Judith Stacey

How) Does The Sexual Orientation Of Parents Matter

Opponents of lesbian and gay parental rights claim that children with lesbigay parents are at higher risk for a variety of negative outcomes. Yet most research in psychology concludes that there are no differences in developmental outcomes between children raised by lesbigay parents and those raised by heterosexual parents. The analysis here challenges this defensive conceptual framework and analyzes how heterosexism has hampered intellectual progress in the field. The authors discuss limitations in the definitions, samples, and analyses of the studies to date. Next they explore findings from 21 studies and demonstrate that researchers frequently downplay findings indicating difference regarding children’s gender and sexual preferences and behavior that could stimulate important theoretical questions. A less defensive, more sociologically informed analytic framework is proposed for investigating these issues. The framework focuses on (1) whether selection effects produced by homophobia account for associations between parental sexual orientations and child outcomes; (2) the role of parental gender vis-a-vis sexual orientation in influencing children’s gender development; and (3) the relationship between parental sexual orientations and children’s sexual preferences and behaviors.

Gay Parenthood and the Decline of Paternity as We Knew It

Most analyses of postmodern transformations of intimacy feature adult unions, often placing gays and lesbians on the frontier. The contemporary pursuit of parenthood evinces a similar shift from obligation to desire and from an economic to an emotional calculus. Here too, gay men and lesbians serve as pioneers, with planned gay male parenthood occupying particularly avant-garde terrain and Los Angeles County. This article analyzes gay male narratives of parental desire and decision-making drawn from ethnographic research on gay male intimacy and kinship in Los Angeles, the unlikely global epicenter of gay paternity. It identifies a ‘passion for parenthood’ continuum in which most men occupy an intermediate zone which leads them to situational paternity or childlessness contingent upon intimate relationships. Heterosexual ‘situations’ lead most straight men to paternity, while homosexual ‘situations’ lead a majority of gay men to childlessness. Yet the very success gay men achieve pursuing parenthood against enormous odds exposes conditions governing contemporary family life that represent the decline of paternity as we knew it. This does not augur the demise of male parenthood, however, but its creative, if controversial, reconfiguration.

Cruising to Familyland: Gay Hypergamy and Rainbow Kinship:

Drawing upon ethnographic research conducted among gay men in Los Angeles, this article demonstrates that while gay male recreational sex disrupts conventional family norms and practices, it also serves as a cultural resource for constructing creative ‘families of choice’. In the unfettered pursuit of masculine sexuality, gay men reconfigure eros, domesticity, parenthood and kinship in ways that simultaneously reinforce and challenge conventional gender and family practices and values. Those who breach sexual norms often cross social divides as well, forging hypergamous intimate attachments that cross racial, generational and social class boundaries more frequently than heterosexuals do.

Queer reproductive justice

In the past half-century, there have been some notable shifts in English language feminist and queer scholarship and activism about procreation, marriage and family. In particular, there has been a striking increase in emphasis on genetic and biological family creation in queer and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender kinship practices, in contradistinction to earlier emphases on escape from the norms and demands of heteronormative patriarchy. During the gay liberation movement, older concepts of ‘families we choose’ were not defined by (nor meant necessarily to include) the creation of children as kin. The contemporary shift transpires amidst racial, national and economic disparities around the ability of people to ‘couple’ or to access reproductive technology. In line with early feminist and queer studies, this commentary calls for a broadening of the view of reproduction, and for more direct engagement between the primarily critical discourse on reproductive justice and the frequently celebratory discourse on queer families.

Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice: How Women are Choosing Parenthood without Marriage and Creating the New American FamilySingle by Chance, Mothers by Choice: How Women are Choosing Parenthood without Marriage and Creating the New American Family, by HertzRosanna. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006. 273 pp.

but three are tied to the academy in some significant way. Not even everyday life is represented, but the tentacles of the corporate university reaching into the person. By the end of the book, even the biographies of the contributors are disappearing, reduced to a third person inventory of position and place. This provides a decisive clue to what the “I” is. It is not a person, but an extension of the institutional setting into a personalized space, what Weber might have described as a hard shell inscribed with a corporate identity. If the word “I” was taken out, the essays would still move, so dominant is the institutional presence.

26.00 cloth. ISBN: 0195179900.

Judith Stacey has added a new preface to her classic study of how the traditional nuclear family has been supplanted by a variety of new relationships that are not defined by blood ties and traditional gender roles.