biological father disappears like
magic. From my point of view, that is a very far-reaching change. (Karen Elleman (V): 1.
behandliing af lovforslag nr. L 67: Forlsag til lov om aendring af lov om aegteskabs indgpelse
of oplosning of forskellige andre love samt ophaevelse af lov om registreret parnetskab. p.6)

78
2008–09 - L 105 (overview): Proposal to amend the Adoption Act/Forslag til lov om ændring af
adoptionsloven og forskellige andre love.

62
In the quote above it is evident that the importance of the father is also connected to the
discourse of individual rights and the norm of two parents of different sex is indirectly
expressed.

The Finnish law on fertility treatment also provides an example of how the importance of a
biological father sometimes overrides that of the social mother. In Finland lesbian registered
partners (and single women) had the right to get fertility treatment before the co-mother had
legal rights to the child she was having together with the birth mother. The rights of parents
have on a number of occasions been understood differently in the cases of heterosexual and
lesbian couples and single women. Firstly, if a child is born via fertility treatment to a married
heterosexual couple, s/he automatically becomes the child of the couple and there is no
question about the paternity even if donor cells were used. In the case of co-habiting
heterosexual couples, the father has to officially recognise his paternity. However, in the eyes
of the law, registered lesbian partners still do not automatically become parents of the child as
a couple. Only the biological parent of the child is considered a legal parent. Up until 2009 all
forms of adoption were prohibited, which meant that the co-mother did not a have the
possibility to adopt her partner’s (and in effect her own) child. Problems arising from this
complex situation were recognised79 and raised in the Parliament on a number of occasions,80
but the social mothers’ legal right to the child remained for a long time unrecognised. The
situation improved after the amendment of the Finnish Adoption Act that took place in
September 2009. According to the amended Adoption Act, the co-mother can now adopt her
registered partner’s biological child. This is referred to in the Finnish debate as “internal
adoption”. Adoption of a child who is not already part of the family remains prohibited. This
includes both domestic and international adoption.

In Finland, the debate concerning legislation on fertility treatment, included extensive

discussion of the rights of the donor. Before the Act on fertility treatments of 2006, it was
possible to use anonymous donors. This is not the case any longer. The Act on fertility
treatments stipulates that the anonymity of the donor can be lifted and the donor’s identity
revealed upon request of the child when s/he has turned eighteen. The Finnish GLBT
79
 Committee on special issues related to registered relationships 2003:10/ Lapset ja rekisteröity parisuhde.
Rekisteröityihin parisuhteisiin liittyviä erityiskysymyksiä selvittäneen toimikunnan mietintö. Sosiaali-
ja terveysministeriön 2003:10. 
80
For example: Written Question KK 253/2004 vp - Rosa Meriläinen /Green party and others. Inter-family
adoption in same-sex families. Kirjallinen kysymys 253/2004 vp Sisäinen adoptio-oikeus samaa sukupuolta
olevien parien perheissä.

63
organisation SETA ry. was against the lifting of the anonymity of the donor, since it would
have put the co-mother’s and the donor’s rights into opposition.81 Especially before the
Adoption Act was amended, the lifting of the anonymity of the donor could have meant that
the co-mother’s rights were less than those of the donor’s, i.e. the so-called biological father.
In a sense, the backdoor was left open for a hypothetical biological father, even when the
child already had two parents.

In Sweden, the position of the social mother was determined in the law on fertility treatment
from 2005. If the birth mother is a registered partner, her partner will automatically be
regarded as the mother of the child and in the case of cohabiting partners, the cohabiting
partner will be given the possibility to confirm parenthood. But this legislation only applies to
children that are conceived through Swedish fertility clinics, not if the child is conceived in
another country or at home. Even though there is a legislative acceptance of two mother
families the regulations on known donators puts an interesting twist on the parenthood
discussion. As pointed out above Swedish law stipulates that every “donor-conceived child”
has the right to know his/her biological origin. Even if a child already has two legally
confirmed parents, the day the child turns eighteen, if the child so chooses, a father can re-
enter the scene (Zetterqvist Nelson 2007). The extensive emphasis on the social father’s role
and participatory fatherhood in Sweden has come to influence and permeate most Swedish
speech about family, children and parenthood and is reflected even on lesbian couples (Ryan-
Flood 2005). One reason behind the decision to allow giving fertility treatment to lesbian
women was that it was feared that they otherwise would go to Denmark for instance to get
treated and the donor would then be anonymous and the conceived child would be denied its
right to know its biological heritage.82 With the current legislation the donor will be known
and the state has a “better control” of lesbian women’s reproduction.83 But even after the
latest changes in the regulations on assisted fertilisation, some women still choose to go to
other countries that have anonymous donors for assisted fertilisation to avoid known donors
(Eriksson 2008).

81
See: Seta ry. statement 22.2.2006. Government Bill on fertility treatments and changing the paternity Law/
Hallituksen esitys hedelmöityshoidoista ja isyyslain muuttamisesta.
82
Governmental Bill 2004/2005:137Assisted insemination and parenthood.
83
Swedish lesbian couples have continued to go to Denmark for treatment. This is due to long queues caused by
shortage of donated sperm after anonymity of the donor was lifted (Eriksson 2008).

64
<H2> Conclusions: (In)Appropriate Mothers

Policy discourses concerning fertility treatments have recently shifted in Denmark, Sweden
and Finland. New policies that allow fertility treatment for lesbians mark a discursive change
that recognises and approves lesbians as mothers and parents. However, there is a certain
duality present in Nordic policies on fertility treatment and parenthood; these newly won
rights were not accompanied with changes in overall family policies. Added to this, in order
to be recognised politically, the subject has to transform and adapt to demands from
authorities. In this case the lesbian biological mother, who used to be defined as an abject or a
monstrosity (Bryld 2001), is now seen as a potentially good and caring mother. At the same
time she is also re-inscribed into heteronormative discourses: instead of being deemed as
inappropriate or being nonexistent, lesbians today have to conform to the particular state
approved type of motherhood. Thus, policy discourses on fertility treatment in Denmark,
Finland and Sweden can be interpreted as attempts to weed out the “non-normative mothers”.

However, in debates on equal access to fertility treatment, the lesbian social mother is
particularly in danger of being constructed as an “unthinkable parent” to the point that she
was not recognised as a parent in the Danish and the Finnish first amendments to the laws. In
the case of Sweden, the single woman is clearly constructed as an unwanted parent since she
is not entitled equal access to fertility treatment. Thus, in Sweden there is no discrimination
on the basis of sexual orientation, but instead the law clearly discriminates against single
women.

When contrasting Swedish policies with Finnish and Danish, it is evident that the dominant
discourse of the well-being of the child with its corresponding arguments of “recognising
existing family forms” has led to a legal situation where children born to lesbian couples with
the state approved fertility treatments is now regulated. At the same time single women are
excluded from the right to fertility treatment and children born outside the state approved
fertility treatment are denied their legal rights in Sweden. The proper family in Swedish
policy debates on fertility treatment for lesbians is thus constructed as a unit of two parents.
Paradoxically the well-being of all children is not guaranteed with this legal situation since
the legal status of children born to lesbians who chose to have children outside of state
approved fertility clinics is unclear.

65
If one contrasts Danish policy debates with Finnish and Swedish ones, it is apparent that the
discourse of individual rights is more dominant in Denmark. Arguing for equal access to
fertility treatment proved to be strategically wise since this articulation led to the lifting of the
ban on giving fertility treatment to lesbians and single women. Now the same rules (with
anonymous donor) apply for lesbians, single women and heterosexual women in a
relationship. However, even though lesbian couples can now get treated, the lesbian partner is
not automatically acknowledged as a mother (as is the case for heterosexual couples) but has
to apply for so-called step-child adoption. Furthermore, if a lesbian couple chooses a known
donor (and do not follow the legal prescriptions with an anonymous donor) it is not yet
decided whether the social mother has the possibility of step-child adoption or not. These
cases are falling in-between, which means that social mothers are thereby denied legal rights
to parental leave. Queer identities that do not conform to normative family ideals are excluded
in a discourse of rights (Nebeling Petersen 2009).

The importance of the father and the threat of the fatherless family were perhaps most clearly
articulated in the Finnish policy debates – and are reflected in legislation that differentiates
between lesbian- and heterosexual couples. Also, the meaning of fatherhood is understood
differently in the case of heterosexual as opposed to lesbian couples. Heterosexual couples
can be trusted in that the social father is considered the father, even if donated sperm is used.
In the case of lesbian couples, the identity of the biological father can be revealed later on,
even when the child has got two parents already. This clearly reveals the norm of the
heterosexual family and the precariousness of the position of the social mother in Finnish
policy discourses.

The position of the lesbian social mother remains ambiguous. The position of the social
mother is negotiated within and in between the discourses on the importance of the father and
the well-being of the child. In Denmark and Sweden if there is a known father (who has
contributed to the birth outside of the state regulated system) the status of the social mother is
unclear. It seems that the acknowledgement of the social mother is possible only when her
rights do not clash with the rights of a biological father. In Finland, the social mother has been
only recently legally recognised and internal adoption within the family has become possible.
There is thus a risk that the rights of the lesbian co-mother are overridden by those of the
“hypothetical” fathers. In addition, the focus on the “couple”, which is at present especially

66
strong in Sweden, leads to marginalisation of single-parent families and same-sex families
with more than one set of parents.

Legislative solutions concerning parental rights of people that do not conform to the norm of
the heterosexual nuclear family are often somewhat ad-hoc in nature (Rydström 2008). This
also proved to be the case with the right to access to fertility treatment for lesbians in
Denmark, Finland and Sweden. Since there is no overall policy approach in any of the three
countries to same-sex families, gaps and loopholes appear in the legislation, leaving some
children unprotected by family laws and some parents without official recognition of their
parenthood and therefore with limited access to family policies. Thus, in general, in policy
discourses in all three countries, and despite new legislation, parenthood of heterosexual
couples is unquestioned whereas parenthood of lesbians is still under negotiation.

<H2> References

Bacchi, C. 1999. Women, policy and politics. The construction of policy problems. London
and New York: Sage publications.

Bradley, D. 1998. Politics, culture and family law in Finland: Comparative approaches to the
institution of marriage. International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family 12(3): 288–306.

Bryld, M. 2001. The infertility clinic and the birth of the lesbian: The political debate on
assisted reproduction in Denmark. European Journal of Women’s Studies 8(3): 299–312.

Burrell, R. 2006. Assisted reproduction in the Nordic countries – a comparative study of

policies and regulation. TemaNord 2006:505. Norden: Nordic Committee on Bioethics.

Committee on special issues related to registered relationships. 2003. Children in registered

relationships: Committee Reports of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health 2003:10.
Tempere: Ministry of Social Affairs and Health.

Eriksson, A. 2008. Lesbiska väljer bort svensk insemination (Lesbians chose not to
inseminate in Sweden). <http://www.sr.se> (18 January 2011).

Hall, S. 1992. The question of cultural identity. In Modernity and its futures, eds. H. D. Hall
and T. McGrew, 274–316. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Hirvonen, H. 2006. Hedelmöityshoitolaki ja sosiaalinen kansalaisuus -inkluusion ja

ekskluusion politiikat (The Act on fertility treatment and social citizenship: the politics of
inclusion and exclusion). Unpublished Master’s thesis in Social Policy. University of
Jyväskylä: Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy.

67
Kaarto, H. 2007. Homo- ja lesbopareille valmistellaan perheen sisäistä adoptio-oikeutta
(Internal adoption right in preparation for gay and lesbian couples). Helsingin Sanomat, 28
November 2007. <http://www.hs.fi/kotimaa/artikkeli/Homo-
+ja+lesbopareille+valmistellaan+perheen
+sis%C3%A4ist%C3%A4+adoptio-oikeutta/1135232182167> (30 November 2011).

Kantola, J. 2006. Feminists theorize the state. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Liljestrand, P. 1995. Legitimate state and illegitimate parents: Donor insemination politics in
Sweden. Social Politics 2(3): 270–304.

Lüttichau, I. 2004. “We are family”: The regulation of ‘female only’ reproduction. Social &
legal studies 13(1): 81–101.

Moring, A. 2007. Kolmen kerroksen vanhempia? Hetero- ja parisuhdenormatiivisuuksia

Suomen ja Ruotsin hedelmöityshoitolaeissa (Parents of three different grades? Hetero- and
couple normativities in the fertility treatment legislation in Finland and Sweden) SQS 1/7: 15–
34.
<http://www.helsinki.fi/jarj/sqs/sqs1_07/sqs12007moring.pdf> (15 January 2011).

Nebeling Petersen, M. 2009. Fra barnets tarv til ligestilling – en queerteoretisk undersøgelse
af Folketingets forhandlinger om kunstig befrugtning (From the best interest of the child to
equality – a Queer-theoretical analysis of parliamentary debates on artificial fertilisation)
Kvinder, køn og forskning (2): 30–42.

Ryan-Flood, R. 2005. Contested heteronormativities: Discourses of fatherhood among lesbian

parents in Sweden and Ireland. Sexualities 8(2): 189–204.

Rydström, J. 2005. Tvåsamhetens brunn (In the pond of couplehood). In Queersverige,

(QueerSweden), ed. D. Kulick, 308–335. Stockholm: Natur och Kultur.

–––. 2008. Legalising love in a cold climate: The history, consequences and recent
developments of registered partnerships in Scandinavia. Sexualities 11(1–2): 193–226.

Sijaissynnytys tulossa uuteen harkintaan (Surrogacy to be reconsidered). Editorial in

Helsingin sanomat. 2011. Helsingin sanomat, May 22.
<http://www.hs.fi/paakirjoitus/artikkeli/Sijaissynnytys+tulossa+uuteen+harkintaan/11352663
23037> (19 August 2011).

Stormhøj, C. 2002. Queering the family. Critical reflections on state-regulated

heteronormativity in the Scandinavian countries. Lambda Nordica 9(3–4): 38–56.

–––. 2007. Homosexuelles medborgerskab i et retfaerdighedsperspektiv (Citizenship of

homosexuals from a rights perspective). Kvinder, køn og forskning 16(4): 33–41.

Vaahtera, E. 2007. Naisparit ja itselliset naiset yhteiskuntajärjestyksen ylläpitäjinä –

hedelmöityslakikeskustelusta vuosina 2005–2006 (Female couples and independent women as
supporters of social order-on the fertility treatment debate between 2005–2006). SQS 1/7: 78–
84.
<http://www.helsinki.fi/jarj/sqs/sqs1_07/sqs12007vaahtera.pdf> (15 October 2011).

68
Verloo, M., and E. Lombardo. 2007. Contested gender equality and policy variety in Europe:
Introducing a critical frame analysis approach. In Multiple meanings of gender equality. A
critical frame analysis of gender policies in Europe, ed. M. Verloo, 21–50. Budapest: CEU.

Zetterqvist Nelson, K. 2007. Mot alla odds – regnbågsföräldrars berättelser om att bilda
familj och få barn (Against all odds – stories from rainbow families on forming family and
getting children). Malmö: Liber

69
Guillaume Marche

<H1> LGBT Families, Youth, and Sexuality in the United States

Approaches to LGBT rights and LGBT families in the United States and in Europe differ
greatly. Whereas issues of sexual orientation and gender expression in general are often the
focus of acrimonious public debates in the United States, LGBT rights enjoy some degree of
protection in many European countries and they are guaranteed in Article 21 of the European
Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights. On the other hand, the US federal system affords
LGBT families in certain states or localities better recognition than in most EU countries. The
United States may thus serve as a useful vantage point for comparisons with Europe. In
particular, do the differences between the experiences of LGBT families on either side of the
Atlantic cast the American model as an example for Europeans to follow, a cautionary tale, or
a foil which enhances European achievements? We suggest that the answer is mitigated,
insofar as differences owe to a complex mixture of political tradition, institutional framework,
and social state of affairs. We propose to examine the matter by exploring the interplay
between issues of LGBT families and youth sexuality in the United States.

The recognition of LGBT families in the United States has been evolving rapidly since the
1990s. The “gay marriage” theme in particular has become a prominent topic in both national
and state politics. Same-sex marriage, however, is not all there is to LGBT families in the
United States, as LGBT people have in fact invented a wide variety of family configurations,
which – though often informally – have reshuffled definitions of the American family. As a
result the LGBT community can less and less be assumed to solely consist of unattached adult
individuals, or couples without offspring. The issue of generations has thus become extremely
important for the American LGBT movement, insofar as it concerns not simply procreation
and adoption, but the whole set of processes whereby culture and values are transmitted from
one generation to the following, so that each LGBT generation can symbolically outlive itself
(Marche 2003, 99–100; Whisman 1996, 123–124). Consequently the political questions raised
by LGBT families in the United States potentially hold interesting lessons for the politics of
LGBT families in Europe.

Our claim is that the development of alternative families has made youth sexuality a vital
issue for the American LGBT movement, and that it is instructive to examine how this

70
question is dealt with in a context where, since the 1990s in particular, sex panics – i.e.
irrational public fears growing out of isolated cases of sexual abuse or misdemeanour – have
increasingly tended to cast youth as an asexual sanctuary. We suggest that there is a paradox
in that, on the one hand, the overall political context puts a premium on desexualising LGBT
politics, while, on the other hand, LGBT families challenge the movement to find appropriate
ways of dealing with the issue of youth and sexuality. We explore this question through the
lens of social-movement sociology by considering the way movement organisations do, or fail
to, reconcile their discussions of families, and of youth and sexuality.

We begin by showing that, given the current state of the political debate in the United States,
and whether LGBT advocates like it or not, the issue of youth sexuality is of the foremost
importance in the LGBT families debate. We then go on to argue that the non-youth
movement has got increasingly desexualised, whereas the main issues of significance for
LGBT youth are more straightforwardly related to sexuality. However, even as the questions
of LGBT families and youths do expose the LGBT movement to attacks that primarily
stigmatise homosexuality as a sexual conduct and a choice, the movement tends to react by
claiming that sexual orientation is primarily an identity and it is not a choice. As a result, the
LGBT movement’s current approach to youth issues is a sign of its growing essentialism,
whereas this movement used to deal with such questions in ways that proposed alternative
social definitions of gender and sexuality. The challenge for the LGBT movement is therefore
to find effective ways to confront the strong counter-movement mounted by religious right-
wing organisations84 in reaction to the emergence of alternative LGBT families. We end by
showing that this very aggressive counter-movement questions the LGBT movement’s
relation to youth sexuality, but at the same time puts it in a position to propose innovative
approaches to youth and sexuality. As a consequence, the LGBT movement is ultimately
challenged to approach youth sexuality as a matter of rights and empowerment.

<H2> LGBT Families and the LGBT Movement

Same-sex marriage has undeniably become the most visible aspect of the politics of LGBT
families in the US, in part because it has been used as a high-profile issue in national and state
politics. Access to marriage is indeed important to LGBT families because official recognition

84
Among these organizations are for example Focus on the Family, the American Family Association, or
Concerned Women for America.

71
facilitates making families through adoption or artificial insemination, for example. But the
legal situation of same-sex marriage is constantly evolving. A recent high-profile issue results
from Proposition 8 in California, where in 2008 voters approved a constitutional amendment
restricting marriage to the union of one man and one woman – after the state’s Supreme Court
in May 2008 had mandated that the right to marry be extended to same-sex couples. Although
the amendment’s constitutionality was upheld by California’s Supreme Court in May 2009, it
was since struck down by a federal court in August 2010 and will in all likelihood be
eventually reviewed by the United States Supreme Court (Schwartz 2009; Dolan 2010).85 Six
other states – Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont86 –
and the federal capital Washington, DC, do allow same-sex marriage but most states’ statutes
and/or constitutions ban same-sex marriage,87 and eighteen states also ban domestic
partnership or civil unions.88

On the contrary, even before they legalised same-sex marriage, New York and the District of
Columbia – i.e. the federal capital, Washington – did recognise those legally entered into in
other states. Finally, five states allow civil unions, whether in addition to marriage – e.g.
Vermont –, instead of marriage – e.g. New Jersey –, or in spite of a marriage ban – e.g.
California.89 As a result the map of the recognition and prohibition of same-sex marriage or
unions is both unstable and very complex.90 But what is striking is that the issue has become
so prominent as to all but subsume the political debate on LGBT families in the United States:
indeed, hardly any other LGBT rights issue enjoys equivalent political visibility.91

But in fact, LGBT people have invented a wide variety of family configurations, and because
of the same-sex marriage debate these various family types have lost visibility. There are, for
example, couples who do not particularly want to get married, but demand access to adoption.

85
Proposition 8 may also ultimately be challenged with a ballot measure to reverse it.
86
Maine did legislate to allow same-sex marriage in 2009, but the law was repealed through a ballot measure in
the polls in November 2009.
87
Twenty one state constitutions prohibit same-sex marriage, and twelve states have a statutory ban.
88
These are: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, North
Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin.
89
These five states are: Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey and Rhode Island.
90
The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) posts regularly updated maps of the recognition of same-
sex couples in the United States at <http://www.thetaskforce.org/issues/marriage_and_partnership_recognition>
(9 August 2011).
91
One such high-profile LGBT rights issue is the integration of openly homosexual soldiers in the US army, but
its visibility has been more sporadic – essentially linked to attempted integration by individual presidents: Bill
Clinton unsuccessfully in 1993 and Barack Obama successfully in 2010 – and, although highly symbolical, it is
of direct concern to much fewer people than same-sex marriage.

72
Thirteen states and the District of Columbia authorise joint adoption by same-sex parents, and
nine states, plus again the District of Columbia, authorise second-parent adoption by same-sex
partners.92 In addition, local – i.e. city or county – governments in several states also allow
adoption. So the United States is relatively tolerant in this respect, as only one state, Florida,
bars all homosexual people – whether as individuals or couples – from adopting, and a mere
three other states, Utah, Mississippi and Arkansas, forbid adoption by unmarried or same-sex
couples.93 Elsewhere same-sex couples and LGBT persons can take advantage of legal
loopholes to seek an authorisation to adopt.

It is noteworthy though that adoption by same-sex couples or by a biological parent’s same-

sex partner is never recognised as a fully-fledged right, but granted as a matter of derogation.
It is also remarkable that access to adoption is surprisingly easier than marriage – the reverse
of Europe – as a result of the country’s federalism: marriage is a state-wide competence,
whereas adoption can be addressed more locally; as a result same-sex marriage has much
more political visibility than adoption, because its presence in state politics has a repercussion
in, and is an echo of, the national political debate. But same-sex couples’ recognition can be
worked out at the local level, too, through domestic partnership in particular. And since
counties or municipalities are more likely to be politically homogeneous than whole states, it
can prove easier – under favourable political circumstances – to garner pro-LGBT support
locally than state-wide. These characteristics of US federalism may in a sense prefigure
developments in Europe as its integration moves forward, in that pioneering nation-states may
pave the way for progress in more reluctant ones when political issues get debated at the
continental level. But the main difference between American politics and Europe’s
prospective federalism is that the supra-national level in Europe seems readier than most
member states to recognise LGBT families – almost the reverse of the imbalance between the
local and state/national levels in the United States (Agius 2009; Banens 2010).

92
The former are: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey,
New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and the District of Columbia; the latter are: California, Colorado,
Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont and the District of
Columbia; eight states and the District of Columbia allow both.
93
The Arkansas law was struck down by a state court in 2010, but the decision is not final until it has been
affirmed or reversed by the state’s Supreme Court. Additionally, in Michigan state jurisprudence effectively bars
unmarried individuals and same-sex couples married in other states from joint adoption; in Nebraska the state’s
Department of Social Services’ policy prohibiting adoption by homosexual or unmarried couples has been
sanctioned by the state’s Supreme Court, which has also ruled against second-parent adoption.

73
But LGBT families are not necessarily centred on a couple with or without children. Some
LGBT organisations offer “safe homes” for LGBT youths who have fled abusive families,
while others provide them with “foster grand-parents” – i.e. elderly couples or individuals
without offspring with whom to pair up (Marche 2003). Other “families of choice” – as the
anthropologist Kath Weston calls them (Weston 1991; 1993) – are simply made up of friends,
including sometimes former sexual or romantic partners. All these configurations are
alternatives to the monogamous, couple-centred model of the family, and they are often
informal arrangements. So they make up de facto families which never seek de jure
recognition, but they are none the less significant, for they make LGBT families a laboratory
for the evolution of the family as a civil and cultural institution. They also encourage the
LGBT movement to deal with the prominent issue of intergenerational permanence,
transmission and renewal – which is particularly important in a context where AIDS has
decimated the generation that created LGBT communities in American cities and launched
the age of gay rights in the post-gay-liberation period of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Even though, thirty years into the AIDS era, the archetype of the unattached, middle-aged
promiscuous gay male no longer subsumes the image of the LGBT community, it is
noteworthy that conservative campaigns do place the issue of sexuality at the heart of the
LGBT families debate. For example, two major aspects of the Bush administration’s “values”
battle were its opposition to same-sex marriage and the promotion of abstinence-only-until-
marriage sexual education (Greslé-Favier 2009). The two are clearly linked in the
conservative right wing’s agenda.94 In fact, abstinence-only sexual education does not have to
exclude same-sex attraction. But because it is explicitly geared toward promoting marriage it
is likely to do so, and in effect does most of the time (Fischer 2009, 63). Conservative anti-
LGBT discourse is indeed prone to such shortcuts, as the following example of the
organisation Concerned Women for America illustrates. One article from the “Culture and
Family Issues” section of its website entitled “What’s Best for the Children” reads:

In the popular film Sleepless in Seattle, a desperate little boy goes on the radio to seek a wife for his
single father. He’s already got a great dad, played by Tom Hanks. The boy does not want another dad;
he wants a mom. Yet, we’re told that public policy should be indifferent to that boy’s needs. To put it

94
Abstinence-only until marriage was not launched by the Bush administration, but by the Clinton
administration as of 1996; it was however the Bush administration which endowed it with massive funding
(Cooper and Cates 2006, 64).

74
 another way, do we really think the boy would not notice if, instead of getting new mom Meg Ryan, he
wound up with a guy from Queer as Folk as his ‘second dad?’ (Knight 2005)

In this segment, “a guy from Queer as Folk” is used as shorthand for an effeminate freak and
is made synonymous for “another dad.” Striking therefore is that this extract contrasts with
the dominant tendency in conservative anti-LGBT discourses nowadays to present
homosexuality as a choice – hence something morally wrong, which can be avoided, for
example thanks to “reparative therapy”, but which can also be imposed on others, especially
children (Brookey 2002). On the contrary, the author, Robert Knight, essentialises
homosexuality in order to stigmatise it by casting the male homosexual as abnormal.

This is confirmed by another extract from the same article: “Who among us could say that our
father could be replaced by a lesbian, and this would not have made any difference in our
lives? Or that our mother could just as easily have been a male homosexual?” (Knight 2005;
emphasis ours) The language here conflates sex and gender with sexual orientation, because
the author does not simply emphasise a child’s alleged need to have parents of both sexes and
genders – one female and one male –, he also labels the putative second mother or father as a
homosexual, thus raising the fear of a sexually deviant adult warping the child’s morality. The
essentialism is most obvious in that Knight gives pride of place to his opposition between the
mother and the male homosexual, thus conjointly invoking the contrary mythic
representations of motherly instinct and of the degenerate male pederast.

But the article goes further and claims:

yes, studies show that [when brought up by homosexual parents] girls are more likely to ‘be sexually
adventurous and less chaste,’ including being more likely to try lesbianism, and that boys are more
likely to have ‘fluid’ conceptions of gender roles, and that researchers should stop trying to cover this
up in the hopes of pursuing a pro-homosexual agenda. The researchers said, in effect: Some of the kids
are more likely to turn out gay or bisexual, but so what? (Knight 2005; italics in original)

Not only does this segment conflate parents’ sex and gender with their sexual orientation, it
also lumps together parents’ sexual orientation with children’s sexual orientation, degree of
sexual activity, and gender identification. What is more, far from impeding the piece’s
capacity to convince, these conceptual flaws enhance it by addressing its readers’ deeper-
seated, less rational anxieties, while at the same time cloaking them in pseudo-scientific

75
language.95 These examples provide a fairly representative illustration of the current state of
the debate on the moral conservative side, which lead us to conclude that, regardless of LGBT
advocates’ strategic options, the issue of youth sexuality is of the foremost importance in the
LGBT families debate.

<H2> Youth Sexuality: A Political Catch 22

But youth sexuality is such a risky topic for the LGBT movement that it deals with the LGBT
families debate in an increasingly desexualised way. We analyse this strategy to argue that it
is somewhat paradoxical, insofar as, at the same time, many issues of importance for LGBT
youth are directly related to sexuality.

In the gay-marriage debate for instance, whereas anti-LGBT opponents frame their argument
in terms of sexual behaviour,96 proponents endeavour to skirt this obstacle by carrying the
debate onto another plane, as the following two examples demonstrate. The American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) has produced a series of half-hour documentaries entitled “Freedom
Files,” which are based on the real-life experience of interviewees. These include a “gay and
lesbian rights” episode and a “same-sex couples” episode, both of which focus on child-
rearing, health insurance, and hospital visitation issues (ACLU [a]; [b]). The ACLU has also
co-produced with Public Interest television a series of ten stories, entitled “10 Couples”,
which is also based on real-life testimonies and additionally focuses on inheritance rights and
adoption (ACLU and Public Interest). The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) in
July 2006 ran a full-page newspaper advertisement in fifty publications nationwide, in which
sixty civic, religious, trade-union and civil-rights leaders and organisations took a stand in
favour of legalising same-sex marriage. The fact is that forty of the sixty leaders and
organisations in question were specifically non-LGBT, and their arguments were framed
strictly in terms on non-discrimination – including a comparison with the prohibition of
mixed-race marriages in Southern US states until 1967 (NGLTF 2006).

95
Interestingly Knight’s assertions distort the findings of the studies in question, which show less gender
conformity – i.e. criticism towards patriarchal gender roles – in lesbian families (Stacey and Biblarz 2001). See
also Stacey and Biblarz 2010.
96
e.g. Knight 2009.

76
These examples, taken from two of the leading national organisations defending LGBT rights
in the US,97 provide an apt illustration of how hard these advocates strive to relegate
sexuality-related issues outside the scope of the gay-marriage debate, by focussing on bread-
and-butter issues or by articulating the case for legalisation strictly in terms of formal rights.98
Such a strategy is sensible insofar as it aims to deflect opponents’ harshest assaults, but it fails
to address the symbolic dimension of opening marriage to same-sex couples other than by
resorting to normification (Marche 2009; Hunter 1995).99 The problem however is that
sexuality-related issues are central to the public debate on youth in general. Thus anti-gay
rights opponents insist on protecting the sexuality of non-LGBT youth by claiming that
LGBT families represent a risk of homosexual “contamination” and that the struggle for their
recognition is in fact an activist ploy for recruiting youths into the homosexual lifestyle –
what radical moral conservatives call the “gay agenda”. Furthermore, we argue, the well-
being of LGBT youth is more particularly affected by sexuality, since their sexual experience
for instance disproportionately involves risky behaviour, such as unsafe sex, exposing them to
HIV infection. Besides, many LGBT youth engage in heterosexual sex, so that, whether male
or female, they are actually more liable to be exposed to unwanted pregnancies (Gilliam 2001;
Saewyc et al. 2008).

So how is one to explain why the LGBT movement tends to desexualise its discussion of
LGBT youths? Part of the explanation is linked to the current overall political context. Since
the 1990s there has been a revival of sex panics used by conservatives in order to construct
youth in general as an asexual sanctuary, thus manufacturing and manipulating public
emotions in order to advance their political agenda (Irvine 2006). In addition to the
publicising of scare stories involving alleged “predators” and young, innocent victims, there
have been highly visible cases of child abuse by priests and politicians’ affairs with minors.
Teenagers have even been indicted with child pornography for “sexting” – i.e. sending each
other crude pictures of themselves on their mobile phones (Wypijewski 2009). Linking youth
with sex in such a context clearly involves political danger.

97
The ACLU is a general civil liberties defense organisation which does not exclusively or even primarily stand
for LGBT rights, yet that is one of its key issues, so that the organisation’s great visibility and reputable record
enable it to be a key player in the LGBT movement.
98
For a definition of formal rights – as opposed to substantive rights – see Bottomore 1992.
99
On the distinction between normification and normalization see Goffman 1990, 31–44.

77
But the desexualisation of LGBT youth by the LGBT movement began long before the 1990s
sex panics. As far back as the gay-rights turn of the gay liberation movement in the early
1970s, when community building replaced sexual liberation at the top of the movement’s
agenda (Armstrong 2002, 97–110), gay youths were provided with counselling, protection
and advocacy because the plight of their disproportionate harassment and victimisation had
become evident (Cohen 2005, 75–77). The 1970s movement thus laid the emphasis on sexual
identity, as opposed to conduct, and by desexualising its approach to gay youths essentialised
them into a reified identity group. Likewise, in the 1980s and 1990s, the LGBT movement
sought to serve youth by advocating for the creation of gay-straight alliance in schools (Woog
1995, 268–279; Miceli 2005; Mayberry 2007). On the contrary, a recurrent trait of LGBT
youths’ experience of sexuality is that it escapes, rather than follows, fixed identity categories,
so that focussing on actual sexual desires, attraction and behaviour among them implies
dealing with fluid identity categories and boundaries (Cohen 2002, 77–80).

These remarks suggest that the desexualisation of LGBT youth issues is but one side of the
LGBT movement’s essentialist leaning, and conversely that its approach to LGBT youth in
general, and their sexuality in particular, is an index of how offensive and daring that
movement is prepared to be. In the late 1960s, for instance, the emergence of the gay
liberation movement was triggered by LGBT youths who had grown impatient with the
homophile movement’s conformity (Armstrong 2002, 62–68; D’Emilio 1998, 223–239). In
other words, it was a youth-led initiative to celebrate homosexuality as a provocative form of
sexual expression that spearheaded the homophile movement’s transformation into the gay
liberation movement (Cohen 2005, 72–74). In the early twenty-first century, on the contrary,
LGBT youths’ advocates insist on the dangers they face – suicide, HIV infection, substance
use, violence and harassment, dropping out of school – and treat them as a fragile category in
need of protection, rather than as a disenfranchised category in need of rights and recognition
(Cohen 2005; Lehr 2008).

At this point in our discussion it is evident that the questions of LGBT families and LGBT
youths expose the movement to attacks that primarily stigmatise homosexuality as a sexual
conduct and as a choice. The movement however tends to react by claiming sexual orientation
is primarily an identity and it is not a choice, and its current approach to youth issues is a sign
of its growing essentialism – whereas it used to be a key aspect of its capacity for innovation.

78
Considering that this state of affairs is at least partially driven by the overall political context,
the question remains how the LGBT movement can get out of this political conundrum.

<H2> LGBT Youth Sexuality: A Creative Challenge for the LGBT Movement

Despite the end of the Bush era and the relative tolerance or progressivism in some states or
localities, US national politics is still a hostile political environment for the LGBT movement.
After the lost hopes of the early 1990s – when a sympathetic new president failed to keep his
strong campaign promise of symbolic integration in the armed forces – it is confronted with a
counter-movement which has gained strength from the moral conservative climate of the
1980s, the “culture wars” of the 1990s, and the ideologically driven neo-conservatism of the
2000s. In this sense, LGBT youth in European countries enjoy somewhat better protection,
since the more developed European welfare states put them in the care of social services and
education systems which are more administrative – hence more secure from populist political
morality campaigning than in the United States, where school boards are not only local, but
elected. Though it may thus appear as a horrible foil to European countries, the United States
should perhaps serve as a cautionary tale, since no country has foolproof indemnity from
ignorance and intolerance – as the early-twenty-first century resurgence of bigoted ultra-
nationalism in central and eastern, but also western and south-western, Europe shows. The
answer to such a challenge lies in collective action, and so the question is how LGBT
advocates in the US are to find ways of efficiently opposing their political foes (Miceli 2005,
592).

In arguing for abstinence-only-until-marriage sexual education, Concerned Women for

America claims: “We don’t tell children not to do drugs and then give them clean syringes in
case they do. We don’t tell them not to smoke and then give them low-tar cigarettes because
those are the least harmful. We don’t do those things because they undermine the point we are
trying to make.” (CWA 2006) When faced with such arguments, it is politically tempting for
advocates for youth in general, and LGBT youth in particular, to resort to disclaimers and –
be it tacitly – endorse the view that having sex at a young age jeopardises one’s well-being.
An alternative, offensive posture would be not to make excuses for the fact that youths do
have sex, and to expose attempts to curb youth sexuality as not simply ineffective, but also
wrong. Especially in the case of LGBT youth, abstinence-only education indeed denies rights
that are already abridged: whereas LGBT youths’ right to sexual and gender expression is

79
consistently denied, the enforcement of abstinence-only programs further violates their right
to free information about safer sex and birth control, a right deriving in particular from the
First Amendment to the US Constitution, as well as from the United Nations’ 1989
Convention on the Rights of the Child.100

In other words, LGBT youth sexuality issues both represent a symptom of the problem and
offer insights into worthwhile solutions. The LGBT movement’s political goal, from this
perspective, is to stand for youths’ empowerment, in the sense of enhancing their capacity to
negotiate sexual relations and to make informed decisions. In addition to affirming a set of
rights, this posture has a strategic justification: it avoids being trapped in a discussion of what
is good or bad about youth sexuality, or what is the right time for young people to be sexually
active, instead taking the issue onto the political plane of the actual, social contexts in which
youths make decisions about sexuality (Waites 2005, 29–30). At stake then is no longer
whether, or how much, youths ought to be disciplined, but how to keep them out of unfair
treatment and to empower them by “challeng[ing] the unequal social contexts in which
[youths’ moral agency] is embedded” (ibid., 30).

The question then remains to what extent the movement is equipped to address these
questions. As a matter of fact the resources do exist in the LGBT social movement field for
addressing youths as leaders and agents producing empowerment – instead of clients
receiving services (Cohen 2005, 77–78). An organisation that is neither led by, nor
specifically meant for, LGBT youth, Advocates for Youth, does stand for their rights, for
example by producing sex-positive sexual education material, but also campaign material
such as talking points on youth sexuality issues (Advocates for Youth 2006). The organisation
thus does not simply engage in lobbying and advocacy on youths’ behalf, it also fosters
grassroots campaigning (Azrak et al. 2005). Another example is the National Youth
Advocacy Coalition (NYAC), an organisation for and of LGBT youth. It participates in the
Coalition for Positive Sexuality (CPS), producing positive material about youth sexuality
which presents sex as a fulfilling experience and offers resources for activism as well as for
services (CPS 2008). Additionally, many sex-positive, online LGBT youth forums provide

100
“Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” (US Constitution,
Amendment I); “The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek,
receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print,
in the form of art, or through any other media of the child's choice.” (UN Convention on the Rights of the Child,
Article 13)

80
peer-produced information, safe space for debate, and resources for grassroots organising
(Cohen 2005, 80). These are but a few examples of existing organisations and initiatives
which foster empowerment through agency by giving voice to LGBT youth’s experience of
sexuality.

<H2> Conclusion

As in Europe, the recognition of same-sex unions is a high-profile aspect of the LGBT

families debate in the United States. But perhaps more than in Europe, the LGBT movement
there has made possible the emergence of alternative LGBT “families of choice”, facilitated
in part by legal loopholes and political opportunities resulting from the structure of American
federalism, which distributes power among three levels of government – federal, state, and
local – and sometimes allows local issues to remain below the radar of national politics, thus
making room for discreet, yet effective and significant policy innovations. This prominent
issue however confronts the LGBT movement with a very fierce opposition, which challenges
it to take stock of the connection between issues of LGBT families and of youth sexuality, on
which the LGBT movement must consequently take a stance. The more often chosen, longer
established strategy however consists in deflecting accusations of trying to “convert” youths
to the “homosexual lifestyle” by desexualising the approach to issues concerning LGBT
youth, which in turn tends to essentialise them as a fixed identity category. On the contrary it
was LGBT youths’ offensiveness about sexuality and their refusal of essentialism which
historically drove the LGBT movement forward in various periods of growth.

But unlike Europe, issues regarding youth, sexual orientation, and sexuality are subjected in
the United States to the political sanction of public debates and elections where radical moral
conservatives have great sway. As a result, the LGBT movement there is subjected to
heightened vulnerability. At the same time, however, the politicisation of youth sexuality
implies that the issue is up for deliberation in the contentious, democratic political arena,
which offers the LGBT social movement a political opportunity to jump into the fray, shed
caution, and take the offensive by framing sexuality issues in terms of LGBT youths’ rights.
This can be done by empowering LGBT youths to speak on the basis of their experience. As
we have suggested, the movement has both organisational and grassroots resources to do so.
Moreover, given that moral conservatives’ religious fundamentalist ideology provides their
discourse with a built-in advantage for a discussion of moral values, framing the debate on

81
LGBT youth in terms of rights is a reasonable strategy. It allows the LGBT movement to
address, rather than dodge, the issue of youth sexuality which is embedded in the LGBT
families debate, and hence allows it to be less defensively poised in confronting its opponents.
While this political situation is to some extent specific to the American LGBT movement, the
conclusions to which it leads may serve as an inspiration for European advocates of LGBT
families.

<H2> References

<H3> Newspapers and Magazines

Dolan, M. 2010. Judge Strikes down Prop. 8, Allows Gay Marriage in California. Los Angeles
Times, 4 August.

Schwartz, J. 2009. California High Court Upholds Gay Marriage Ban. New York Times, 26
May.

Wypijewski, J. 2009. Through a Lens Starkly. The Nation, 18 May: 6–8.

<H3> Primary Sources

Advocates for Youth. 2006. Effective Sex Education. Washington, DC: Advocates for Youth,
<http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/storage/advfy/documents/fssexcur.pdf> (24 August
2010).

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). [a] [no date provided]. Freedom to Marry. The
Freedom Files – Second Season (30 minutes). New York: American Civil Liberties Union,
<http://aclu.tv/marry> (24 August 2010).

–––. [b] [no date provided]. Gay and Lesbian Rights. The Freedom Files – First Season (30
minutes). New York: American Civil Liberties Union, <http://aclu.tv/node/61> (24 August
2010).

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Public Interest. [no date provided]. Ten Couples
(10 films; 3’09’’ to 4’47’’) <http://www.10couples.org> (15 September 2010)

Azrak, S., N. Kaur Dhingra, and J. Stacks. 2005. My Voice Counts! Campaigns for Youth’s
Reproductive and Sexual Health. Advocacy and Organizing Toolkit. Washington, DC:
Advocates for Youth,
<http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/storage/advfy/documents/mvc_toolkit.pdf> (25 August
2010).

Coalition for Positive Sexuality (CPS). 2008. Just Say Yes. Washington, DC: Coalition for
Positive Sexuality, <http://www.positive.org/images/JSY_pdfs/JustSayYes_BW8x11.pdf>
(24 August 2010).

82
Concerned Women for America (CWA). 2006. What Your Teacher Didn’t Tell You about
Abstinence. Washington, DC: Concerned Women for America,
<http://www.cwfa.org/brochures/abstinence0106.pdf> (24 August 2010).

Cooper, L., and P. Cates. 2006. Too High a Price: The Case against Restricting Gay
Parenting. New York: American Civil Liberties Union Foundation,
<http://www.aclu.org/files/images/asset_upload_file480_27496.pdf > (24 August 2010).

Crouse, J. S. 2005 (16 March). How to Talk to Your Child about Sex: The Sex Pyramid.
Beverly LaHaye Institute. Washington, DC: Concerned Women for America,
<http://www.cwfa.org/articles/7432/BLI/reports/index.htm> (24 August 2010).

Gilliam, J. 2001. Young Women Who Have Sex with Women: Falling through Cracks for
Sexual Health Care. Washington, DC: Advocates for Youth,
<http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/storage/advfy/documents/ywsw.pdf> (23 August 2010).

Harvey, L. 2006 (2 February). Fairy Tales Don’t Come True. Culture and Family Issues.
Washington, DC: Concerned Women for America,
<http://www.cwfa.org/articles/10633/CFI/papers/index.htm#ref> (15 October 2009).

Knight, R. H. 2005 (17 February). What’s Best for the Children. Culture and Family Issues.
Washington, DC: Concerned Women for America,
<http://www.cwfa.org/articles/7465/CFI/family/index.htm> (24 August 2010).

–––. 2009 (22 June). ‘Gay Marriage’ Is Not Only Wrong; It’s Socially Destructive. Culture
and Family Issues. Washington, DC: Concerned Women for America,
<http://www.cwfa.org/articledisplay.asp?id=5014&department=CFI&categoryid=family> (24
August 2010).

National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF). 2006. Civic, Religious, Civil Rights Leaders
Join to Declare ‘Marriage Matters’. Washington, DC: National Gay and Lesbian Task Force,
<http://www.thetaskforce.org/issues/marriage_and_partnership_recognition/marriagematters>
(24 August 2010).

Woog, D. 1995. School’s Out: The Impact of Gay and Lesbian Issues on America’s Schools.
Boston: Alyson.

<H3> Academic Sources

Agius, S. 2009 (16 October). Different Families, Same Love: Knocking at the Door of the
European Institutions. Paper presented at the conference, LGBT Families: The New Minority?
Ljubljana, Slovenia: Peace Institute (16–17 October 2009).

Armstrong, E. A. 2002. Forging Gay Identities: Organizing Sexuality in San Francisco,

1950–1994. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Banens, M. 2010. Mariage et partenariat de même sexe en Europe. 20 ans d’expérience.

Politiques sociales et familiales 99: 73–84.

83
Biblarz, T. J., and J. Stacey. 2010. How Does the Gender of Parents Matter? Journal of
Marriage and Family 72(1): 3–22.

Bottomore, T. 1995. Citizenship and Social Class, Forty Years on. In Citizenship and Social
Class, ed. T. Bottomore, 53–93. London: Pluto Press.

Brookey, R. A. 2002. Reinventing the Male Homosexual: The Rhetoric and Power of the Gay
Gene. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Cohen, S. 2005. Liberationists, Clients, Activists: Queer Youth Organizing, 1966–2003.

Journal of Gay & Lesbian Issues in Education 2(3): 67–86.

D’Emilio, J. 1998. Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities. The Making of a Homosexual

Minority in the United States: 1940–1970. Chicago: University of Chicago Press [1983].

Fisher, C. M. 2009. Queer Youth Experiences with Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage

Sexuality Education: ‘I can’t get married so where does that leave me?’ Journal of LGBT
Youth 6(1): 61–79.

Goffman, E. 1990. Stigma. Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. London: Penguin
[1963].

Greslé-Favier, C. 2009. ‘Raising Sexually Pure Kids.’ Sexual Abstinence, Conservative

Christians and American Politics. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Hunter, N. 1995. Marriage, Law and Gender: A Feminist Inquiry. In Sex Wars: Sexual
Dissent and Political Culture, eds. L. Duggan and N. Hunter, 107–122. New York:
Routledge.

Irvine, J. M. 2006. Emotional Scripts of Sex Panics. Sexuality Research and Social Policy
3(3): 82–94.

Lehr, V. 2008. Developing Sexual Agency: Rethinking Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth
Century Theories for the Twenty-First Century. Sexuality & Culture 12(4): 204–220.

Marche, G. 2003. Les familles homosexuelles aux Etats-Unis: conformisme ou conflit social?
Revue Française d’Etudes Américaines 97: 99–117.

–––. 2009. Groupe dominant et minorités sexuelles aux Etats–Unis: quelle définition de la
citoyenneté? In Citoyenneté et diversité, eds. M. Spensky and J. Cohen, 151–170. Clermont-
Ferrand, France: Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal.

Mayberry, M. 2007. The Story of a Salt Lake City Gay-Straight Alliance: Identity Work and
LGBT Youth. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Issues in Education 4(1): 13–31.

Miceli, M. S. 2005. Morality Politics vs. Identity Politics: Framing Processes and Competition
among Christian Right and Gay Social Movement Organizations. Sociological Forum 20(4):
589–612.

84
Saewyc, E. M., C. S. Poon, Y. Homma, and C. L. Skay. 2008. Stigma Management? The
Links between Enacted Stigma and Teen Pregnancy Trends among Gay, Lesbian, and
Bisexual Students in British Columbia. Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality 17(3): 123–
139.

Santelli, J., M. A. Ott, M. Lyon, J. Rogers, and D. Summers. 2006. Abstinence-Only

Education Policies and Programs: A Position Paper of the Society for Adolescent Medicine.
Journal of Adolescent Health 38: 72–81.

Stacey, J. and T. J. Biblarz. 2001. (How) Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?
American Sociological Review 66(2): 159–183.

Waites, M. 2005. The Age of Consent: Young People, Sexuality and Citizenship, Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan.

Weston, K. 1991. Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship. New York: Columbia
University Press.

–––. 1993. Parenting in the Age of AIDS. In Sisters, Sexperts, Queers: Beyond the Lesbian
Nation, ed. A. Stein, 156–186. New York: Penguin.

Whisman, V. 1996. Queer by Choice: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Politics of Identity. New
York: Routledge.

85
Daniela Danna

<H1> Homoparentality in Italy: Myth of Stigmatisation

This article addresses a widespread argument about “homoparental families” in public

discussions in Italy: homosexuals should not be allowed to have children, not just because it is
plainly immoral, but also because their offsprings will be subjected to stigmatization. The
argument “for the good of the children” is captious: a possible discrimination due to the
parents’ sexual orientation (a diversity comparable to being non-white, fat, near-sighted or
gender-nonconforming) is used to motivate further discrimination. The same argumentation
has found its way also into Italian law; since 2004 it prohibits assisted insemination outside of
cohabiting heterosexual couples (l. 40/2004 on artificial procreation). The law was adopted in
a social environment with growingly positive attitudes towards open expressions of
homosexuality – which is an important change in comparison to the pre-LGBT movement
years before the eighties.

<H2> Legal issues

From the nineties onwards the surveys in Italy show an oscillating trend regarding the
approval of homosexual marriage and a declining one regarding the right of same-sex couples
to adopt children. Unfortunately there are no older data available, which would enable long-
term comparison of attitudes, and that is because issues such as gay and lesbian families and
same-sex marriage were absolutely unthinkable before the contemporary LGBT movement.

In the following tables results from various research measuring attitudes towards different
aspects of the legal recognition of same-sex couples and families are presented and, if
available, compared with the average result for EU countries. Italy is constantly under the
European mean, and has a rather mixed trend in acceptance of same-sex marriage and other
forms of legal recognition for same-sex couples, although ultimately the acceptance is
growing, except for the right of same-sex couples to adopt, which is not even on the agenda of
the LGBT movement in Italy. At first the support for such adoptions was growing and it is
now declining.

86
 Item Percent in Source and year
favour
Marriage for persons of the same sex 47% Gallup 1993101
(57% EU-15)
Resolution of E.U. Parliament asking for 37% Doxa 1994102
marriage or an analogous form for persons
of the same sex
Civil marriage for same-sex partners 51.6% Eurispes 2003103
Homosexual marriage (total) 31.6% Demos-Eurisko 2004104
Homosexual marriage (18 to 24 years) 40.2% Demos-Eurisko 2004
Homosexual marriage (55 to 64 years) 17% Demos-Eurisko 2004
Marriage for persons of the same sex 37% Ipsos 2005 (July)105
Registered unions for same-sex partners 31% Eurisko 2005106
(September)
Marriage for same-sex partners 29% Eurisko 2005
(September)
Marriage for same-sex partners 31% Eurobarometer 2006
(44% EU-25)
Any form of recognition of same-sex 58.9% Eurispes 2009107
partners
Civil marriage for same-sex partners 40.4% Eurispes 2009

Table 1: Support for the legal recognition of same-sex partnerships in Italy (1993–2009).

Item Percent in Source and year

favour
Adoption for same-sex partners 25% Gallup 1993
(42% EU-15)
Adoption for same-sex partners (female 37% Doxa 1994
respondents)
Adoption for same-sex partners (male 23% Doxa 1994
respondents)
Adoption for same-sex partners 36.6% Eurispes 2003
Adoption for same-sex partners 21.2% Demos-Eurisko 2004
Adoption for same-sex partners 26% Ipsos 2005 (July)
Adoption for same-sex partners 24% Eurobarometer 2006
(35% EU-25)
Adoption for same-sex partners 19% Eurispes 2009

101
See <http://www.gallup.com/poll/1651/gay-lesbian-rights.aspx> (8 August 2011).
102
See <http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/1994/febbraio/10/nozze_fra_gay_forse_figli_co_0_9402104709.shtml>
(8 August 2011).
103
See <http://www.arcigaymilano.org/dosart.asp?ID=3816> (8 August 2011).
104
See <http://www.repubblica.it/2004/j/sezioni/cronaca/mammegay/sondadem/sondadem.html> (8 August
2011).
105
See <http://www2.agcom.it/sondaggi/dox/2005/IPSOS_08_07_05.doc> (8 August 2011).
106
See <http://www.repubblica.it/2005/i/sezioni/politica/prodipacs/itafavo/itafavo.html> (8 August 2011).
107
See <http://www.eurispes.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=175:gay-pride-orgoglio-e-
pregiudizi&catid=40:comunicati-stampa&Itemid=135> (8 August 2011).

87
 Table 2: Social support for the right of same-sex partners to adopt jointly (1993–2009).

The Gallup poll about gay marriage and adoption by homosexuals in 2003 was surprisingly
positive, given that the question of gay marriage was not on the political floor at that time, not
in Italy nor anywhere else in Europe, except for the Netherlands and Belgium, where same-
sex marriage was introduced in 2001 and 2003 respectively. In other European countries
where same-sex partnerships were recognised by that time, gays and lesbians were not
granted the same rights as heterosexual married couples. Furthermore the institution was not
called “marriage”. The positive response in 2003 was thus most probably related primarily to
the heated debate in the United States.

In this survey, women turned out to be more in favour of the rights of homosexuals than men,
and so were the more educated, the leftists and the young in comparison with the opposite
categories. The positive result was replicated in the poll conducted by the institute Eurispes108
in 2003 (N=2000), when the percent in favour of marriage and adoption grew to an absolute
majority. It confirmed the trend of growing acceptance of homosexuality among the young
traced by the surveys of the Iard institute (Buzzi, Cavalli and De Lillo 2002, 2007).

<H2> Social acceptance

A study on moral attitudes towards homosexuality, conducted among 4500 Italians aged 18–
74 by the Catholic University in Milan (Cesareo 1995), showed these results:

Degree of Mean Female Male

condemnation (%)
To have homosexual None or little 38.2 40.8 35.6
experiences Fairly 14.8 13.9 15.8
Much 46.9 45.3 48.6

Table 3: Answers to the question: “We will present you a series of behaviours that some people consider morally
unacceptable. How much do you condemn them?” (Source: Cesareo 1995, 314–316) 109

The Iard study on (15–24 years old) youth has gathered data from 1983 to 2007 in six waves,
with quota samples. The questions were threefold: if homosexual experiences were thought to
be criticised by society, if the respondent criticises them, if they could think of having a

108
See <http://www.arcigaymilano.org/dosart.asp?ID=3816> (8 August 2011).
109
The percent indicates the column percent.

88
homosexual experience themselves. The acceptance of homosexual relations by the youth
reached the lowest point in the first half of the nineties, probably due to the Aids crisis, and it
now has a positive trend, with the highest acceptance expressed in 2007 though with an older
sample (15–34 year old). The most recent Iard study was actually conducted in 2007 with a
sample not comparable with the others. The results showed that 46% of the respondents found
homosexuality morally admissible, and nearly 12% could think of having such an experience
themselves (Buzzi, Cavalli and De Lillo 2007).

1983 1987 1992 1996 2000

Do you think homosexual experiences 88,2% 91,6% 91,5% 89,9% 82,7%

are criticised by society?
Do you criticise homosexual 36,7% 30,9% 40,8% 49,5% 47,3%
experiences?
Could you think of having a homosexual 10,8% 5,2% 4,4% 7,4% 9,5%
experience?

Table 4: Positive answers by 15–24 years old. (Source: Buzzi, Cavalli and De Lillo 2002)

<H2> Previous results: minority stress

Despite of changes in the social environment, stigmatization and discrimination towards

children of openly homosexual couples is one of the most quoted arguments in public
discourses in Italy about families called “homoparental”. In fact there is a declining trend in
support for same-sex adoptions, which remain illegal in Italy. Existing homoparental families
are constituted by singles and couples where one person is a biological parent of the child.
These children were often born in a previous heterosexual union. The politicians and some
“experts”, cited by media, claimed that these families are isolated and emarginated from
society, and children in a “homoparental” family suffer, so much so that legislators have both
the obligation to prevent the establishment of new such families and the right not to recognize
the existing ones (for a detailed discussion on media representations of homoparentality see
Trappolin 2009).

There are some critical points showed by previous research about the relationships of
homoparental families with their social environment. These families were exposed to stress,
which was also found at workplace and is associated with one’s disclosure of sexual
orientation and problems with the extended families (Hequembourg and Farrell 1999),

89
though, on the other hand, in the Netherlands Bos et al. (2004a) did not find different use of
formal and informal social support in child rearing among two groups of lesbian-planned
families and heterosexual families.

Anderssen et al. (2002) in a review of nine studies, conducted between 1978 and 2000, on
outcomes for children having lesbian or gay parents concluded that children of lesbian
mothers show low levels of stigmatization and are generally not more stigmatized than other
children, even if children fear they could be, and act in order to prevent teasing. The review
includes the comparative study by Golombok et al. (1983) and its follow up (Tasker and
Golombok 1997), where some difference was assessed: male offsprings of lesbian mothers
were teased more often than offsprings of heterosexuals, with the motive of being gay
themselves.
A review of 18 research studies on the health and other outcomes for children born through
assisted reproduction into various types of families concluded that: “Despite the significant
level of bullying, children in lesbian and gay families develop effective peer relationships. It
is also surprising that these children have the same levels of emotional functioning as other
children and appear to be in some way resisting the common negative mental health
consequences of being bullied and discriminated against. One possible explanation for this
level of resilience is that the bullying is not directly about the children’s own identity, but
rather about their parents’ identity. […] A more global explanation is that lesbian and gay
parents are very effectively assisting their children to deal with bullying at school” (McNair
2004, 63). A more recent study showed equal levels of peer stigmatisation and victimisation
in matching groups of 18 children of lesbian and heterosexual couples (not belonging to
ethnic minorities) (Rivers et al. 2007).

The critical points found in previous research can be conceptualised as deriving from minority
stress (Meyer 1995). In sociological and psychological literature (Bos et al. 2004b) minority
stress is defined with these dimensions: (1) rejection, social isolation; (2) stigmatisation; (3)
internalised homophobia (or racism, anti-Semitism).

In this article I will present qualitative results about the two social dimensions of the minority
stress: (1) rejection and social isolation and (2) stigmatisation. I will put aside the internalised
homophobia, which is a dimension more properly explored by psychological research tools.
Moreover, the social dimensions are the test variables for the amount of the minority stress

90
which can be allocated to internalised homophobia. A study of 256 gay and lesbian families in
the US, for example, Johnson and O’Connor (2001) found that lesbians and gays becoming
parents expect more negative reactions (even in a very high measure) from families of origin
and employers than what effectively happens when they become parents.

<H2> Composition of the sample

In our research the sample consists of 25 homosexuals,110 23 women and 2 men living in
Central-Northern Italy,111 living in a total of 17 families. They were interviewed with semi-
structured interviews.112 All the respondents are ethnic Italian and were born in Italy.

The sample is a self-selected sample of people answering to an ad for a research on the

experiences of “homoparental” families with the external world. The ad was published in a
gay magazine in 2006, it appeared on various web sites and was distributed in mailing lists.

In the interviews the respondents were asked about their experiences and the relationship with
their families of origin, with their neighbours, their friends, with the health system, schools,
and workplace. It is possible that a “minority stress” syndrome can be found in the
experiences of homoparental families, because homophobia is widespread and, like racism
and anti-Semitism, internalised.

Women and men, who replied to the ad, were in a relationship with a person of the same sex
at the time of the interviewing (autumn 2006) or they had such a relationship before they
became single. Thus the composition of the families, included in the research, varied very
much. Within the sample there are singles and people who have a same-sex relationship,
ranging from “just started” to ten years of living together. Some couples wanted their own
children, some women raised children on their own, or decided to separate from the biological
father of their children at different ages. The age range goes from the very early stage of
pregnancy to the child’s 14th year. Most children of the lesbian mothers interviewed have a
known father.

110
In the research interviews there were no specific questions asked about the self-definition of respondents’
identity. I use the term “homosexual” to include both, gay men and lesbian women.
111
Just one woman lived abroad, but was born in Central Italy.
112
Excerpts from interviews, thematically presented, can be read in Italian on www.danieladanna.it, under the
title Fonti della ricerca sulle famiglie omogenitoriali, edited by Daniela Danna.

91
Six families had children that were born in a previous marriage, among which there is the gay
couple interviewed, with a daughter growing up with the father’s partner as the “third parent”.
Nine families have children born to a lesbian couple, and three of them have since separated,
among which are the mothers of a child who had been adopted abroad by her foreign partner.
A child has been conceived in a heterosexual union but has grown up with the mother and her
partner (in this case the father is the “third parent”), and another child has grown up without
the full participation in parenting by the mother’s partner. The women with planned families
are younger and more urban than those with reconstructed families. We distinguish between
“reconstructed families”, where the different-sex parents separated and one of them entered
into a same-sex family, and “planned families”, where the mother(s) were in a lesbian
relationship.

The geographic composition of the sample was the following: four families lived in big cities
(in Rome or Milan); three in middle-sized cities, seven in small towns, two in the countryside,
and one abroad.

In previous research, a decade ago, I interviewed 52 lesbian mothers from all over Italy
(Danna 1998). The sample was composed in a very different way. Women were older, in
many cases born in the South and having migrated to the North of Italy. Nearly all women
decided to be in a relationship with another woman after having had children within a
heterosexual union, while in the present research this group has become a minority.

The time of “arrival” into a lesbian relationship has shortened compared to ten years ago.
Nowadays women living even in small places, or growing up and living in a very
traditionalist environment, are able to discover their homosexuality in the context of a more
positive light due to mass media reporting on homosexuality and due to the internet. The latter
gives the possibility of immediate contact with other homosexuals: “The thing
[homosexuality] did not have the terrible aspect that my environment and culture had instilled
me, so I had the possibility of trying to make contacts with people who could share this kind
of experience.” (Immacolata, 45)113

113
All the names of the respondents are changed.

92
The age of children living with these families varied from 9 months to 18 years, with a mean
age of about 7 years. Children born into a lesbian relationship were much younger than those
born in a previous heterosexual relationship, and their age varied between 9 months and 7
years. There has been one formal interview and some informal exchanges of opinions with the
children themselves.
In the interviews we touched upon issues such as the relationship of each parent with their
families of origin, neighbors, medical staff, schools, work and friends. We have also
discussed how the parents talk to their children about homosexuality, and if the children are
aware that their parents are homosexual. According to previous (foreign) research findings
lesbian mothers feel more at ease than heterosexual mothers to talk with their children about
sex and are more tolerant towards manifestations of their children’s sexual orientation,
whatever it be (Tasker, Golombok 1997; Golombok 2000).

As the number of gay fathers in the sample is very small no gender comparison is possible.
The small number of gay fathers reflects the low number of fathers that ask for shared or
exclusive custody. The two men interviewed were a couple, one had shared custody of his
daughter.

In most thematic sections I have not analysed the results according to the different ways of
having become a parent: self-insemination, medically assisted insemination, previous
marriages, adoption. The reason for that is that this variable is not particularly important for
the object of this study, which explores stigmatisation and discrimination.

<H2> Results

<H3> Self-presentation strategies

Homosexuals belong to a minority that is not always immediately visible and recognisable.
The possibility of “passing” as a heterosexual is always open: the decision of becoming
visible as a gay or a lesbian (parent) is taken in very conscious way, and in many situations
invisibility can be judged as a better strategy, even for women who are otherwise known as
lesbians. It is easy to accept the presumption of heterosexuality that people have.114

114
Of course multiple diversities are possible, but they were not present in my sample.

93
Do the respondents introduce their family in its real composition, as lesbian and gay parents,
especially in the reconstructed families where the same-sex partner is a “third parent”? Does a
true self-presentation happen in every circumstance? Answers to these questions are important
in order to examine the reactions of various environments to the diversity of the homoparental
families. The research showed that the distinction between the nine “planned families” and
the six “reconstructed families” (which includes the family with the gay fathers) is important
as it influences the strategies of self-presentation. Furthermore this distinction also reflect the
age differences and the differences in the place of birth (urban/rural).

Only very few respondents never talk about their homosexuality to anyone. However the
research showed that the mothers and their partners in reconstructed families are more reticent
in introducing their family as “homoparental”. In planned families the visibility is bigger,
especially with the extended family and at the workplace. In casual social interactions, both
groups do not generally care about presenting their true family composition, and do not
correct the “heterosexuality presumption”. The effectiveness of this strategy is nevertheless
doubted by a couple of new mothers who still practice it, but intend to come out more
frequently. They do not want their kids to have a “double life”: “Now that we have kids we
must be more courageous” (Filippa, 37). But they don’t plan to be out in every circumstance.
“There are some people with whom I am not sure that this kind of communication could be
helpful, so I am embarrassed, torn between the feeling that I need to come out and the need to
protect my kids” (Marta, 44).

Most respondents expressed a strong rejection of a self-presentation as “lesbica” (lesbian): “I

certainly do not introduce myself like that: ‘Good morning, I am a lesbian.’” (Assunta, 37).
On the other hand, they reported talking with ease about the relationship with their partner.
The solution they have employed was not to use the word “lesbica”, which reflects a social
stigma (though it is used in the lesbian community), but rather to correct the presumption of
heterosexuality by saying “la mia compagna” (“my partner”, feminine in Italian): “It always
comes naturally, when you speak you say la mia compagna instead of il mio compagno, there
is no further need to declare it” (Gina, 40). “I am not going around putting it on a flag, but I
do not hide it either” (Veronica, 42).
Others talked about some kind of a training that one needs in order to get used to presenting
the same-sex relationship as something natural. The training is needed in order to unlearn the

94
internalized homophobia. “What I present as natural, is accepted as such also by the others”
(Renzo, 36).

<H3> Reactions to coming out

Positive reactions to coming out were prevalent. Respondents are conscious that people can
show a façade of social convenience, under which they do not truly accept homoparental
families:
“Probably there is an answer which is collective, cultural, ideological, then there is an answer based on
the personal relationship, which is different. I would not be surprised if the same people who attend our
centre, our friends, if asked by a journalist about what they think about homosexual families, would
doubt our capacity to be good parents, or they would say that this is not a good thing. Because the levels
are different: on one level there is the relationship, the contact, and the certainty that this person is a
friend, and you know that she is behaving well. This is something different from the abstract
‘homosexual family’” (Angelica, 38).

This diffused (perhaps) façade of social acceptance is nevertheless enough to guarantee a

quiet life: no respondents reported serious episodes of discrimination. The worst thing
reported in our research was one case of aggression (which will be discussed in detail later)
and a couple of incidents which included mocking by peers during early adolescence: “He
was targeted by his cousins because the story of the mother together with another woman had
come out, and he was mocked” (Immacolata, 45). Discomfort was expressed about two
children: a boy in primary school is at unease because he does not know his father, and a
teenage girl (personally interviewed) felt isolated because she could not freely talk about her
family with her peers, judging them too prejudiced and aggressive against all forms of
diversity.

<H3> What is homosexuality?

Nearly all the respondents talked about homosexuality to their children, but not everyone
talked about homophobia, probably since it is difficult to talk about dangers and bad
experiences. Contrary to expectations, all the respondents – not only those with a longer
history of same-sex relationships – felt at ease with answering the questions about
homosexuality that children sooner or later ask in different forms: what is the meaning of the
word that they have heard for the first time (lesbian, gay, homosexual …), why are there

95
gender-non-conforming people (for example, the singer Elton John dressing as a woman), if
only a man and a woman can get married or two women or two men can, too, and so on.

Nearly all respondents reported having presented homosexuality in a positive light. Especially
in the reconstructed families, where children are older, the positive consideration of
homosexuality sometimes clashed with the prejudice, expressed by the separated father.

In the interviews the respondents expressed a strongly felt dilemma how to convey to children
the reality of homophobia:
“We were aware that the only way to help her was to show her our homosexuality in a positive way.
Sooner or later, there will be somebody who’ll call her the daughter of a rotto in culo [an offensive
Italian term for gay man], and we wanted to come to that moment knowing that she would have all the
elements to face the thing. We did not say anything to her, because to talk about it was to mark it as an
abnormality. We lived the thing in front of her without hiding, and leaving her the time to absorb it”
(Carmelo, 36).

In the case of a woman having a “long coming out” in the place where she lived as a
heterosexual married woman, the dilemma was especially difficult, as it was connected with
what the couple would say or hide to the outside world: “How can my son introduce my
partner to the outside world, if I don’t do it? He lives not really like a double life … but he has
two realities” (Immacolata, 45).

Some of these children became defenders of homosexuality, fighters against homophobia:

three of them defended schoolmates from accusations of being effeminate, six had a positive
stance towards homosexuals, in one family the mothers did not know. Only a boy, growing up
with two women and recognised by the father when he was three years old, had a negative
stance about homosexuality at the time of the interview (10 years old, more details later). In
five families children were too small to have a proper judgment on the question.

<H3>The family of origin

The respondents reported a great variety of experiences – from very problematic to idyllic –
about their relationship with the family of origin. However this issue is neither particularly
meaningful nor important, since the respondents do not depend on the family of origin
anymore, and in cases of contrasts a certain modus vivendi can be established over time.

96
Relationships with the family of origin can be modified by births of grandchildren/nephews
both in a positive and in a negative way. The positive stories were prevalent: the grandfathers
and grandmothers helped out with the children, who also spent holidays and other meaningful
moments with their in-laws.

Eight families had a good relationship with their families of origin: the parents of the mothers
recognised the family as such. Three families were in a rather good relationship; in one case
the relationship was bad, and the birth of a child had worsened it; in three cases the
respondents could not answer the question (in one the parents had passed away); in two cases
relationships were different depending on the particular member of the family of origin; in
one case the relationship improved with the birth of a child.

<H3>The neighbours

The reported reactions from neighbours were positive or indifferent. As written above, the
strategies of self-presentation varied: many left it to the imagination and intelligence of their
neighbours to figure out that they are lesbians with children. The neighbours’ children are
generally positively impressed by seeing a family of two mothers. Also heterosexual mothers
befriended with the respondents expressed positive judgments, noticing the advantages of a
situation where two women share the care work: “They envy us, and they tell us: ‘My
husband, that coglione [Italian derogatory word for a stupid person], is always stuck to the
sofa’” (Giannina, 50); “We are receiving all the vents of the heterosexual mothers” (Elena,
48).

Interestingly enough the most frequently reported atmosphere in small villages was a
welcoming one, despite the presumption that people in rural areas hold more negative
attitudes towards homosexuals than in the anonymity of big cities:
“The three of us, we always went out and many times we took our daughters by the hand. The province
can give you these unexpected gifts … I am convinced that it is like that because these small centres
have a centuries-long habit of self-protection, and they encompass everything that comes from the
outside” (Carmelo, 36).

The sense of common belonging to the local dimension, the reciprocal acknowledgement

97
among inhabitants of the same small place, often with family ties, seems stronger than
homophobia.
Other interviewed women, living in a working class neighborhood of a big town, had a
painful notion of their diversity, and how dangerous it was to express it:

“Yes, you live in freedom, but some times you are very restrained, there are many consequences, you
cannot be free as you like. We are free at home, even in front of him [the son] if we want to hug, we do
not hide (respecting our intimacy). At the campsite [which was attended by members of the extended
family and neighbours] I must always pay attention to how I position myself: not to close to her… I do
not feel free” (Nicoletta, 30).

On the other hand, a working class neighborhood of another big city positively surprised one
of the women interviewed, who was also one of the very first to have made recourse to
artificial insemination:
“I remember how anxious I was going out of our apartment the day when the belly began to show. We
lived in a housing project with 120 apartments and were befriended with one or two people, and did not
get along very well with the others, and nobody knew it, maybe just this friend of ours. I was in anguish
about what would happen, because it was not just a thing between us anymore, it was becoming a social
thing, and I must say that everything went very well, they welcomed us” (Carola, 39).

<H3>Doctors and other medical personnel

Examining the relationships in this area is more pertinent to couples who decided to have kids
together. The response of sanitary staff to the self-presentation of two mothers has always
been positive. Apart from the refusal of a gynecologist to follow the pregnancy of a couple
obtained with artificial insemination abroad, all the other gynecologists and nurses,
obstetricians, pediatricians that the respondents have professionally met, in most cases did not
raise an eyebrow at the self-presentation of the two mothers. One nurse was sincerely sorry
for not being able to put both names on the birth certificate of the child.

Among families with children born into the lesbian couple, nearly all were treated as couples,
with the partner of the woman in labour reportedly treated the same way as fathers would be –
except from one episode, which occurred also due to the fact that the same-sex relationship
had not been presented to the medical staff: “I was hurt by the fact that the obstetricians came
out with the twins, and asked: ‘Who is the father? We are giving them to the father’, and I told

98
them ‘You can give them to me’. ‘No.’ And they kept them, they only showed them to all the
members of the family” (Marta, 37).

<H3>Psychologists

Maybe it is just a coincidence, but the only two occasions in the interviews when meetings
with psychologists were mentioned were both problematic. The children involved were from
two different families – both were teenagers born into previous marriage. A school
psychologist was contacted by a 16 year old girl herself for a problem not related to her
family situation: “Among all the things he asked me, there was the composition of my family,
and I saw he was struck. After an hour of counselling he said that my family was sick, that I
was a monster, no surprise I was in an existential crisis” (Teresa, 18). The same psychologist
also talked in this girl’s class about the supposed bad sides of homoparental families. In
another case, a girl, who is, according to her parents, somewhat shy, was labelled as
problematic, just at the time when the school psychologist and teachers were informed about
her family situation.

<H3>Schools

The distinction between the reconstructed and planned families turned out to be very
meaningful in the context of schools: all the co-mothers in planned families have presented
themselves as homoparental families, starting with day nursery and at all other levels of
schooling attended by their children, except for one woman who presents herself in public as
a friend of the mother, with whom she is raising up a son since he was born (but he was
conceived in a previous heterosexual union). All the women from the reconstructed families
did not present themselves as homoparental family to the school authorities.

Lesbian mothers in planned families want to “illuminate” the teachers, they expect them not
to have previous experience with this kind of situation: “It is important that in the moment
when my child says something like ‘My friend has two mothers’, the teacher doesn’t get
embarrassed. He knows perfectly well that he is right, he knows many children with two
mothers” (Mimma, 37).

Reactions were not bad in this area either, even if the good intentions of the teachers to

99
include in their teaching different family situations, clashed with the school programmes of
the Ministry of Education, presenting “the family” in a very normative way: there are always
two parents, male and female, four grandparents, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters – who
can or cannot be present in the daily experiences of the children.

<H3>Working places

At work, the great majority of mothers and fathers were open on the subject of their family
situation. Everyone at work knew about their same-sex relationship and about their children,
except for the three cases where not everybody at work knew it, and five cases where no
colleague knew about it. Among these are two women who have spent together twenty years
of parenting, and two who have shared four years of parenting.

In the context of workplace those who have talked about their homosexuality did not
encounter negative reactions: “I told my colleagues: ‘Look, I am like that’. One confessed to
me that he suspected it” (Grazia, 47). Sometimes the issue was not openly talked about: “I
knew that everyone knew, but nobody ever asked. It is a situation that I am a bit sorry about,
you dodge somehow. You do not ask, I do not tell. They knew, when I had a partner they
talked in the plural voi [“you”, having no gender], and after the kid was born, even more so”
(Mimma, 37). The condition of work precariousness pushes towards reticence:
“In my working place, they do not know it. I have a temporary contract, I change workplace often. I
tend to be open, I talk about this other person in my life. It is the person I am living with, she is my
partner for 10 years. You talk, but you limit yourself”. (Marta, 44)

<H3>Friends

People we befriend are generally supportive of our choices. Sometimes in the friends’ group
subtly discriminatory stances can be discovered:
“Nearly always we have had positive stuff [reactions], but I am very cautious, there are many levels
where you can say that you are more or less satisfied. This couple of our friends, husband and wife,
both very kind, they adore us, love us, defend us and all, told us that the fact that we had a daughter did
not give them any problem, absolutely zero, if we just did not make her become a lesbian!” (Carmelo,
36)

Even on the gay and lesbian scene, it must not be taken for granted that the choice to become

100
parents would be met favourably:
“Lesbians are getting used to parenthood. Ten years ago if you got into a lesbian bar with kids, they’d
take a hard look.” (Simona, 41)

“Sometimes I find more openness in some heterosexual couples than in homosexuals. I don’t know,
sometimes there is an interior fear… I bring my experience of suffering and I think that you are carrying
the same thing and that you’ll pass it on…” (Renzo, 36)

“We are still stuck with objections of this kind ‘if the son of two lesbians must learn how to shave
himself, how can he learn?’. Sometimes I have to go back to the abc with gay people, not with
heterosexuals.” (Carmelo, 36)

<H3>Discrimination of children

Only for a few children the parents reported problems, which included the sense of being
different for not having a father, being mocked by peers about the family situation, and the
sense of isolation for not being able to openly talk about their family (the latter occurred in the
context of a reconstructed family).

The serious discriminatory episode that we have briefly mentioned earlier, was a physical
attack on the son of a separated mother. However the child soon got over this violent episode.
Moreover, he did not surrender to the attack, as the kid himself proudly affirmed. His mother
recalls:
“Many people whom I thought to be my friends turned away [when I got separated from my husband].
Well, you expect it for yourself, you are prepared. But my son, too, has been pointed at by cousins,
mocked because people knew the story of the mother together with another woman. This story did not
come out at school, nor here where he lives. It came out in a campsite where we had been going for
years when I was together with his father. In this campsite there are members of my ex-husband’s
family, and when the story came out, they thought of telling it to most people on the campsite, not
thinking about possible consequences for him. I did not worry about me, because if somebody came to
say: ‘You left your husband because you are a lesbian’ I would have answered that this is my private
life and, moreover, it is true. The bad consequences came for him, and he still has some, because the
first year this story came out, some children who had learnt from their parents that his mother was a
lesbian put him in a circle and threw stones at him, calling him names, telling him ‘son of a lesbian’. I
saw him coming back to the camper all dirty and crying. ‘What did you do?’, and he told me about
these ‘friends’ who insulted him.
I scolded those kids: don’t you ever dare anymore! (I just talked with the kids, not with the parents.)
Then I told him: ‘We do as you please. If you don’t want, we do not come here anymore’, even if I

101
 thought that it was like fleeing. But I would have done it for him. Unexpectedly he told me: ‘I want to
stay, I want to stay on’. He did not have many friends there, he thought that he did not want to run
away.
This has happened 2-3 years ago, and with all this he keeps on going to the campsite and some people
are still telling him… and he answers: ‘Mind your own business, think about your mother and your
father, maybe he is a cuckold’. He wanted to come back. This surprised me because you expect that a
kid would go away, that he would choose the easy path, but he decided to stay. […] This year someone
attacked him again. I think it is not as easy as living on a happy island …” (Immacolata, 45).

The other very problematic case that emerged from the interviews is the negative stance
towards homosexuality of a 10 years old child. This is how his biological mother describes
the problem:

“It has come out that [he believes] we are not together, and if we were this would disturb him.
I never told him this openly, but I never denied it either, I left open the possibility of things being in this
way, and told him that, if it were so, it wouldn’t be a bad thing. Yes, I did talk to him about
homosexuality, but he evades the issue. He says: ‘You are married with dad’ ‘No, I have never been
married to your dad, I was with Gigliola. I love Gigliola, I told you already’. And at this point, he shuts
up” (Lucia, 40).

In general, as well as in defining parenting roles, reconstructed families encounter more

problems than planned families. In reconstructed families the partner of the mother or father
acts as a ”third parent”, and tends to hide her parenting role – in this case probably conveying
a negative judgment of homosexuality to the child.

Another important problem is to explain clearly what homophobia is, in order to prepare the
child to eventual negative reactions. Sometimes this preparation is not made, and the risk is an
emotive impact which is seriously negative at the moment of discovering that the same
relationship which at home is lived as normal and laden with positive values, can be a reason
for mocking in the outside world.

<H2>Conclusion

According to the experiences of parents surveyed in our research the argument that children
coming from homoparental families, and the homoparental families themselves, suffer
stigmatisation everyday proves to be a myth. Even the lighter concept of discrimination does

102
not really seem to apply to the everyday life of homoparental families in terms of social
interactions. The legal framework for them remains nevertheless nonexistent: in Italy there is
still no possibility for legal recognition of two mothers, as necessary as it is for the well-being
of the children – but the discrimination is institutional, not social, because in daily life they do
get recognised and respected.
Taken into account the different degree of openness about being homosexual, the environment
in which the respondents live has shown itself to be either favourable or indifferent to their
choices, both in rural and urban contexts. This confirms the earlier research findings by
Danna (1998) about the climate of tolerance for lesbians with children. Since procreation is
seen as normal in heterosexual environments, it probably helps homoparental families in
building social ties. In fact many respondents felt the homosexual environment, where
procreation is not normal, to be less supportive than the heterosexual (consistent with findings
of Hare 1994, Gartrell et al. 1999).

The most problematic areas of social interaction of the homoparental families interviewed
were the relationship with psychologists working in schools (however given the very low
number (two) of such cases in our sample this can be only a provisional conclusion) and the
relationship with peers, but only in the teenage years. This is consistent with research in other
countries (see Speziale and Gopalakrishna 2004 for mental health professionals, and, among
others, Ray and Gregory 2001, Clarke et al. 2004 for peer relationships), showing also the
resilience of these children, who exhibit no more internalising and externalising behavioural
problems than children of heterosexual couples (Flaks et al. 1995, Wainright and Patterson
2006), though some study reports lower self-esteem (Gershon et al.1999) and some do not
(see Jansen in this volume).

In relation to the minority stress, my qualitative data correspond with the low level of
minority stress measured with quantitative research by Bos, van Balen and van den Boom in
the Netherlands. They have interviewed a sample of one hundred lesbian families and one
hundred heterosexual families, both groups having had children with artificial insemination.
The exploration of the Dutch researchers of minority stress in lesbian families gave the
following results:

“The lesbian mothers in this sample generally reported low levels of rejection, perceived stigma, and
internalized homophobia. In spite of the low levels of minority stress, higher levels of rejection were, as

103
 expected, associated with more sense of parental stress and more sense to justify the quality of the
parent–child relationship. Having negative assumptions about straight people’s attitudes toward
homosexuality, and having higher levels of internalized homophobia, were also associated with more
parental justification. Levels of rejection were associated with more emotional/behavioural problems in
children” (Bos et al. 2004b, 10).

In the present study, conducted with qualitative methods, I could not establish precise
correlations, but the experiences gathered bring us to the analogous conclusion that the level
of minority stress, as defined only by the social variables of rejection/social isolation and
stigmatisation (taking aside the psychological variable of internalised homophobia) is low.
This result allows us to define the stigmatisation of homoparental families as a social “myth”.

In the respondents’ experience there is a high level of acceptance of diversity from those
people who have personal acquaintance with gays and lesbians. We must bear in mind
though, that not all the respondents lived in a situation of complete openness about their
homoparental family, but mostly they selected the people in whom to confide about their
family situation, generally avoiding to do so in casual social contacts, taking into account the
Italian cultural climate tinged with homophobia.

<H2>References

Anderssen, N., C. Amilie, and E. A. Ytteroy. 2002. Outcomes for children with lesbian or gay
parents: A review of studies from 1978–2000. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 43(4):
335–351.

Bos, H. M. W., F. van Balen, and D. C. van den Boom. 2004a. Experience of parenthood,
couple relationship, social support, and child-rearing goals in planned lesbian mother families.
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 45(4): 755–764.

–––. 2004b. Minority stress, experience of parenthood and child adjustment in lesbian
families. Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology 22(4): 1–14.

Buzzi, C., A. Cavalli, and A. de Lillo, eds. 2002. Giovani del nuovo secolo. Quinto rapporto
IARD sulla condizione giovanile in Italia. Bologna: Il Mulino.

–––. 2007. Rapporto giovani. Sesta indagine dell’Istituto IARD sulla condizione giovanile in
Italia. Bologna: Il Mulino.

Cesareo, V. 1995. La religiosità degli italiani. Bologna: Il Mulino.

104
Clarke, V., C. Kitzinger, and J. Potter. 2004. Kids Are Just Cruel Anyway: Lesbian and Gay
Parents' Talk about Homophobic Bullying. British Journal of Social Psychology 43(4): 531–
550.

Danna, D. 1998. Io ho una bella figlia: Le madri lesbiche raccontano. Forlì: Zoe.

Eurobarometer 66. 2006. Public Opinion in The European Union.

<http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/eb/eb66/eb66_highlights_en.pdf> (29 October
2011).

Flaks, D. K., I. Ficher, F. Masterpasqua, and G. Joseph. 1995. Lesbians choosing motherhood:
A comparative study of lesbian and heterosexual parents and their children. Developmental
Psychology 31(1):104–114.

Gallup. 2003. Homosexual marriages and child adoption by homosexual couples: Is the public
ready? Survey on homosexuality across Europe.
<http://www.eosgallupeurope.com/homo/index.html> (29 October 2011).

Gartrell, N., A. Banks, J. Hamilton, N. Reed, H. Bishop, and C. Rodas. 1999. The national
lesbian family study: 2. Interviews with mothers of toddlers. American Journal of American
Orthopsychiatric Association 69(3): 362–369.

Gershon, T. D., J. M. Tschann, and J. M. Jemerin. 1999. Stigmatization, self-esteem, and

coping among adolescent children of lesbian mothers. Journal of Adolescent Health 24(6):
437–445.

Golombok, S., A. Spencer, and M. Rutter. 1983. Children in lesbian and single-parent
households: Psychosexual and psychiatric appraisal. Journal of Child Psychology and
Psychiatry 24(4): 551–572.

Golombok, S. 2000. Parenting: What really counts? London: Routledge.

Graglia, M. 2002. Le rappresentazioni dell’identità gay e lesbica negli psicoterapeuti. Rivista

di Sessuologia 26(1–2): 145–154.

Hare, J. 1994. Concerns and issues faced by families headed by lesbian couples. Families in
Society. The Journal of Contemporary Human Services 75(1): 27–35.

Hequembourg, A. L., and M. P. Farrell. 1999. Lesbian motherhood: Negotiating marginal-

mainstream identities. Gender & Society 13(4): 540–557.

Johnson, S. M., and E. O'Connor. 2001. The National Gay and Lesbian Family Study. APA
Workshop 2: Lesbian and Gay Parents. <www.mindfully.org/Reform/Gay-Lesbian-Family-
Study.htm> (15 September 2011).

McNair, R. 2004. Outcomes for children born of A.R.T. in a diverse range of families.
Melbourne: Victorian Law Reforms Commission.
<http://www.lawreform.vic.gov.au/wps/wcm/connect/da394080404a0d839919fbf5f2791d4a/
mcnair+final+version.pdf?mod=ajperes> (30 November 2010).

105
Meyer, I. H. 1995. Minority stress and mental health in gay men. Journal of health and social
behaviour. 36(1): 38–56.
<http://www.chssp.columbia.edu/events/ms/year4/pdf/sh_Meyer%20IH.pdf> (30 November
2010).

Patterson, C. J. 1995. Summary of research findings. <www.apa.org/pi/parent.html> (20

September 2010).

Ray, V., and R. Gregory. 2001. School experiences of the children of lesbian and gay parents.
Family matters. (59): 28–34.

Rivers, I., V. P. Poteat, and N. Noret. 2007. Victimization, social support, and psychosocial
functioning among children of same-sex and opposite-sex couples in the United Kingdom.
<http://dspace.brunel.ac.uk/bitstream/2438/2637/1/Developmental%20Psychology.pdf> (30
November 2011).

Speziale, B. and V. Gopalakrishna. 2004. Social support and functioning of nuclear families
headed by lesbian couples. Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work 19(2): 174–184.

Tasker F. L., and S. Golombok. 1997. Growing Up in a Lesbian Family. London: Guilford
Press.

Trappolin, L. 2009. Quanto e come si parla oggi di omogenitorialità in Italia? In Crescere in

famiglie omogenitoriali, eds. C. Cavina and D. Danna, 117–128. Milano: Franco Angeli.

Wainright, J. L., and C. J. Patterson. 2006. Brief report: Delinquency, victimization and
substance use among adolescents with female same-sex parents. Journal of Family
Psychology, 20(3): 526–530.

106
Martine Gross

<H1> Grandparenting in French lesbian and gay families115

Since November 1999 the “Pacte civil de solidarité” (PACS) has given legal recognition to
same-sex couples in France. The law was drafted sometimes in reference, sometimes in
opposition to the institution of marriage. It is a contract between two persons, regardless of
their gender, for managing their community life. In 2007 the PACS was amended in order to
grant the same economic rights and obligations as marriage, except the widow’s pension.
However PACS does not address any issues related to children and family (Rault 2005;
Courduries 2008).

In France same-sex partners are not allowed to marry and cannot jointly adopt children – a
right, which is granted only to married heterosexual couples. A person, however, may adopt a
child as a single parent, but coming out as a gay or lesbian single parent would most probably
demolish any chance of adoption despite the fact that the law does not explicitly exclude
single gays and lesbians from adoption. Furthermore access to medically assisted
reproduction is limited only to heterosexual couples who cannot conceive, and can produce
proof which shows that they have been living together for at least two years. Single women
and same-sex couples, who have no access to reproductive technology in France, have to
travel abroad. Surrogacy is also strictly forbidden by French law, which forces both
heterosexual and same-sex couples to go abroad where surrogacy is legal.

Despite all these restrictions, a legal parent (biological or adoptive) may ask a court to share
parental responsibility with another person (regardless of gender). The court has to decide in
the best interest of the child. If the judge believes that lesbian or gay families are not good for
the child, (s)he can refuse the application from the couple to share parental responsibilities.
Furthermore if parental responsibility is granted, the right lasts only until the child’s 18th
birthday. Afterwards the legal parent can cancel sharing at any time, which means that the
child has no legal way to enter into his “not legal” parent lineage.

115
This text is to a large extent based on a previous article published in French: Gross, M. 2009. Grandparentalité en
contexte homoparental (Grandparenting in a gay or lesbian parenting context). Revue des sciences sociales 37(41): 120–129.

107
Regardless of all the legal barriers for a growing number of people in France, being gay or
lesbian is no longer incompatible with raising children116 – but how do (future) grandparents
react to these parental projects? When parents are told about their child’s homosexuality, they
often take it for granted that they will never have grandchildren, especially if they have only
one child. The belief that the lineage, or at least one of its branches, is to come to an end, is
challenged when a homosexual child announces that he or she is on the way to start a family.
When future grandparents find themselves in this unexpected situation, the parents of a
lesbian daughter or of a gay son are led to reconsider their previous views of a childless
homosexuality.

In this paper focussing on social grandparenting in same-sex families I will explore the
following questions: (1) Do the parents of a gay son react in the same way to the new same-
sex family as the parents of a lesbian daughter? (2) Does the method chosen to start a gay or
lesbian family, i.e. adoption, artificial insemination, surrogacy or a co-parenting arrangement
have an influence on grandparents’ understanding of their new role as grandparents? (3) Is the
grandparental position weakened by the absence of legal recognition of the parental status of a
son or a daughter?

<H2> Grandparents between biology and gender

In the context of the social and psychological roles of the grandparents in families, research in
developmental psychology and family sociology has been primarily focusing on inter-
generational bonds of heterosexual families. Developmental psychology addresses issues such
as the influence of grandparents on the development and the socialisation of children, the
interactions of grandparents with their children, the three generations’ perceptions of the role
and place of grandparents, the factors determining the frequency of contacts etc. (Leblond de
Brumath and Julien, 2001). Family sociology, on the other hand, considered issues such as
their place and role in the family, the role of grandparents in the context of divorce etc.
Family sociology has also highlighted that the diversity of family models in contemporary
Western societies, the processes of individualisation and secularisation and the erosion of the
normative heterosexual marriage as the only context in which children can be raised

116
According to recent French public opinion findings about homosexuality, 60% of female and 49% of male
respondents believed that homosexuality is a sexual orientation just like any other (Bajos and Beltzer 2008).

108
contributed to the emergence of new functions of grandparents (Schneider et al. 2005; Attias-
Donfut and Segalen 2007).

Research in developmental psychology and family sociology outlined the biological bond and
the gender of the parent as two important parameters of the intergenerational relationships:. In
step-families non-biological grandparents often offer their grandchildren less support than
biological grandparents (Johnson 1992; Attias-Donfut and Segalen 2007; Schneider 2005).
Step-families share some common points with gay and lesbian families. In these families the
step-parent is actually a social parent, who is not related biologically and often also not
legally linked with the children in the family. In step-families as well as in lesbian and gay
families, “additional grandparents” come into the grandchildren’s world (Neyrand 2005). In
such family structures the emotional, biological and legal ties do not necessarily coincide; or
in other words: the emotional, biological and legal bonds are not incarnated into the same two
persons.

Similarly to research on step-families, the studies on the intergenerational bonds in lesbian

families found the importance of the biological bond. A study comparing extended family and
friendship relations of children conceived by donor insemination, including 55 families
headed by lesbian parents and 25 headed by heterosexual parents, showed that the frequency
of contacts between children and grandparents was similar both in same-sex and heterosexual
families, however children had a stronger relationship with biological grandparents regardless
of the parental sexual orientation (Fulcher et al. 2002). One possible explanation for this lays
in the cultural function of the biological bond; it could be that grandparents put less effort into
spending time with their non-biological grandchildren as they do not see them as fully their
own. It seems that biological relatedness plays a crucial role in constructing family
relationships. Social representations grant more “legitimacy” to biological bonds than to
elective ones. In this sense the heterosexual nuclear family, consisting of two biological
parents, remains a “reference point” for grandparents. Their feeling of “legitimacy” (that is, I
am the true grandparent of the child) depends on how far away they are from the bio-conjugal
model of the family.

Besides the role of the “biological bond”, gender also proved to be an important factor in
grandparenting. According to previous research findings maternal grandparents offer more
care for their grandchildren compared with paternal grandparents even if they are biologically

109
connected to their grandchildren (Julien et al. 2005). Women more often establish close
relationships with their parents, and consequently trying to invest more in creating a “lineal
bridge” between their children and children’s grandparents, potentially leading to a
“matrilineal advantage” in the grandchild-grandparent relations (Chan and Elder 2000).
Furthermore if parents separate paternal grandparents are more frequently isolated from their
grandchildren. In families with a son and a daughter where both separated from their
respective spouses, grandparents are more likely to keep in touch with children born to their
daughter than with those born to their son (Attias-Donfut and Segalen 2007). Research also
shows that the parents of the non custodian relative (generally paternal grandparents) meet
their grandchildren less often than the parents of the custodian parent (maternal grandparents).
The fact that grandchildren see maternal grandparents more frequently than paternal
grandparents is also true in nuclear families where parents have not divorced (Schneider
2005).

Besides the biological bond and the role of the gender, the quality of the relationship between
parents and their children can also significantly influence the relationship between
grandparents and their grandchildren (Patterson 1998). As homosexuality can sometimes
cause rejection or conflicts between parents and children, consequently a smaller
grandparental investment can also be expected in a lesbian and gay parenting context.

<H2> Sample and methodology

The empirical base of this chapter consists of two studies conducted in 2005 and 2007–2008.
In 2005 I surveyed 336 members of the French Association of the Gay and Lesbian parents
(APGL): 270 women and 66 men. 66% of women and 55% of men in the sample were
parents, the rest of the respondents wanted to become parents. 93% of all respondents were in
a same-sex relationship. They were for the most part well-educated. 88% had reached a
university level. 31% were living in a rural area or in small towns (fewer than 60 000
inhabitants), 20% in middle-sized towns (from 60 000 to 160 000 inhabitants), 9% in a big
city (more than 400 000), 41% were living in Paris. Most participants (46%) were 35 to 41
years old, 28% were younger than 35, 26% were 42 to 55 years old. One part of a broader
questionnaire included questions about parents’ reactions to respondents’ coming out as gay
or lesbian, the announcement of the parental project and the actual birth of a child. Parents of
respondents were also invited to participate in the research. This parental sub-sample

110
consisted of nine fathers (eight of whom were fathers of lesbian mothers, and one the father of
a gay father), and 21 mothers (16 mothers of lesbian mothers and five mothers of gay fathers).

From September 2007 to February 2008 a second, qualitative part of the research followed.
Semi-structured interviews with gay and lesbian parents were carried out in 31 families, all
but one were living in Paris or its suburbs. The sample consists of 12 paternal families (eight
cases of surrogacy, three cases of co-parentality and a divorced father) and 19 maternal
families (13 cases of artificial insemination with donor, three identified donors, three cases of
co-parentality). In 15 families I met both the parents and the grandparents. The interviews
intended to explore the following issues: reactions to the child’s coming out, grandparents’
“coming out” (having a gay son or a lesbian daughter), level of the acceptance of the same-
sex couple, reactions to a PACS (i.e. decision to get “married”), reactions to the
announcement of a parental project, reactions to the newly born, and what it is like to be a
grandparent (naming, frequency of contacts, baby-sitting, visits, etc.).

<H2> Accepting homosexuality and homoparenting

In a homoparenting context, there are several stages to go through for one’s parents to become
grandparents: first, parents discover sexual orientation of their child and accept it. Secondly,
they share the news with relatives and acquaintances. Thirdly, they might be introduced to the
same-sex partner of their child. Finally they are told about the parental project, which is
sometimes announced by their child’s mentioning the desire to become a parent.

According to the 2005 survey results the acceptance of the parental project depends on the
level of acceptance of each previous stage. The acceptance of the coming-out has a significant
influence on the acceptance of the same-sex partner of the child and the same-sex couple as
such. The stage of the acceptance of the same-sex couple seems to be decisive. It turned out to
be a crucial point for the eventual approval of the homo-parental family. The research showed
that 87% of mothers and 77% of fathers approve of their child’s homo-parental family.
Grandparent participants pointed out that for them it was easier to accept their own child’s
homosexuality once they saw that their child is in a loving and stable same-sex relationship.
Furthermore the birth of a grandchild also helped them in recognising and accepting the same-
sex family, regardless of the possible reservations they might have had beforehand. In fact,
the only grandparents in our sample who still found homosexuality disturbing after their

111
grandchild was born were grandfathers whose son was single or entered the parental project
as an individual (for example, co-parenting with two lesbians) although he was not single at
the time.

Grandfathers’ reservations about homosexuality reflected in the present research are in

accordance with a previous French study (de Busscher 2004) on gays and lesbians aged 29 or
younger, indicating that between 1997 and 2004 the number of parents who knew about their
child’s homosexuality increased as well as the level of acceptance towards their child’s
homosexuality. However, as shown in the table I, fathers tend to have more difficulties in
accepting their child’s homosexuality than mothers.

1997 2004
(N=1383) (N=1195)
Mothers knowing about their child’s 61.6% 69.7%
homosexuality
Fathers knowing about their child’s 45.2% 54.1%
homosexuality
Acceptance of own child’s homosexuality by 75.2% 88.4%
the mother
Acceptance of own child’s homosexuality by 60.5% 81.9%
the father

Table 1: The level of knowledge and acceptance of child’s homosexuality by parents (de Busscher 2004).

In the interviews grandparents reported about a variety of feelings and emotions they
experienced when their own child came out as gay or lesbian. Some, mainly parents of gay
sons, talked about the feelings of pain, suffering, sadness, guilt and disappointment, while
others, mainly parents of lesbian daughters, talked about the fear of social stigma and
difficulties their daughter will have to go through due to her sexual orientation. The small
sample size, of course, does not allow for any broader generalisations, but the majority of the
examined grandparents gave up the idea of becoming grandparents once their child came out
to them as lesbian or gay. Furthermore, as is reflected by the following examples, they
accepted their child’s sexuality primarily in order to keep the child happy and satisfied:

“She was 14 or 15 when she told me about that. She said: ‘Mom, I am attracted to women.’
She was disoriented. I was very close to her and I thought: ‘Well, as long as she is happy …’.
I am tolerant. It was the happiness of my children that mattered.” [Monique (58); mother of a
lesbian daughter Amélie (38)]

112
“That [homosexuality] floored me. It was something I refused. Physically I still cannot
manage to bear it. I took a 180° turn when I saw the relief, the joy on my son’s lighted face
when he told us. I said to myself: ‘It is necessary for you to go his way because he needs it’. It
took me time.” [Etienne (70), father of a gay son Pierre (45)]

“When my son told me about his homosexuality I almost got sick, my husband violently
rejected him. At the beginning the couple [the son and his partner] could not come to our
house. But after several years, my husband said ‘my sons’ when talking about [the son and
his partner]. Things got better with time.” [Elisabeth (62), mother of a gay son Charles (38)]

Especially men’s homosexuality as a problematic and unacceptable notion is somehow

assuaged in the context of a more acceptable loving and stable same-sex couple. The couple
therefore concentrates on other references (for example, happiness, safety, care) rather than
just on homosexual orientation. As parents reported about the importance of their child’s
happiness, such a couple could be seen as a “materialisation” of such happiness. That is why
some male respondents came out to their parents only after they had found a stable partner
and could reassure their parents that they are happily in love. Parents then have a
representation of their child living as a couple: even though the partner is of the same sex, and
even though the couple might have no desire to have a child, it still complies with the
conjugal model, which seems to be an important reference point for parents in accepting their
child’s homosexuality.

Jonas, for example, kept his homosexuality a secret because he first wanted to find “the right
one” before coming out to his parents. He wanted to show them his happiness.

“When I met François I immediately knew that he was the one I had been waiting for, so the
only thing I had to do was to share this good news with my parents. But I knew that I was
going to cause them a great pain as they will probably never be grandparents.” [Jonas (28)]

As already mentioned the acceptance of child’s homosexuality positively affects the attitudes
towards grandchildren and homoparenting. In our sample there were few grandparents who
did not approve of a “homosexual lifestyle” and consequently had no relationship with their
grandchildren.

113
“They liked Madeleine, but when they learned about our relationship, they threw me out and
we have never made up. We moved and when I gave birth to Alice, they did not show up.;
Alice only met them when she turned 18 and the request to meet them was hers.” [Bénédicte
(52)]

“My father does not want me to come [to their house] with my partner. Then, inevitably, I
don’t see my father very often. The twins are 18 months old and they have practically never
seen their grandparents.” [Henri (37)]

When the same-sex couple announces the parental project to their own parents, the news is
not always well received. In some cases the parental project is the ultimate sign that the
couple is stable, which affects parents’ potential hopes that their child’s homosexuality might
just be a passing phase. In these cases the parents never fully accepted their child’s
homosexuality, but the birth of a grandchild might nevertheless have a positive effect. The
grandmother of a lesbian daughter, for example, thought at first that her daughter’s
homosexuality would disappear in time. When she heard about the parental project, she
reacted badly:

“You want to play with a doll? You are insane! […] When they announced that they were
going to the Netherlands to try and have Elsa, they phoned me to say: ‘That’s it, we are
leaving, we are going to see the stork’. I cried. I cried every time [I thought of that], because I
was sad. I did not want this to happen, I had always refused it. […] And then Elsa was born.
My husband and I visited her. When I went back to work, I shone. Everything was changed. I
had seen the little one. A young colleague asked me what had happened to me. I said it all just
like that: ‘I am a granny, my daughter is homosexual and her girlfriend gave birth'”
[Micheline (57), mother of a lesbian daughter Sophie (36)]

In some other cases the parental project might come as shocking news as it destroys the
heteronormative representation of what a family is. A father of Iranian origin, for example,
reacted to such news by saying that it was the worst news he had ever heard. In another case
parents reacted similarly when they heard that their daughter's partner was pregnant. They
said she has done something monstrous and that the grandchild will seek a father forever.
Nevertheless, on the basis of our sample we can say that these two examples are an exception
rather than the rule. The more common reaction of future grandparents is worries. They worry

114
about the position of the grandchild in same-sex family configuration: they worry about the
absence of a father, or, in case of co-parenting arrangements (a gay father and a lesbian
mother), because of the unusual family configuration, in which the child has two homes, or
because of society’s opinion, homophobia and the issues the child will have to face.

The birth of a child modifies the position of everyone in the family: children become parents,
and parents become grandparents. However, as psychoanalysts Ducousso-Lacaze and
Gadechoit (2006) claim, the places’ symbolic permutation system is not always immediate
when a place is vacant. It can also be pointed out that when there is only one parent,
temptation is strong for a grandparent to replace the absent father or the mother.

In same-sex families, the absence of an opposite-sex parent can thus potentially cause a sort
of generational confusion. Some lesbian daughters from our sample, for example, reported
their fathers’ failing to occupy the right place as grandfathers. They disqualified the social
mother’s educational role and appeared as if they were the “right man for the job”. This way
social mothers could easily find themselves in competition with the father of their partner.
“Her father invests himself more than he should because there is no father. I find it hard to
feel legitimate as a social parent.” [Micheline (33)]

<H2> Grandparents’ coming out

With the parental project and the arrival of a child, it is no longer possible for grandparents to
hide the fact that their child is a homosexual and has a same-sex relationship. In fact some
grandparents reported that they found it easier to talk about their child’s homosexuality after
they became grandparents. Some reported announcing the news to all their friends and
relatives, so that all family members were informed about it and there were no surprises at the
next family gathering. Others organised big family reunions with every single cousin to
introduce the couple and the child to the whole family. A christening of the child can also be
the occasion to officially introduce the couple and the homoparental family.

The arrival of this little girl especially increased the circle of people we informed. From the
moment when there is a baby, and that people know your daughter is not married, one has to
… give explanations to friends, to give more information about what the reality is.” [Philippe
(68), father of a lesbian daughter Elisa (32)]

115
For some parents it is hard to explain the “unusual” family situation. A father of a gay son
who got a child together with his partner through surrogacy explained that it was hard for him
to explain this situation as he was faced with double “transgression”: homosexuality and
surrogacy. The father wanted to share his happiness with others, but he had to be careful in
giving out this information.

“One has to try and explain this … there is a grandson, who, in addition, was not born in
France, all that … Our friends already have grandchildren. When it happened to us, we were
crying all over the place and they were asking us: “But are you going to have it? And the
mom, why didn’t she stay?” It is perhaps for that reason that my wife says that the birth of
our grandson was … really, it was necessary for us to make the Roman tortoise go ahead
afterwards.” [Etienne (70), father of a gay son Pierre (45)]

In our sample there were two sets of religious grandparents who were faced with the opposing
views from the Church. As they needed to reconcile the love for their child and their faith,
they started a dialogue with church authorities to protest and to defend their child.
“I even wrote a letter to a bishop who had said some unfortunate words on homoparenting. I
wrote to him that I was scandalised. You have two young women who chose a generous way
and you condemn them. From a materialist point of view, these two young women's lives
would be more comfortable if they had had no child.” [Paul (71), father of a lesbian daughter
Jeanne (37)]

When a child is born in a same-sex family, the grandparents are forced to come out if they
wish to publicly assume the role of a grandparent. The fact that such family situations are new
can be seen also in the lack of appropriate terms. Our respondents reported that grandparents
are struggling with the issue how to address their child’s partner. Some refer to their child’s
partner as “daughter-in-law” or “son-in-law”. The majority, however, tend to use less explicit
terms such as “friend” (“here is my daughter and her friend”), which makes it possible not to
reveal the nature of the homosexual relationship. Sometimes, when they are at ease with the
homosexual couple, parents literally adopt the partner of their child and they called them “my
sons” or “my daughters”. It is a way of eluding the question of conjugality while at the same
time integrating the partner into the family.

116
<H2> Social parenting

Previous studies have shown that sometimes step-grandparents do not feel authorised to
designate themselves as grandparents or to let their grandchild call them grandpa and
grandma: the higher the numbers of parents, the less step-grandparents feel legitimate as
grandparents (Schneider 2005). Our research showed a similar situation in same-sex families.
The “conjugal dimension” of the parental project turned out to be a crucial point:
grandparents who were biologically (and therefore legally) linked to the grandchild had closer
relationships with the child compared to “social grandparents”. Other factors which might
have had effects on such relationships included the level of acceptance of homosexuality by
parents, how important the grandparents found the biological bonds, and the position of their
child in homoparenting. If the (grand)parents’ child helped another same-sex couple to get a
child (for example, a gay son being a donor for a lesbian couple), the parents of the gay son
were less likely to assume the role of the grandparents for the child to be born to the lesbian
couple. In order words: the closer the same-sex family composition is to the heterosexual
nuclear family, the more likely the grandparents are to take on their roles as grandparents. A
good example of this is the case of Philippe and Fabien. They are a same-sex couple, but
Philippe conceived his daughter and raises her in a co-parenting arrangement with a lesbian
woman. He carried out his parental project individually and believes that the biological father
and mother are the unique parents of this child. Moreover Philippe’s homosexuality is not
accepted by his father. In this kind of family structure Fabien’s parents are not at all likely to
be regarded as (social) grandparents to Philippe’s child.

In contrast, when the parental project emanates from the couple, when the couple is perceived
as a parental unit and both partners consider themselves parents, grandparents – regardless of
their biological or social link to the grandchild – are more likely to position themselves in
respect to how the same-sex couple sees itself. If the couple designate themselves as two
mothers or two fathers, the grandparents will have to position themselves by taking these
terms into account, despite the fact that they might find such a designation transgressive. On
the other hand, if the same-sex couple conforms to the traditional representations according to
which one cannot have two moms or two dads, grandparents will not adopt a more
“transgressive” position than that of their own children. Consequently they will not refer to
the grandchild’s biological and social parent as “two moms” or “two dads” – only one partner
(the biological one) will be seen as a parent.

117
These patterns were also present in the findings of the 2005 survey. It was shown that all
grandparents who were biologically or legally linked to their grandchild used the term “our
grandson” or “our granddaughter” in front of outsiders. On the other hand, only 30% of the
parents of the legal mother’s partner and 10% of the parents of the legal father’s partner did
so.

Additionally, the number of parents also has an influence on how grandparents understand
and call their biological or social grandchildren. The 2005 survey showed that when children
are born in a bi-parental context via donor insemination or adoption, more social grandparents
name them as a grandson or a granddaughter than when children are born in a more-than-two-
parents context, such as co-parenting. In some cases of co-parenting biological grandparents
do not “give up” traditional representations and regard the biological father and the biological
mother as a couple, ignoring their respective same-sex partners. This also implies that co-
parenting arrangements make it possible for grandparents to minimise homo-conjugality in
favour of heteroparentality and conformity with the traditional bio-conjugal model.

Françoise and Irène, for example, have a little girl that Irène conceived in a co-parenting
arrangement. The lesbian couple feels that they are both parents and they say that the child
has three parents: both of them and the father. Nevertheless, Françoise’s mother is not really
sure whether she has the right to be called granny, not only because of the absence of the
biological bond, but also because she appears to be some kind of ‘extra’ character – the third
grandparent:

“It is not my real granddaughter. I do not want to usurp a place which is not mine. There are
already Irène’s parents and those of the dad. If there was no dad, perhaps I could be a
grandma, too. Three people, it is too complicated.” [Jeannette (71), mother of a lesbian
daughter Francoise (38)]

The grandparent respondents claimed that for grandparents to feel completely “legitimate” in
a social grandparent position depends on how the same-sex parents of the child position
themselves with regard to the heteronormative expectations of the nuclear family. If parents
do not position themselves as parents, grandparents cannot assume their role. Marie’s mother,
for example, is not certain whether she is a grandmother or not. She has a photograph of her

118
lesbian daughter and her partner and their child displayed on a table. She refers to this child as
“like a granddaughter”, but she wonders whether she has the right to be called Granny since
her daughter does not want to be called Mum.

As parents and grandparents need names to refer to each other, they come up with different
solutions. The social parent is often called “the second mother” or “the second father” as is
the case with Pierre and Didier, who have been together for 15 years and have had a child via
surrogacy. Didier’s parents regard Pierre as a second father and Pierre’s mother as a
grandmother.

“I regard my son's companion as a second father. Before the child’s birth, he was rather like
another son. I have much affection for him. I think that he looks after him [my son] very
well… From time to time I even happen to say that the child resembles him, although I know
very well that it cannot be. […] With the mother of our son’s companion, we have a very close
relationship. I wondered how things would go when he [Pierre and Didier’s child] meets her
as he is not her real grandson, but on the contrary she goes mad when the little one comes
and visits her […]The mother of our son’s companion is definitely the grandmother of our
grandson.” [Elisa (68), mother of a gay son Didier (42)]

For Didier’s father, a sexual relationship with a mother brings a greater legitimacy for that
person to be called a father. However, as Didier’s child was born via surrogacy and there was
no sexual relationship with that woman, the absence of such a relation enables him to define
Pierre as a father as much as Didier.

“For my grandson, I give my son’s companion the title of the second father, yes. Since my son
had it without sexual intercourse … so to speak … with this woman, I do not see him as a
more genuine father than his companion who did not have such a relationship. In fact, to me
they have equal responsibilities in terms of paternity. If something happened to our son, I’d
put my head on the block: this child would remain with my son’s companion”. [George (70),
father of a gay son Didier (42)]

In some cases grandparents have difficulties in accepting the idea that their son's or daughter's
companion is a (social) relative. This is especially the case in contexts where parents cannot
accept their child’s same-sex partner: when parents generally ignore the partner and some are

119
even in competition with them. One such example from our survey is the case of a
grandmother who competed with her daughter's partner during the pregnancy as well as just
after the birth. She thought that since her daughter was the mother, her partner could be
assigned only as some kind of a father. That is why it came as a shock to her when she was
told that the couple is planning a second child, except that this time the child would be carried
by the daughter’s partner.

Some social grandparents expressed their fear that they might lose contact with their
grandchild, if something happened to the grandchild’s parents (for example, in case they
separate). Such fear is closely related to the lack of legal protection of the social bonds. In
other words if there is no biological connection a question how to define a parent and a
grandparent can be raised. It seems that the law is too often based only on the biological
connection and disregards the quality of relations. A social parent or grandparent can have a
good quality relation with a child and they can be important figures in child’s life, however, in
legal terms these parents and grandparents remain invisible. Such invisibility was also
reflected in some of the concerns expressed by social grandparents in our research:

“My selfish side told me this little one will be Corinne's child [the partner of my daughter]. If
something happens, I will perhaps never see this child again. Ones love a baby automatically
and I was afraid. Well, finally he is here and I am his granny. There are photographs of this
little one as there are of my other grandchildren […]I thought about my three grandsons on
my son’s side. It is my son, it is our blood. Apart from sharing the love one can give to a baby
… well, he [Corinne’s child] is a foreigner to us … How many grandchildren do I have? At
first I said three, but now I can say four without hesitation. He is my grandson in my heart.”
[Social grandmother Marianne (64), mother of Danielle (36), Corinne’s partner].

<H2> Conclusion

Our findings indicated that in the interviews conducted with social grandparents similar issues
were raised as in the case of step-families (Schneider 2005). In step-families being a step-
grandparent primarily depends on the nature of the bonds that parents and grandparents
maintain, while other factors, such as personal availability and geographical proximity, seem
to be less important. Nevertheless grandchildren in step-families only rarely call their step-
grandparents grandpa and granny. The relationship between children and their step-

120
grandparents intensifies in situations where other (biological) grandparents are absent and
there is a possibility for step-grandparents to play a symbolic part in the family. Another
element which introduces step-grandparents into the child’s life is the reintroduction of the
“institutionalising” stages: marriage for the couple, and the adoption of the grand-child.
Although there are many similarities between step-families and same-sex families, the option
of marriage as an “institutionalising” step is not available for same-sex families in France.
These families undoubtedly use PACS to build a legitimacy (Rault 2005), but there is not
enough empirical evidence available to say that PACS plays the same symbolic role as
marriage and therefore enables social grandparents to enter into the context of co-parentality.

Our research showed that the roles played by social grandparents in the life of a same-sex
family depend on the bonds between parents and grandparents, and particularly on the
grandparents’ degree of acceptance towards the same-sex couple. If grandparents are able to
redefine the same-sex family for themselves as just an ordinary family that raises children,
such redefinition usually facilitates the introduction of grandparental bonds.

However, the acceptance of the couple as parents also depends on the way how the couple
apprehends their own parental status. Co-parenting arrangements can increase the number of
parents involved, and consequently can also weaken the intensity and the legitimacy of the
elective bonds of those who are not biologically connected to the child. If one member of the
same-sex couple is not convinced that he or she is a “true parent”, his or her own parents will
probably also have some difficulties entering into a grandparental role. In order words, the
research showed the power of the heteronormative matrix, with which grandparents, and
sometimes also parents, in same-sex families have to deal with. The cultural as well as legal
and political pervasiveness of the exclusively heteronormative nuclear family model makes it
difficult to register the legitimacy of the “extra grandparents”, when there is no biological
bond, or when there are already grandparents from the two lines of biological parents of the
child. Nevertheless, parents and grandparents tend to find their own innovative ways to
interpret, understand and live such family situations. The latter can be best illustrated by the
grandmother who claimed that her grandson is not hers biologically, but “he is my grandson
in my heart”.

<H2> References

121
Attias-Donfut, C., and M. Segalen. 2007. Grands-parents : La famille à travers les
générations (Grandparents: The family through the generations). Paris: Odile Jacob.

Bajos, N., and N. Beltzer. 2008. Les sexualités homo-bisexuelles: d’une acceptation de
principe aux vulnérabilités sociales et preventives (Homo-bisexual Sexualities: From
acceptance in principle to social and preventive vulnerabilities). In Enquête sur la sexualité en
France (Survey on sexuality in France), eds. N. Bajos and M. Bozon, 243–271. Paris: La
découverte.

Chan, C. G., and G. H. Elder Jr. 2000. Matrilineal advantage in grandchild-grandparent

relations. Gerontologist 40(2): 179–190.

Courduries, J. 2008. Usages et représentations du Pacs chez les couples gays (Usages and
representations of the PACS among gay couples). In Identités et Genres de vie (Identities and
gender-style life), ed. D. Le Gall, 217–240. Paris : L’harmattan.

De Busscher, P. O. 2004. Les modes de vie gay (Gay ways of life). In Enquête presse gay
2004 (Press gay survey 2004).
<http://www.invs.sante.fr/publications/2007/epg_2004/epg_mode_vie.pdf> (21 July 2011).
Ducousso-Lacaze, A. and P. Gadechoit. 2006. Homosexualité et parentalité: une approche
psychanalytique (Homosexuality and parenthood: a psychoanalytic approach). In
Homoparentalités: Approches scientifiques et politiques (Homoparenting: Scientific and
political approaches), eds. A. Cadoret, M. Gross, C. Macary and B. Perreau, 261–272. Paris :
PUF.

Fulcher, M., R. W. Chan, B. Raboy, and C. Patterson. 2002. Contacts with grandparents
among children conceived via donor insemination by lesbian and heterosexual mothers.
Parenting: Science and Practice 2(1): 61–76.

Gross, M. 2009. Grandparentalité en contexte homoparental (Grandparenting in

homoparenting context). Revue des sciences sociales 37(41):120–129.

Johnson, C. L. 1992. Divorced and reconstituted families: Effects on the older generation.
Generations 16: 17–20.

Julien, D., M. F. Bureau, and A. Leblond de Brumath. 2005. Grandparentalité et

homoparentalité au Québec (Grandparenting and homoparenting in Quebec). In Grands-
parents et grands-parentalités (Grand-parents and grandparenting), eds. B. Schneider, M. C.
Mietkiewics, and S. Bouyer, 199–217. Ramonville Saint-Agne: Eres.

Leblond de Brumath, A., and D. Julien. 2001. État des recherches empiriques sur les liens
entre les enfants de parents homosexuels et leurs grands-parents (State of the empirical
research about the bonds between homosexual parents, children and their grandparents). In
Parentalité gaie et lesbienne: familles en marge? (Gay and lesbian families in the margin?),
ed. D. Julien, 113–121. Montréal: Association canadienne pour la santé mentale et Alliance de
recherche IREF/Relais-femmes.

Neyrand, G. 2005. L’impact grandparental des mutations sociales (Grandparenting impact of

social changes). In Grands-parents et grands-parentalités (Grand-parents and

122
grandparenting), eds. B. Schneider, M. C. Mietkiewics and S. Bouyer, 247–254. Ramonville
Saint-Agne: Eres.

Patterson, C. J. 1998. Families of the lesbian baby boom: Children's contact with grandparents
and other adults. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 68(3): 390–399.

Rault, W. 2005. Construire une légitimité. L’appropriation du pacte civil de solidarité par les
familles homoparentales (Building a legitimacy. Ownership of the civil solidarity pact by gay
and lesbian families). In Homoparentalités, Etat des lieux (Gay and lesbian parenting, state of
art), ed. M. Gross, 319–328. Ramonville Saint-Agne: Eres.
Schneider, B. 2005. Les belles grands-mères (Step grandmothers). In Grands-parents et
grands-parentalités (Grandparents and grandparenting), eds. B. Schneider, M. C.
Mietkiewics, and S. Bouyer S., 185–198. Ramonville Saint-Agne: Eres.

Schneider, B., M. C. Mietkiewics, and S. Bouyer, eds. 2005. Grands-parents et grands-

parentalités (Grandparents and grandparenting). Ramonville Saint-Agne: Eres.

123
Roman Kuhar & Judit Takács

Do families have a sexual orientation?

Interview with professor Judith Stacey

Judith Stacey is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and Sociology at New York
University. She is the author of numerous books and articles, including Unhitched: Love,
Marriage, and Family Values from West Hollywood to Western China (2011), In the Name
of the Family: Rethinking Family Values in the Postmodern Age (1996), Brave New
Families: Stories of Domestic Upheaval in Late Twentieth-Century America (1990,
reissued in 1998) and Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution in China (1983). She is one of
the leading experts on family and its diversities.

In your article “(How) Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?” from 2001, you
and your colleague Tim Biblarz point out that findings from the studies on same-sex
families are often used and abused in political debates. Furthermore some researchers
claim that there isn’t even any point in comparing same-sex families with heterosexual
families as that would be like comparing apples with oranges: both are fruits but cannot
be compared. What is your opinion about that?

I think you could compare an apple with an orange if you knew what it was you wanted to
compare about them. You could make comparative statements about how much juice you
could get from either one (laughs). In my view, the whole notion of a gay or a lesbian family
is kind of ridiculous: it implies that a family has a sexual orientation, which is not the case. I
think that if you want to compare same-sex parents with different-sex parents who are
relatively similar in other aspects, that is a reasonable enough comparison, and there are
reasons to want to do that at this stage of history. I think the goal should be eventually to not
to need to do that. I don’t think the emphasis ultimately should be on which of these two types
of families is best for children because that is where you get beyond apples and oranges into
an area where you really cannot make any kinds of judgements that make a lot of sense. That
is like asking whether it is better for children to have black parents or white parents.
Obviously in a racist society where blacks are subordinate, children will gain many social
privileges from having white parents, but that does not mean that white folks perform a better
kind of parenting.

I belong to the school of social scientists who believe that there is no such thing as purely
objective social science research. In this view, all social science research inescapably employs
perspectives and values. The very concepts we use contain ideas and ideologies embedded in
them. A social scientist has a responsibility to become as aware of her values and
presumptions as possible and to make these transparent to readers. I think that a topic like
same-sex marriage or gay and lesbian parenting, which in many societies, certainly in mine, is
very controversial, is not more subjective than others, but it raises more difficult challenges
for how to formulate the research questions and later for how to present findings and analysis
…

… and it is exactly this political context, the fear of results being abused for political
goals, which “forced” some researchers of same-sex families to tone down any

124
differences they might have found in their comparison between the families formed by
different-sex and same-sex partners in families.

Well, that cuts both ways. Some researchers exaggerate the differences because they are
hostile to gay and lesbian parenting, and they assume that a difference is a disadvantage.
Those who are sympathetic to gay and lesbian parenting often tend to minimize the
differences and to bury finding of difference in their reporting. Too often, I think, they tried to
insist that the children are exactly the same.

The problem is therefore in the automatic interpretation of “difference” as “deficit”?

Exactly. What my co-author Tim Biblarz and I set out to do was to not presume that a
difference is a disadvantage or a deficit and to look at what differences were reported and how
you might be able to understand them, and in some cases just see them as benign or
insignificant. As Freud famously said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Which are these differences and how can they be evaluated?

There are no huge differences reported between gay and straight parents or their children. We
wanted to caution against the idea that everything has to be identical, but the most important
thing to say is that there are far more similarities than differences. The differences reported
include such things as children in homosexual-parent families tend to be more tolerant of
differences than children in heterosexual-parent families. There are pretty obvious reasons for
that. It is not due to the sexuality of their parents, but to the way that the children develop
sensitivity to discrimination and stigma, and how they become more aware of difference as a
result. In addition, I do think that there is some evidence, and expect that future research will
find more, that children with gay and lesbian parents will be more comfortable with whatever
sexual attractions they experience rather than feeling a need to conform to heterosexuality if
that is not what they desire. I think too that research hints that they are more accepting of
certain levels of gender variation than is generally true of children with heterosexual parents,
and again that indicate their greater tolerance of social diversity overall. But these findings of
differences are pretty small. There are not any huge differences in research findings about
child outcomes.

There are also some research findings of differences in the parenting. It seems that on average
two women who have chosen to parent together are likely to want to share the economic and
childcare responsibilities more equally than heterosexual married couples do. They are more
likely to both cut back on work hours and less likely to have just one parent staying at home
full-time with the children. It looks as if gay male parents are more likely to have one parent
choose to stay at home with the children than among lesbian couples but we don’t have a lot
of data on that yet.

Furthermore several studies showed that lesbian couples are less likely to use corporal
punishment than heterosexual married couples do.(We don’t have much data yet about gay
male couples, but one study suggests this finding too.) Again we don’t know if this difference
would hold up in wide-scale studies but if so, I think it may be explained partly by the gender
difference of two women parenting, but also by the fact that planned lesbian couple families
tend to have a higher level of education, and they are older parents. And of course, these are
all intentional parents: you don’t have any unwanted children in planned lesbian or gay parent
families and that gives a certain advantage to their parenting skills and behaviours. I think we

125
actually see slightly better levels of parenting among lesbian couples and gay male couples on
average than with heterosexual, married-couple parents, because there are many more
accidental pregnancies, more youthful parenting and less planning among the latter.

Your meta-research on how sexual orientation of parents matters from 2001 has been
quoted a lot. Has it also been abused?

It has been used and abused, and I imagine that our newer article on how the gender of parents
matters published in 2010 will be used and abused in similar ways. Ironically, the way the
study came to be used constructively is in part a product of the way it was abused. The article
was published during the climactic period when the same-sex marriage cases in Canada and in
Massachusetts were before the highest courts. Many opponents of same-sex marriage cited
our study in their legal briefs and in their media releases. They misrepresented our study as if
it offered evidence that supported an argument against giving equal rights to same-sex couples
or to gay and lesbian parents. They drew on some of our careful discussion of what the
problems were with some of the prior research in order to argue that the research was not
strong enough to support the claims that gay and lesbian parenting was safe enough for
children. They used our critique of prior research to suggest that we were saying that the
research was worthless, which was not the case. They also selected a couple of interpretations
we made that from their point of view represented deficits that were dangerous. One was
about our conclusion that there was not enough evidence yet to say that children with gay and
lesbian parents were no more likely than children with heterosexual parents to turn out to be
gay or lesbian. We said that there were very little data – and surprisingly, there still are very
little data – on that question. However, we also said that a couple of studies did report slim
data on this, and we thought that all logic and all plausible theories about the development of
sexual orientation would point in the direction of at least a small difference here. A larger
minority of children who have gay and lesbian parents should not turn out to be exclusively
heterosexual. However, this should not be regarded as a problem or a deficit. Although we
didn’t have much evidence yet, we thought it was a mistake for sympathetic researchers to
claim that there were no differences in the area of the way children’s ultimate sexual identity
or sexual behaviour would develop.

And you can imagine that people opposed to gay and lesbian parenting seized on that as an
example of how having a gay parent would make a child turn out to be gay … But we were
just trying to say that we simply don’t know if more of them will turn out to be gay or lesbian,
and we still don’t know. The research is very thin on this subject, and it is not easy research to
conduct, but I have a strong hunch that this will turn out to be true. We don’t understand very
much about how sexual orientations develop, but our reasoning was that at least a higher
percentage of children with gay and lesbian parents would feel freer than other children to
express homoerotic desires if they experienced them. Opponents misconstrued this to claim
that gay parents would intentionally socialize their children to become gay.

Does this imply that when children raised in heterosexual-couple families face
homosexual desires and feelings, they just tend to push these feelings away because of
their heteronormative environment?

Exactly, depending obviously on the attitudes of their parents. But one would assume that a
young person with straight parents and homoerotic desires would find it harder to come out or
to acknowledge and explore those feelings than children with gay or lesbian parents. Our
presumption was, and some research supports this, that gay and lesbian parents are more apt

126
to be tolerant and supportive of their children’s sexual identity and orientation no matter what
these are.

You mentioned that we still don’t have enough research on same-sex families. This is the
very argument which is often used by the opponents of same-sex families who claim that
such families are a very new social phenomenon and thus we cannot really tell whether
same-sex families provide safe environments for children or not.

That is not what I said. We do now have enough research to say that these families form a
perfectly safe environment for children to grow up in. What we don’t have is much data on
how children’s sexuality will turn out as adults. But I do not believe that this qualifies as an
issue of child safety or well-being. There are now about three decades’ worth of studies in
different nations, and some of them of very high quality, that make it very clear that children
with same-sex parents turn out to be just as healthy, emotionally developed, socially and
cognitively successful as comparable children with heterosexual parents. At least we know
that about children with lesbian parents. We don’t have that data for gay male parents yet,
because the research hasn’t been done. But the evidence is uniform that there is no reason to
have any concerns about same-sex parent-families being safe places for children other than
those issues stemming from the way society treats these parents and their children. There are
issues around social stigma and bullying, but denying equal rights to gay parents simply
reinforces the existing problems rather than improving the circumstances for their children.
That would be like saying that in an anti-Semitic society Jewish parents shouldn’t have
children, or in a racist society, black parents shouldn’t have children, because their children
are going to suffer stigma and discrimination.

Following this line of argument, why would one allow joint adoptions by same-sex
couples knowing that the children might be more likely to suffer stigma and
discrimination than others?

I have two answers to that question, and the US Supreme Court perhaps answered it best.
First, denying same-sex couples the right to adopt children reinforces the very social problem
of stigma and discrimination that it pretends to protect children from experiencing. Because
this is a social problem, rather than one caused by attributes of the parents, that is exactly the
wrong way to address the issue. The second thing I would say is that there is a debate among
researchers about whether children who have gay and lesbian parents actually do experience
more teasing and social hostility than children with heterosexual parents. Certainly they do
face homophobic teasing about their parents, but social scientists still debate whether they are
teased more than children from other families, or whether this is just the issue that they are
teased about. I think it depends a lot on where they are growing up. If they are growing up in
a progressive community, then the odds are that they are not suffering very much from this.
Of course, in certain areas of our country, and I am sure yours too, the teasing and the
discrimination can be intense and impose a serious burden on the children. But usually same-
sex adoptive parents choose not to live in such hostile communities.

Although the hazard of homophobic harassment is a real concern, the notion of the best
interest of the child has to be placed within a broader social frame. Personally, I don’t
consider it to be in the interest of any child to reinforce the level of homophobia and social
stigma and inequality in any society. It isn’t very healthy for the children doing the teasing not
to learn how to live peacefully with social differences. Finally, research finds that children
who learn to cope with social hostility often develop resilience and strength. While it is not

127
enjoyable or desirable, it is not necessarily harmful to them either. As someone who grew up
Jewish in a moderately anti-Semitic, primarily non-Jewish small town in the 1950’s. I can
testify from personal experience, that it was not always fun to feel different and “other,” but it
also taught me a great deal and probably had something to do with my becoming a
sociologist. I developed my interest in social differences from an early stage (laughs).

But, as I said, the US Supreme Court gave the best answer to your question in the famous
Palmore versus Sidotti ruling in 1984. This was an interracial child custody case. After a
white couple divorced, the mother had custody of the children for several years, without any
contest from the father. However, after she married a black man, her former husband sued to
take custody away from her on the grounds that it was unfair to subject their children to living
with the prejudice against an inter-racial marriage household. The case went all the way to the
US Supreme Court which ruled in favour of the mother. The Court said that in a democratic
society, the proper object of the law is to combat discrimination and stigma rather than to
reinforce the undemocratic aspects of society by capitulating to them. In the long run, you
want to build a society that grants equal respect and rights without insisting that everyone has
to be the same or be kept apart.

Isn’t it logical that gay and lesbian parents, who have probably experienced
homophobia themselves, are well-equipped to discuss these issues with their children, or
as Susan Golombok suggests, to prepare their children for the homophobic society?

Yes, on average that is true. Obviously there are some lousy gay and lesbian parents just as
there are lousy heterosexual parents. We should not romanticize same-sex parenting.
However, on average, I think that gay and lesbian parents are prepared to deal with this issue;
they think about it a lot, there are many support groups and community resources and advice,
and most do their best to prepare their children for social prejudice. And, on average, their
kids seem to cope pretty well with homophobia. This is the same kind of an argument that
comes up about trans-racial adoption in the US, which also provokes a lot of controversy.
Will it be good for a black child to be adopted by a white parent? And what about
international adoptions which remove children from their cultural origins? … These are real
issues. However, the idea that you would bar an entire category of capable, sincere, loving
and eager potential parents from taking on children to whom they would be dedicated, is not a
child-friendly policy, and certainly not a democratic policy.

Nearly ten years after publishing the very influential article on whether the sexual
orientation of parents matters, you published a similar article in 2010. Except that this
time Tim Biblarz and you wondered whether the gender of parents matters; does it?

Well, the 2010 article is similar to our original study of parental sexual orientation, but it was
a more ambitious project. Over the past decade, opponents of lesbian and gay parenting
generally replaced the argument that the problem was the homosexual orientation of parents
with the claim that children need both a mother and a father, and that it was unfair to children
to deprive them of one of those two genders. Not only do politicians from both main political
parties in the US make this argument, but they claim that research overwhelmingly supports
this very popular view. For example, this argument was written into the preamble of the 1996
Welfare Reform Bill in the United States, and it has been cited in many court decisions
around issues like same-sex marriage and child custody. Consequently, Tim and I decided to
investigate whether there were really studies that spoke to this question. We quickly
discovered that the research that was being cited to support the idea that children do best if

128
they have a mother and a father was not research that ever looked at this issue at all. The
research cited compared children with a married mother and father to children whose mothers
had never married or whose parents had divorced. In other words, most of the research
compared two-parent families with single-parent families or with joint-custody, divorced
parent-families, or step families, and those clearly are not legitimate comparisons nor ones
that can tell anything about whether children do best if they grow up with both a mother and a
father.

Consequently, Tim and I decided to look at studies that could come closer to being able to
answer this question. We identified two bodies of research that we thought could shed some
light on this issue. One compares two women parenting versus a man and a woman parenting
together. This time we were looking at the newer research since 2001, which mainly
compares planned lesbian co-parenting through donor insemination or adoption with
heterosexual parenting, sometimes also through donor insemination due to infertility. The
second body of research we examined compares single (presumptively straight) fathers with
single mothers who are raising children.

The results were interesting. When you look at the lesbian co-parents and the heterosexual co-
parents the findings were very similar to what we concluded in 2001, only now we have a
much stronger body of research. However, when it came to the single heterosexual dads
versus the single heterosexual moms, there were some surprises. This is not an ideal body of
research, because it is not typical for men to be the primary parent in the case of a divorce.
Therefore, we can presume that unusual circumstances lead to this family pattern. That makes
the comparison difficult to interpret, and perhaps unfair to the fathers. Keeping this in mind,
we did find some interesting differences, again relatively small. It turned out that the single
mothers were a bit better at setting controls, and they were more aware and involved in their
children’s lives than the single fathers were. Studies also reported that children of single
mothers were somewhat less likely to abuse substances, drop out of schools, etc. than children
with single fathers. That was surprising because of stereotypes about how the dad is a better
disciplinarian and things of that sort. In general we concluded that the gender of the parents is
a trivial factor compared to the quality of the parent. It appears that on average two parents
who get along and are decent parents are better than one, but that it is the quality of the
parenting not the gender of the parents or even the number of the parents that is the most
important factor.

So can we say that it is not important after all that children are “exposed” to “female
roles” and “male roles”, to femininity and masculinity, repeating again the arguments of
those who oppose same-sex families?

I wouldn’t put it that way, because all children are exposed to various versions of femininity
and masculinity, no matter what sort of family they experience. The important point is that
children do not have to have one male and one female parent to develop a comfortable gender
identity. First of all, it is virtually impossible to bring up children hermetically in their
individual families. Secondly, the gender identity of children seems to have no relationship at
all to the gender of their parents, whether they have male or female parents. Gender identity is
established very early irrespective of the gender mix or wishes of the parents. Few
transgender people would develop if this were not the case.

Western cultures tend to have very simplistic ideas about what constitutes male and female
parenting. It is a mistake to suppose that there are two mutually exclusive categories of

129
parents – one male and the other female. There are average differences between the way
women parent and men parent, just as there are average differences in height between men
and women. Lots and lots of women are a lot taller than a lot of men, and the same is true for
all the kinds of differences you find in parenting. There are so many different traits in
parenting that do not reduce to feminine or masculine. Some parental traits that we tend to
identify as more masculine or feminine can be performed by men or by women, and usually in
complicated packages. In the lesbian co-parent families that I know, or in the gay male co-
parent families, I would say that, yes on average, one of the two tends to parent in a slightly
more stereotypically “feminine,” and the other one a little more “masculine” way in areas like
discipline, communication, and play. But these are very small differences, and there is more
overlap than difference. You cannot confidently predict which of the two parents will do
what, not by their gender, not by who is the biological parent, or by other simple factors. In
some cases the person who is the breadwinner is also the more permissive parent; in other
cases the person who stays home full-time with the child is more permissive, and sometimes
more of a disciplinarian. You really cannot predict which.

We also know that when heterosexual married couples parent together, they often tend to be
more like each other in their attitudes and values and styles of parenting than the mother is
like all other women or the father is like all other men. There are significant class differences
and educational differences, and regional and religious differences in parenting, and so it’s
really simplistic to assume that there is a masculine way to parent and a feminine way to
parent, that children just need one of each, and that the only way they can get it is by having
one male and one female parent in their homes.

In your 2010 article on How Does the Gender of Parents Matter? ‘transgender’ is listed
among the keywords, however, there is hardly any information provided on transgender
parents or parenting. Does this reflect the general social invisibility of transgender issues
or that there is not enough research yet focussing on this field (on how children can be
affected by their parents’ gender re-assignment, for example)? In general, how do you
see the social relevance of these issues (related to trans-parenting)?

That is an accurate observation, a fair criticism of our article, and an insightful analysis of the
state of research on trans-parenting. To the best of my knowledge, there are no studies yet that
address the question of the impact of a parent’s gender reassignment on their children. There
are personal accounts by such parents and some of their adult children, a good documentary
film, and some sensitive treatments in popular culture, but we do not yet have social science
research findings on this aspect of gender and parenting. In fact, we are only beginning to get
research findings on the impact of gay male parents on their children. Tey Meadow, a former
doctoral student of mine, recently completed a trail-blazing dissertation that illuminates some
of the reverse issue – the impact of transgender children on their gender normative parents.
It’s a fascinating, important study. When we do begin to have studies of transgender parents, I
predict they will reinforce the conclusions Tim Biblarz and I reached in our 2010 article – that
the gender of parents does not have much, if any influence, on the gender identity of children
or their well-being. Once again, the central factors will be the quality of parenting and the
social context.

You argue elsewhere that according to previous findings lesbian sexual orientation per
se has no negative effect on parenting, or on children’s healthy psychological
development and social adjustment. However, can you say the same about gay men?

130
As I mentioned earlier, we do not yet have much research on gay male parents that examines
their children’s development, but the early studies, as well as the implications from all of the
other research on family structure, leads strongly toward this conclusion. There simply is no
evidence that a parent’s sexual orientation or identity has an independent negative (or
positive) impact on their children’s well-being. My own ethnographic research on gay male
parents led me to believe that gay men are likely to be among the most successful parents.
This is not because they desire men, but due to “selection effects.” It is so much more difficult
for gay men to become parents outside of heterosexuality, that only those who are deeply
motivated are likely to do so.

According to your findings lesbian partnerships, despite the fact that they are more
egalitarian compared to heterosexual partnerships, tend not to last as long and break up
earlier then heterosexual or gay relationships. How can you explain that?

I want to say again that we don’t know yet that this is true. There are very little data on this,
and the data that are available are not strong, but there are some data that lead to this view.
We don’t know if such findings will be replicated over time, nor whether this would still be
true if lesbians had full and equal rights and as well as equal family and social support.
However, I personally think that there are some reasons to imagine that married lesbian co-
mothers might have a higher divorce rate than heterosexual married couples or than married
gay male co-parents. In fact, I think that gay male co-parents may turn out to have the lowest
rate of divorce, but we have no data on that yet.

What seems to be the case for lesbian co-parents is that, on the one hand they tend to have
higher standards for their relationships than heterosexual couples do. Precisely because they
want more equal and reciprocal relationships, they are more disappointed when relationships
do not meet their high standards. And lesbian co-parenting situations make it a lot harder to
achieve equality than it is for gay male co-parenting couples. In the U.S., at least, because
lesbian couples are having their children primarily through donor sperm, only one of the
mothers is the biological mother. In a typical case, one of the women gets pregnant and
breast-feeds, and in many states she has the advantage of being the legal mother too. These
asymmetries make it very hard to achieve equality. One of the paradoxes is that lesbian co-
parents are more likely to fail at their own goals for the relationship than heterosexual couples
or gay male couples. They don’t have equal rights with heterosexual parents, and they don’t
have equal rights or relationships to the children, and this can exacerbate tensions in the
relationships as well. However, at least part of the difficulty derives from social and legal
discrimination. Co-parents need to have full and equal rights to their children from the very
start so that one person doesn’t immediately feel vulnerable and left out of the parenting
situation.

There seems to be a difference in social acknowledgement of families. For example, if

you are a heterosexual family with a small child, people on the streets tend to approve
your family by smiling at you and this is some kind of a support you get from strangers,
while if you are two men raising a small child, then you constantly have to come out of
the closet, you have to explain and defend your family situation and so forth. There
seems to be less social support for same-sex families in everyday life. On the basis of
your own research into gay families, would you agree with this observation?

I don’t entirely agree with that. That’s true for gay men, but it’s much less true for lesbian
couples, because gender stereotypes lead most people to presume that a woman is the primary

131
parent. When men are out with children, especially in societies that have become very
sensitive and anxious around issues of sexual abuse and paedophilia, they often encounter this
anxiety and concern. Single straight men experience this as well. Heterosexual stay-at-home
dads complain a lot about public reactions when they take their children to the playground, for
example. This is a real gender issue. Lesbian co-parent families have to cope with the
invisibility of the second parent. All kinds of institutional factors come into play, and lesbian
and gay parents constantly have to become educators about their families. whether it’s in a
doctor’s office or a school or travelling with their children, or whatever. Certainly gay and
lesbian parents face many issues that heterosexual parents usually don’t have to face.

Personally, however, I also think that same-sex parent families often enjoy certain advantages
as well. There is much more organised support by gay and lesbian communities for parenting.
There are great organizations for their children, like COLAGE (Children of Lesbians and
Gays Everywhere) and for their straight relatives, like PFLAG (Parents and Friends of
Lesbians and Gays). In Los Angeles, where I did research, there is a wonderful group called
the Pop Luck Club, which is specifically for gay fathers and “wannabe” gay dads; they hold
monthly orientations and picnics and weekly playgroup meetings, and they have established
contingents to support of single gay dads, stay-at-home dads, etc.. This is something most
heterosexual single parents don’t have. I think this is a terrific way to respond to
discrimination.

Nowadays when most European countries are characterized by low or even “lowest
low”117 fertility rates it should fit a rational demographic policy at a national level to
encourage willing same-sex partners to have children, too – and thus let them contribute
to the reproduction of the work force, which is often referred to as a sort of “national
duty”, especially by conservative politicians, certainly in my country (Hungary). How do
you see same-sex couples fit into this policy environment? Which arguments could be
used to support this?

Under low fertility conditions, it might be considered a rational demographic policy to

encourage lesbians to have children with donor sperm, but the same logic would not apply to
gay men. Most gay men who become parents do so through adoption, and this does not
increase fertility rates. From a political perspective, I would not employ a “national duty”
argument to support lesbian or gay parent rights. I do not believe that parenting should be
considered an obligation, nor that arguments for human rights and social justice should rest on
instrumental, strategic arguments. Hardly anyone chooses to be a parent in order to help
reproduce the national workforce, nor do I want to live in a world where that was a principal
motive for parenthood. Instead, in addition to human rights, I would stress the social benefits
society gains from expanding the population of dedicated, responsible parents and from
promoting an inclusive society.

Can you also see the trend of the increasing feminization of same-sex marriages in the
US? This trend was observed in Scandinavian countries and elsewhere in Europe. Can
this be connected, in your view, to the fact that it is easier to “get” children within a
female same-sex couple than in a male one?

117
McDonald, P. 2008. Very low fertility: Consequences, causes and policy approaches. The Japanese Journal
of Population 6(1): 19–23.

132
I am not up-to-date on the international rates of same-sex marriage by gender, but it is true
that in the U.S., lesbians have been marrying at higher rates than gay men in the states where
it is legal. I thought it had been somewhat different in the Netherlands after it became the first
nation to legalize same-sex marriage. I would expect women to marry at a greater rate than
men for two major reasons. Perhaps, most important, a higher percentage of lesbians than gay
men are in long-term couple relationships to begin with. In the U.S., there was a popular joke
about this gender difference: Question: What does a lesbian bring on a second date? Answer:
A U-Haul Truck (a rented truck to move all of her furniture and belongings into her new
lover’s home).

The second factor for this feminization trend is the one you point out. Women are more likely
than men to want children and, of course, they can become parents much more easily than two
men. Shared parenthood presents many reasons to encourage marriage, particularly in a
country like the U.S. where married couples and their children receive far more benefits,
security and status than unmarried people do.

In a 2010 European report118 on family structures and family forms “Rainbow families”
were listed under the heading of “new and rare types of families”. Do you also see
Rainbow families this way, as being new and rare? Also in this report it is pointed out
that the research on rainbow families can have a “high potential for scientifically
understanding families in general because all sex or gender related characteristics of
both spouses are initially symmetrical in these families”. Do you agree with this view?
Why – or why not?

It depends on one’s definition of a “rainbow family.” If this means self-identified lesbian or

gay couples who openly choose to have children together, I guess it would be accurate to
describe this family form as a historically recent phenomenon. In the U.S., pioneer lesbian-
parent families like this emerged in the 1970s in the wake of feminism. Their numbers have
grown exponentially ever since, and this is increasingly a global phenomenon. To call it
“rare” also depends on the metric you employ. Because gays and lesbians represent a small
minority of the overall population, that could be a fair statement. However, among that
minority, this form of family is no longer rare. In fact, it is becoming close to normative in
many societies.

However I would define “rainbow family” much more broadly to encompass a broader array
of family forms that do not centre on heterosexuality or marriage. That’s the approach I take
in Unhitched. Ironically, as same-sex marriage becomes normative, the broader definition of
rainbow family may be eroding.

I do agree with the first part of the claim that studying rainbow families provides a rich
laboratory for understanding family life in general. However, as my earlier answers about
gender complexity indicate, I do not share the view that two women or two men automatically
display symmetrical gender or sexual attributes.

In your book In the name of the family you discuss family values in the post-modern age.
What should these values be and can we really share the same value system about
families considering the protests that are taking place right now against same-sex
families?

118
See: <http://www.familyplatform.eu/en/1-major-trends> (15 September 2011).

133
No, we are never going to share the same family values, but I think we have to learn to live in
a pluralist society. I think that if one takes seriously the ideas of freedom of religion, freedom
of conscience, and equal rights for all citizens, then we have to arrive at a set of social values
that will provide a framework for valuing diverse families. In my view, family ethics should
promote responsibility, integrity and consent. The goal of society should be to set up the
structural conditions that give equal rights and opportunities to individuals and their
relationships irrespective of gender, sexual orientation, race or ethnicity, religion, and so on,
but not to impose the family forms, the gender norms or the sexual norms that you have to
practice. Now, obviously that is utopian, but then democracy is a utopian idea.

134
Contributors

Maria Carbin holds a Ph.D. in political sciences and is currently employed as a post-doc at
the Centre for Gender Studies, Umeå University, Sweden. The post-doc project focuses on
neo-liberal governmentality and equality policies within higher education. She teaches
courses in gender studies in the areas of feminist theory, post-colonial studies and
poststructuralism. Between 2007 and 2010 she participated as a researcher in the research
project Quing (Quality in gender+ equality policies in Europe), funded within the European
Commission’s 6th Framework Programme. Within the Quing project Maria Carbin analysed
equality policies in the Nordic countries, with special attention to Danish policies.

Correspondence: Centre for Gender Studies, Umeå University, S-901 87 Umeå, Sweden.
E-mail: maria.carbin@ucgs.umu.se

Daniela Danna holds a Ph.D. in sociology and social research and is a researcher at the
Department of Social and Political Studies, Università Statale di Milano, where she teaches
social policy. She is also the editorial director of XXD, a feminist on-line monthly magazine.
Her research has been focused on gender issues, lesbian and gay issues, violence against
women, prostitution policy and she is now researching on population theories. Her books in
the new millennium are: Il genere spiegato a un paramecio (BFS 2011), Stato di Famiglia.
Le donne maltrattate di fronte alle istituzioni (Ediesse 2009), Crescere in famiglie
omogenitoriali (co-editor with C. Cavina, Franco Angeli 2009), Ginocidio. La violenza contro
le donne nell’era globale (Eleuthera 2007), Prostituzione e vita pubblica in quattro capitali
europee (editor, Carocci 2006 – the English translation is published on-line), La gaia
famiglia. Omogenitorialità: il dibattito e la ricerca (with M. Bottino, Asterios 2005), Che
cos'è la prostituzione? Le quattro visioni del commercio del sesso (Asterios 2004), Donne di
mondo. Commercio del sesso e controllo statale (Eleuthera 2004), Amiche, compagne,
amanti. Storia dell'amore tra donne (Uniservice 2003).

Correspondence: Facoltà di Scienze Politiche, via Conservatorio 7, I-20122 MIlano, Italia.

E-mail: daniela.danna@unimi.it
Web page: <www.danieladanna.it>, <www.xxdonne.net>

Éric Fassin is a sociologist, a professeur agrégé in the Social Sciences Department at École
normale supérieure in Paris, and a researcher at IRIS (CNRS/EHESS). His research focuses
on contemporary sexual and racial politics, in particular in France and the United States, in a
comparative perspective. Recent publications include: Mariages et homosexualités dans le
monde. L’arrangement des normes familiales (2008, co-edited with V. Descoutures, M.
Digoix and W. Rault), Droit conjugal et unions de même sexe. Mariage, partenariat et
concubinage dans neuf pays européens (2008, with K. Waaldijk), Le sexe politique. Genre et
sexualité au miroir transatlantique (EHESS 2009), Género, sexualidades y política
democratica (Cahiers Simone de Beauvoir, Colegio de México 2009), Hommes, femmes:
quelle différence? (Salvator 2011, with V. Margron).

Correspondance: École normale supérieure, 48 bd Jourdan, Paris 75014, France.

E-Mail: Eric.Fassin@ens.fr

135
Martine Gross is a social sciences research fellow at the Centre d’Études Interdisciplinaires
des faits religieux (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Ecole des Hautes Études en
Sciences Sociales). She has published in the area of lesbian and gay Christian and Jewish
identities. Her articles have appeared in Archives en Sciences Sociales des Religions and
Social Compass. She has widely published in the area of lesbian and gay parenting. She is the
editor of Homoparentalités, Etat des lieux (Gay and lesbian parenting, state of art) (Eres,
2005), co-editor (with Anne Cadoret, Caroline Mécary, Bruno Perreau) of Homoparentalités,
approches scientifiques et politiques (PUF, 2006) co-author (with Mathieu Peyceré) of
Fonder une famille homoparentale (J’ai lu, 2007), author of L’homoparentalité (Le Cavalier
bleu, 2009), author of Choisir la paternité gay (Eres, forthcoming 2012), author of Qu’est ce
que l’homoparentalité? (Payot, forthcoming 2012).

Correspondence: CEIFR 10 rue monsieur le Prince, 75006 Paris, France.

Email: gross@ehess.fr
Web: <http://ceifr.ehess.fr/document.php?id=121>

Hannele Harjunen is a post doctoral research fellow in the unit of Gender studies at the
Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. She
holds a Ph.D. in gender studies and is currently working on two research projects: a post doc
research project “The construction of neoliberal bodies and fatness” and “Fatty foods and fat
bodies: Diversification of ideals and practices in healthy eating”. Her research has focused
on gender and body norms, especially body size, and critical fat studies. She teaches social
policy and gender studies at the University of Jyväskylä.

Correspondence: Department of social sciences and Philosophy, P.O. Box 35, 40014,
University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
E-mail: hannele.harjunen@jyu.fi

Elke Jansen manages the largest project on LGBT families in Germany – the “Rainbow
Family” project in LSVD (Lesbian and Gay Federation in Germany). Until 2002 she taught
courses in developmental psychology and statistics and did research at the Psychological
Institute at the University of Bonn. She holds a Ph.D. in Psychology and has been working as
a psychological therapist in private practice for over 20 years. From 2006–2009 she was a
member of the advisory board of the first representative study on LGBT families in Germany,
commissioned by the German Federal Ministry of Justice. She is the author of the first
handbook on LGBT-families in Germany (Regenbogenfamilien – alltäglich und doch anders.
Beratungsführer für lesbische Mütter, schwule Väter und familienbezogenes Fachpersonal)
and many other publication and presentations about lesbian mothers, gay fathers and their
children in Germany.

Correspondence: LSVD, Projekt "Regenbogenfamilien", Pipinstraße 7, 50667 Köln,

Germany.
E-mail: elke.jansen@lsvd.de
Web page: <www.family.lsvd.de>

Roman Kuhar is a sociologist, an assistant professor at the Faculty of Arts, University of

Ljubljana, and a researcher at the Peace Institute, Ljubljana. His research topics include glbt-

136
issues, intolerance and equality, citizenship, and sexuality. He is the author of several books,
among others: Media Construction of Homosexuality (2003), The Unbearable Comfort of
Privacy: Everyday Life of Gay and Lesbians (with A. Švab, 2005) and At the Crossroads of
Discrimination (2009), and the co-editor (with J. Takács) of Beyond The Pink Curtain:
Everyday Life of LGBT people in Eastern Europe. He is also the editor of the Slovenian lgbtq
magazine Narobe.

Web page: <http://www.mirovni-institut.si/Oseba/Detail/en/oseba/Roman-Kuhar/>

Correspondence: Mirovni inštitut, Metelkova 6, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia.
E-mail: roman.kuhar1@guest.arnes.si

Elin Kvist is a researcher and assistant director at the Centre for Gender Studies, Umeå
University. She received her PhD in Sociology at Umeå University in 2006. Her research
focuses on gender equality, labour market, and welfare state and family issues.

Web page: <http://www.ucgs.umu.se/english/about-ucgs/staff/elin-kvist/?languageId=1>

E-mail: elin.kvist@ucgs.umu.se

Guillaume Marche is a senior lecturer in American studies at the Université Paris-Est Créteil
(France) and a member of the Institute for the study of English-, German-, and Romance
language-speaking spheres (IMAGER). He teaches courses on 20th- and 21st-century US
history, politics, society and culture. His research focuses on contemporary social movements
in the US. He wrote his PhD dissertation and several articles on the politicization of sexual
identities in the LGBT movement. His recent research also addresses biography and the
biographical mode in social science, especially memoirs and biographies as sociological
sources; he co-edited with Vincent Broqua a collection of essays entitled L'épuisement du
biographique? (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010). His current research deals with
infrapolitics, especially protest graffiti as an infrapolitical form of mobilization, and he is
editing an issue of the French Journal of American Studies (Revue Française d'Etudes
Américaines) on infrapolitics (upcoming Spring 2012).

Correspondence: Université Paris-Est Créteil – UFR Lettres et Sciences humaines – 61

avenue du Général de Gaulle – 94010 Créteil – France.
Email: gmarche@u-pec.fr

Jose Ignacio Pichardo holds a Ph.D. in social anthropology from the Universidad Autonoma
de Madrid (2008) and is an assistant professor of social anthropology at Universidad
Complutense de Madrid. His doctoral dissertation dealt with the influence of people with
same-sex sexual relations on the social conceptions of family. His research is focused on
gender, kinship and sexuality. He has published several books and articles about sexual
diversity, rainbow families, LGBT youth, sexual rights and homophobia.

Correspondence: Dpto. Antropologia Social, Fac. CC. Politicas y Sociologia (UCM), 28223
Pozuelo de Alarcon, Madrid, Spain.
E-mail: joseignacio.pichardo@cps.ucm.es
Web page: <http://www.ucm.es/info/dptoants/curriculos/IPichardo.html>

137
Judit Takács graduated in History, Hungarian Language and Literature, and Cultural
Anthropology at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, and completed an MA in Social
Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and currently works
as the Scientific Deputy Director of the Institute of Sociology of the Hungarian Academy of
Sciences (IS-HAS), responsible for leading research teams and conducting independent
research on gender issues and family practices, social exclusion/inclusion of LGBT people,
HIV/AIDS prevention, anti-discrimination and equal treatment policies. She is the author of
the ILGA-Europe – IGLYO report on the Social Exclusion of LGBT Youth in Europe; co-
editor (with A. Borgos) of the Voicing Women in Eastern Europe (2011/3) special issue of the
Journal of Lesbian Studies, and (with R. Kuhar) of Beyond the Pink Curtain, the first social
scientific anthology on the everyday life of LGBT people in Eastern Europe. Her most recent
article (with I. Szalma) on Homophobia and same-sex partnership legislation in Europe was
published in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal.

Correspondence: J. Takács, IS-HAS (MTA SzKI), H–1250 Budapest, P.O. Box 20.
E-mail: takacs@policy.hu
Web: <http://www.policy.hu/takacs/publications.php>

138
Index

abortion..................................................................................................................................... 15
abstinence ........................................................................................................................ 75, 79p.
adoption15, 22p., 34, 36, 38pp., 45pp., 63, 65, 68, 71pp., 77, 86, 88, 90, 93, 106p., 114, 116, 123pp., 129
Agius, S. ................................................................................................................................... 74
AIDS............................................................................................................................ 8p., 75, 89
Alberdi, I. ................................................................................................................................. 29
alimony................................................................................................................................ 40pp.
Anderssen, N.C. ....................................................................................................................... 90
Anhamm, U. ............................................................................................................................. 39
anti-Semitism ........................................................................................................................ 91p.
Armstrong, E. A. ...................................................................................................................... 78
artificial insemination........................................................................... 60, 72, 98, 103, 107, 109
assisted fertilisation ...................................................................................................... 62, 64, 66
assisted insemination.................................................................................. 41, 56, 59, 62, 86, 93
assisted reproduction ...................................................................................... 15, 23, 43, 90, 106
Attias-Donfut, C. ......................................................................................................... 107p., 112
Azrak, S.................................................................................................................................... 80

Banens, M................................................................................................................................. 74
Becker-Stoll, F. ................................................................................................................... 36pp.
Beckh, K.............................................................................................................................. 36pp.
Bergold, P........................................................................................................................ 36p., 43
Bestard, J. ................................................................................................................................. 29
Biblarz, T............................................................................................................. 119p., 124, 127
blended families ....................................................................................................................... 44
Bos, H.M.W. ................................................................................................................. 90p., 103
Bradley, D. ............................................................................................................................... 62
Brookey, R. A........................................................................................................................... 75
Brooks, D. ................................................................................................................................ 47
Bryld, M. ...................................................................................................................... 54, 59, 66
bullying.......................................................................................................................... 90p., 123
Burrell, R............................................................................................................................... 55p.
Bush, G. W. ........................................................................................................................ 75, 79
Buzzi, C.................................................................................................................................... 89

Cadoret, A. ................................................................................................................................. 9
Carrington, C............................................................................................................................ 10
Cavalli, A. ................................................................................................................................ 89
Cea, M. Á. .......................................................................................................................... 26, 30
Chan, C.G. .............................................................................................................................. 108
citizenship........................................................................................................................... 20, 53

139
Clarke, V. ............................................................................................................................... 102
co-parenting...................................................................... 24, 107, 109, 112, 114, 117, 125, 128
Cohen, S. ............................................................................................................................. 78pp.
coming out.................................................................... 18, 22, 39, 47p., 95p., 106, 108p., 111p.
consumerism............................................................................................................................. 17
Convention on the Rights of the Child..................................................................................... 80
Courduries, J........................................................................................................................... 106
custody ........................................................................................................ 34, 42, 44, 93, 124p.

D’Emilio, J. .............................................................................................................................. 78
De Busscher, C.O. ............................................................................................................... 109p.
De Lillo, A................................................................................................................................ 89
Descoutures, V. ........................................................................................................................ 24
Dethloff, N. ..................................................................................................................... 41, 44p.
discrimination..................... 27, 36pp., 61p., 67, 77, 86, 89, 93, 95, 100, 102, 120, 123p., 128p.
division of labour ......................................................................................................... 17p., 27p.
divorce................................................................................................ 15, 19, 107pp., 124p., 128
donor insemination...................................................................................... 40pp., 107, 114, 125
Donovan, C......................................................................................................................... 17, 28
Ducousso-Lacaze, A............................................................................................................... 112
Dürnberger, A.................................................................................................................. 36p., 43

Elder, G.H. Jr.......................................................................................................................... 108

Elle, M...................................................................................................................................... 37
Eriksson, A. .............................................................................................................................. 66
essentialism ............................................................................................................ 72, 76, 79, 81

Farr, R....................................................................................................................................... 48
Farrell, M.P. ............................................................................................................................. 90
fertility treatment........................................................................................................ 40p., 53pp.
filiation .......................................................................................................... 16, 23, 27, 32, 41p.
Fischer, C.M............................................................................................................................. 75
Flaks, D.K. ............................................................................................................................. 102
foster child.......................................................................................................................... 40, 47
foster girl .................................................................................................................................. 47
foster parents ............................................................................................................................ 47
fostering.................................................................................................................................... 47
Fulcher, M. ............................................................................................................................. 107

Gershon, T.D. ......................................................................................................................... 103

Gilliam, J. ................................................................................................................................. 77

140
Gillig-Riedle, B. ....................................................................................................................... 46
Goldberg, S............................................................................................................................... 47
Golombok, S......................................................................................................... 48, 90, 93, 124
Gopalakrishna, V.................................................................................................................... 102
Göttgens, C............................................................................................................................... 48
Graham, M. ..................................................................................................................... 23, 26p.
Gregory, R.............................................................................................................................. 102
Greib, A.................................................................................................................................... 47
Greslé-Favier, C. ...................................................................................................................... 75
Greve, W. ................................................................................................................................. 37

Hague Adoption Convention.................................................................................................... 46

Hall, S....................................................................................................................................... 57
Heaphy, B........................................................................................................................... 17, 28
Hequembourg, A.L................................................................................................................... 90
heteronormative............................................................................ 53, 59, 66, 112, 115, 117, 122
heteronormativity ................................................................................................. 16pp., 22, 27p.
Hirvonen, H.............................................................................................................................. 59
HIV........................................................................................................................................ 77p.
homoparental................................................................................. 86, 90p., 94p., 99, 102p., 109
homoparenting........................................................................................................................ 109
homophile movement ............................................................................................................... 78
homophobia............................................................. 8p., 16pp., 22, 91, 95pp., 102p., 112, 123p.
Hunter, N.................................................................................................................................. 77

Iard study.................................................................................................................................. 89
ILGA .................................................................................................................................... 7, 12
infertility........................................................................................................................... 55, 125
intergenerational relationships ............................................................................................... 107
Irvine, J. M. .............................................................................................................................. 78

Jansen, E............................................................................................................... 36, 43, 48, 103

Johnson, C.L........................................................................................................................... 107
Johnson, S.M. ........................................................................................................................... 91
Julien, D. ............................................................................................................................. 107p.
Jungbauer, J.............................................................................................................................. 48

K
Kantola, J.................................................................................................................................. 57
Katzorke, T............................................................................................................................... 40
Kershaw, S. .............................................................................................................................. 48
kinship ............................................................................................................. 8p., 16, 28, 31, 38
Knight, R. H. ......................................................................................................................... 75p.

141
L

Leblond de Brumath, A. ......................................................................................................... 107

Lehr, V. .................................................................................................................................... 79
Lévi-Strauss, C. .......................................................................................................................... 8
Lewin, E. .................................................................................................................................... 9
LGBT families............................................................ 34p., 37, 40, 43, 45, 47p., 71pp., 79, 81p.
LGBT Movement ........................................................................................... 71p., 74, 76pp., 86
LGBT youth ............................................................................................................ 72, 74, 76pp.
Lombardo, E............................................................................................................................. 57
Lüttichau, I. .............................................................................................................................. 61

Mallon, G. ................................................................................................................................ 47
Marche, G..................................................................................................................... 71, 74, 77
marriage8p., 15p., 18pp., 26pp., 31p., 34p., 41, 53pp., 71pp., 79, 86, 88, 92p., 98, 106p., 116p., 124, 130p.
Mayberry, M............................................................................................................................. 78
McNair, R................................................................................................................................. 91
Meyer, I.H. ............................................................................................................................... 91
Miceli, M. S........................................................................................................................... 78p.
Molinuevo, B............................................................................................................................ 18
Morgan, D. ............................................................................................................................... 11

Nebeling Petersen, M. ........................................................................................................ 62, 67

neo-conservatism...................................................................................................................... 79
Neyrand, G. ............................................................................................................................ 107
nuclear family.............................................................................. 28, 60, 63, 68, 108, 114p., 117

O’Connor, E. ............................................................................................................................ 91

PACS...................................................................................................................... 106, 109, 117

Pacte civil de solidarité .......................................................................................................... 106
parental leave............................................................................................................................ 67
patchwork families .......................................................................................................... 36p., 44
Paternotte, D............................................................................................................................. 20
Patterson, C.J.................................................................................................................. 103, 108
Pichardo, J.I.................................................................................................................. 15, 18, 23
planned families ............................................................................................. 90, 92, 94, 99, 101

Queer ........................................................... 8p., 15p., 18, 20, 22pp., 26, 28, 30pp., 43p., 67, 75

142
queer families ............................................................................................... 9p., 26, 32, 40, 43p.
queer family..................................................................................................................... 31, 43p.
queering.................................................................................................................................... 10
Quing........................................................................................................................................ 57

racism ....................................................................................................................................... 91
rainbow families................................................................................................ 31, 49, 60, 130p.
rainbow family ............................................................................................. 40, 43pp., 47, 130p.
Rauchfleisch, U. ....................................................................................................................... 37
Rault, W. ........................................................................................................................ 106, 117
Ray, V..................................................................................................................................... 102
reconstructed families .............................................................................. 29, 92, 94, 96, 99, 101
registered partnership ....................................................................... 15, 29, 34pp., 39pp., 46, 53
Rich, A. .................................................................................................................................... 17
Riedle, H................................................................................................................................... 46
Riley, R..................................................................................................................................... 18
Rivers, I. ................................................................................................................................... 91
Rubin, G. ............................................................................................................................ 16, 25
Rupp, M................................................................................................ 34, 36p., 39p., 43, 45, 47
Ryan-Flood, R. ......................................................................................................................... 66
Rydström, J......................................................................................................................... 53, 68

Saewyc, E.M. ........................................................................................................................... 77

same-sex couples11pp., 18pp., 25, 27, 30, 34p., 38pp., 42, 45pp., 72pp., 77, 86, 106, 121, 123, 129
same-sex families ................................ 35, 61, 68, 107, 112p., 116p., 119p., 122, 126, 128, 131
same-sex family............................................................................. 35, 92, 107, 109, 112pp., 117
same-sex marriage........................ 9, 15p., 18pp., 26p., 31, 71pp., 77, 86, 88, 120p., 125, 130p.
Schneider, B. ....................................................................................................... 107p., 113, 116
Segalen, M................................................................................................................... 107p., 112
sexual abuse................................................................................................................ 47, 71, 129
social acceptance .................................................................................................... 21, 39, 89, 95
social grandparents................................................................................................... 113p., 116p.
social mother ................................................................................................ 42, 56p., 63pp., 112
social parenting ...................................................................................................................... 113
Speziale, B.............................................................................................................................. 102
Stacey, J............................................................................................................................ 14, 119
Staudinger, U.M. ...................................................................................................................... 37
Steffens, M. .............................................................................................................................. 48
step-child adoption ............................................................................................................. 41, 67
step-families ................................................................................................................... 107, 116
stigma .................................................................................................... 94, 103, 110, 120, 123p.
stigmatisation .................................................................................................... 86, 91, 93, 102p.
Stormhøj, C. ........................................................................................................ 53p., 59, 61, 63
Sullivan, M. .............................................................................................................................. 10
surrogacy ...................................................................................... 40, 56, 106p., 109, 112p., 115
Symons, J. ................................................................................................................................ 13

143
T

Tasker, F.L. ........................................................................................................................ 90, 93

taxation ..................................................................................................................................... 34

van Balen, F............................................................................................................................ 103

van den Boom, D.C. ............................................................................................................... 103
van Gelderen, L. ....................................................................................................................... 37
Verloo, M. ................................................................................................................................ 57
Villaamil, F............................................................................................................................... 27

Wainright, J.L......................................................................................................................... 102

Waites, M. ................................................................................................................................ 80
Weeks, J. ............................................................................................................................ 17, 28
Weinrich, J. .............................................................................................................................. 12
Weston, K....................................................................................................................... 8, 31, 74
Whisman, V.............................................................................................................................. 71
widow’s pension..................................................................................................................... 106
Woog, D. .................................................................................................................................. 78
Wypijewski, J. .......................................................................................................................... 78

Yogyakarta Principles .............................................................................................................. 48

youth sexuality ..................................................................................................... 71p., 76, 79pp.

Zetterqvist Nelson, K. .............................................................................................................. 66

Zypries, B. .......................................................................................................................... 35, 38

144