Lesbian and Gay Parents, Heterosexual Kinship, and Queer Dreams: Making Families in Twenty-First Century Taiwan

This article analyzes ways that legal and social understandings of kinship intersect for Taiwanese queer parents and prospective parents. Parents in this research experience varying degrees of legal and cultural intelligibility within the existing household registration system and the familial contexts in which they reside and carry out their daily lives. Many are rearing children in multigenerational, extended family households and are juggling a variety of gendered family roles and responsibilities that shape their parenting practices. Their experiences highlight the limits of rights discourses that treat marriage and parenthood as largely class- and gender-neutral institutions and presuppose a nuclear family model. Such uncritical approaches to marriage and parenthood leave the normative power of these systems intact even as they provisionally open to greater numbers of people. The article foregrounds pathways to parenthood and struggles for legal recognition among queers in a variety of family arrangements, including those that do not fit within the conventional representation of a cohabiting and marriage-desiring same-sex couple with children.

Attachment Patterns for Lesbian/Gay Individuals with Unaccepting Parents

While much research has considered how lesbian/gay parents affect straight children, less attention has been paid to how heterosexual parents affect their lesbian/gay children. At the same time, attachment theorists are trying to determine how contiguous individuals’ differential attachments are to each other, especially in predictive utility. A secure base is best for exploratory processes such as sexual-identity development. Given that lovers share the role of primary attachment with parents in adulthood, lovers for lesbian/gay individuals, compared to heterosexuals, may be a unique source of social support against rejection sensitivity and victimization by unaccepting parents. The results of this study suggest that rejection sensitivity moderates the effect of parents’ acceptance/rejection on parental attachment patterns. Moreover, parental attachment patterns differentially predict romantic attachment dimensions across orientation, and exert limited influence on lesbian/gay romantic attachment and satisfaction relative to heterosexuals. This suggests that lesbians/gays use their romantic attachment as primary to a greater degree than heterosexuals, and dissociate their romantic attachment from their parental attachment in a manner not observed for heterosexuals. This likely reflects protective adaptations given adversarial parental relationships.

Para gustos, los colores. El matizado mundo delirante de los géneros: la ‘patergaynidad’ en otro tipo de familia en Azul y no tan rosa de Miguel Ferrari

Blue and Not So Pink (2012), created by Miguel Ferrari as director and screenwriter, received innumerable positive and negative critiques. In spite of the negative evaluations, the film managed to become a great box office success in Venezuela and in 2013 obtained the Goya Award for the best Spanish American film. This study will analyze the film’s most significant themes; that is, that the consideration of human diversity as an element should be accepted in our societies, the possibility of giving voice to persons who suffer discrimination and the issue of self-acceptance. The notion that the film proposes that there should be other types of families in our societies will be considered: families with gay parents, those with only one parent, and therefore, families that are formed with no blood relationship whatsoever. The trajectory of the main characters within parameters that are juxtaposed and, at the same time, complement each other will be observed—the private and public world, the social sphere and the familial one. Consequently, the transformation that occurs in the family unit to include more unbiased parental rights for homosexuals and transexuals in the formation of a new kind of family core will likewise be examined. By way of conclusion, it will be observed how the musical diversity of the film is developed intradiegetically to support gender diversity, as well as an examination of the concept of gender within heterocentric society and the way in which relationships of homosexual couples and transgender couples challenge patriarchal society and the dichotomous, binary system it adopted.

Representations of Surrogacy: Feminist and LGBT Controversy over Film and Media

Although transnational surrogacy has received much criticism owing to racial and class issues, the U.S. media portrays domestic surrogacy with overwhelming positive languages by employing specific narrative frameworks. Accompanying this shift, it is not so surprising that the number of gestational carrier cycles have skyrocketed from 727 to 3,423 over the last decade. (Note 1) In particular, increase in the number of gay and single men looking for surrogacy has yielded more controversies. This paper asks the following questions: How does the documentary Made in Boise present surrogacy in the context of a broader debate over feminist and LGBT’s positions? How are gay parents used in the altruism narrative framework to downplay exploitation of surrogacy? By providing insight into the intricate economic and power relationships between surrogate and a new emerging group of intended parents, my case study prompts broader questions such as: How to best document the most authentic narratives of the surrogates? How can feminist and LGBT scholars reconcile their viewpoints over surrogacy? These are pertinent questions concerning exploitation and coercion in the industry, thus influencing future feminists’ studies on reproductive technology and politics.

Making visible the invisible: Bisexual parents ponder coming out to their kids

Unlike straight or gay parents whose sexuality is often made obvious to their children based on the gender composition of their relationships, bisexual and other non-monosexual parents are regularly and inaccurately assumed to be straight or gay. As a result, bisexuals in both same-gender and mixed-gender relationships must choose whether or not to come out to their children. This article uses data from an online survey of 767 US parents and explores reasons that bisexual parents offered when discussing their plans to come out or not come out to their children. Using a qualitative, thematic analysis of the open-ended question “Do you plan to tell your children about your sexual orientation? Why or why not?”, this article demonstrates that bisexuals planned to come out in order to educate their children on diversity, to encourage their children to be allies, to combat bisexual erasure, to promote honest communication, to convey solidarity to their LGBTQ+ children, and for necessary logistical reasons. Some parents did not plan to come out to their children, explaining that their sexuality was private, shameful, or confusing. Others said they would come out if asked, or if their children were also queer. These motivations relate to bisexual parents’ unique experiences with binegativity and erasure.

Lesbian and gay individual parenting desires in heteronormative contexts

The cultural, social and institutional barriers that LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) individuals have to face play crucial roles in their desires and intentions to have children. However, unlike the many studies on the decision-making process in the transition to parenthood, few studies have analysed the origins of parenting desires and intentions among LGBT individuals. This study explores the desires and intentions to have children amongst a sample of childless lesbian and gay Italian individuals. A sample of 285 participants (127 women and 158 men) completed a research protocol composed of items evaluating the strength of their desire to have children, their intentions about having children and their general attitudes towards parenting. The findings revealed how, despite the persisting depth of heteronormativity in the country and the absence of legal protection for lesbian and gay parents, a large percentage of participants expressed the desire and intention to have a child. These parenting intentions would seem to be positively influenced mainly by the negative attitudes towards childlessness and by the value attributed to parenthood.

Children in LGBT Political Discourses in the United States

The role of the symbolic child figure has shifted substantially within discourses of LGBT politics and activism in the United States since World War II. From the 1950s well into the 1980s, the putatively heterosexual child was portrayed as the potential victim of homosexuality—victimized by influence, predation, and infection. By the early 21st century, the child had become a figure who was often represented as benefiting from LGBT civil rights—either as the child of lesbian or gay parents whose union was strengthened by the acquisition of civil benefits and protections or as a young gay or trans person struggling to accept a non-normative identity. This cultural shift both reflected and helped generate specific governmental and institutional policies—from the sexual psychopath laws of the 1950s, to the emergence of school-based Gay-Straight Alliances in the 1990s, to the central role of the child in debates over same-sex marriage in the 2000s.