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The great diversity of sexual minority communitiesFootnote 1 in the USA and other parts of the world has received limited attention in the academic literature on same-sex parenting. Such research has been dominated by studies that emphasize the experiences of higher-income, well-educated, White lesbians living in Western nations (Biblarz & Savci, 2010). In this chapter, we analyze characteristics of racial and sexual minority families in the USA and internationally, revealing the substantial geographic, socioeconomic, and other types of variations in these households. We use an intersectional framework within the field of sociology (Choo & Ferree, 2010; Collins, 2000; Moore, 2012) to highlight race, class, gender, and sexuality as mutually constitutive in the lives of sexual minority parents and their children. While race and sexuality also intersect for families in the dominant or “unmarked” categories (heterosexual and White), our focus in this chapter is on those groups for whom race and sexual minority status are overtly salient in the ways they structure inequalities in society and influence pathways to and experiences of family formation (Greene, 1997). As much as this review provides important variation in the experiences of sexual minority families, it also challenges the academic community to substantially broaden its scope when studying same-sex parenting.

In the second edition of Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment, Patricia Hill Collins (2000) conceptualizes sexuality in three ways: as a free-standing system of oppression similar to oppressions of race, class, nation, and gender; as an entity that is manipulated within each of these distinctive systems of oppression; and as a social location or conceptual glue that binds intersecting oppressions together and helps demonstrate how oppressions converge. In her later work, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (Collins, 2004), sexuality is further theorized through the lens of heterosexism, which she identifies as a freestanding system of power similar to racism, sexism, and class oppression that suppresses heterosexual and homosexual African-American women and men in ways that foster Black subordination.

Each of these conceptualizations reveals the ways intersecting oppressions rely on sexuality to mutually construct one another. As we will demonstrate in this chapter, Collins’ (2004) application of the intersectionality paradigm to the study of Black women’s sexuality is also a useful way to conceptualize sexuality as one of several social locations racial and sexual minority parents inhabit. In today’s social and political climate, sexual minority group interests are often analyzed and advocated for in ways that privilege the particular interests of higher-income Whites within those groups. When these interests are constructed as separate from and even oppositional to the interests of (presumably heterosexual) racial minority groups, it is sexual minority people of color and their families who are especially harmed (Cahill, 2010; Romero, 2005).

The study of race is also important within the larger discourses of diversity politics. For example, Hicks (2011) argues that ignoring race and racism in relation to lesbian, gay, and queer parenting is an example of White racial privilege. In his analysis of in-depth interviews with lesbian, gay, and queer parents (also see Chap. 10), the author describes one White gay father who claimed that race was a “nonissue” for him and his two adopted Vietnamese sons. However, Hicks notes that this White gay father could not possibly know all the ways his sons will be positioned racially by others. The literature we review rejects a color-blind view of race as a “nonissue” for parents and families and instead acknowledges the significance of race/ethnicity as well as nationhood in sexual minority family formation.

There are three key components of this chapter. We begin with descriptive information about the size, location, and other demographic characteristics of racial minority same-sex couple-headed families in the USA. The next section examines pathways to and experiences of parenting for racial and sexual minority families living in the USA, as well as White same-sex parents of racial minority children. In the final section, we shift our attention to sexual minority parenting in international contexts and explore some of the theoretical challenges presented by this expanding field of vision. The chapter concludes with a number of practical implications that emerge from this literature and points to directions for future research.

Demographic Characteristics of U.S. Racial Minority Same-Sex Partner Families

The demographic information we present is drawn from a variety of sources, including 2000 U.S. Census data; the 2000 Black Pride Survey, administered by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and distributed to 2,700 Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in nine cities; and a survey conducted by the Human Rights Campaign in 2007–2008 that purposively sampled African-American, Latina/o, and Asian and Pacific Islander American LGBT communities (Cahill, 2010; Cahill, Battle, & Meyer, 2003; Cianciotto, 2005; Dang & Frazer, 2004; Dang & Vianney, 2007; Gates, Lau, & Sears, 2006; Romero, 2005). Our focus on these specific racial/ethnic and sexual minority groups reflects the limits of available data, as other racial and sexual minority populations (such as indigenous sexual minority families) are not represented in the data in sufficient numbers to sketch their demographic characteristics.

African-Americans

According to Dang and Frazer’s (2004) report on data from the 2000 U.S. Census, Black same-sex partner households (defined as same-sex partner households in which at least one person identifies as Black or African-American) are 14% of all same-sex partner households, a proportion that closely mirrors the population of Black households in the USA. Seventy-nine percent of these families (all of which were headed by two women or two men) were headed by two Black women or two Black men and 21% were interracial households. Characteristics of these families were more similar to characteristics of the broader population of Black families in the USA than to those of White same-sex couple-headed families. Specifically, Black same-sex couples reported parenting at rates similar to Black different-sex couples and significantly higher than White same-sex couples. Fifty-two percent of Black female same-sex couples and 36% of Black male same-sex couples were raising at least one child under the age of 18, compared to 32% of White female same-sex couples and 18% of White male same-sex couples. Black same-sex couples were also more than twice as likely as White same-sex couples to be parenting at least one nonbiological child, including adopted and fostered children and children of relatives.

Many Black same-sex partnered families were residing in smaller, more rural cities and towns. Of the top 10 metropolitan areas with the highest proportions of Black same-sex households, all 10 were in the South. This pattern is consistent with residential patterns among the total population of Black families in the USA, 54% of whom were residing in the South at the time of the 2000 Census (Dang & Frazer, 2004). Same-sex couples in which both partners are Black reported lower median annual household income ($41 K) than same-sex couples in which one partner was Black ($58 K) and same-sex couples in which both partners were White ($64 K). Same-sex couples in which one or both partners are Black were also less likely to own their homes (52%) than were same-sex couples in which both partners are White (71%). These findings mirror larger patterns of racial disparities in wealth and income in the USA (Campbell & Kaufmann, 2006; Oliver & Shapiro, 1997).

Dang and Frazer (2004) highlight numerous public policy implications that emerge from these data. Because Black same-sex couples are more economically disadvantaged on average than are White same-sex couples, at the same time that they are more likely to be raising children, they are disproportionately harmed by certain laws that limit access of sexual minorities to certain rights and benefits. Such policies make it more difficult for adults to include children they co-parent with a same-sex partner on their health insurance plans and protect them in other ways. Cahill et al. (2003) make a similar argument based on their analysis of the 2000 Black Pride Survey. Given high rates of parenting among survey respondents, and evidence that racial and economic disparities among LGBT people mirror those of the larger society, Cahill et al. (2003) frame same-sex marriage, fostering, and adoption as matters of racial and economic justice. They observe that laws prohibiting same-sex fostering and adoption are most prevalent in southern states with the largest Black populations and the highest rates of parenting among Black same-sex couples.

Dang and Frazer (2004) and Cahill et al. (2003) further argue that antigay parenting policies threaten the Black community as a whole by reducing the pool of potential foster and adoptive parents for Black children who are overrepresented in the foster care system. Black children who enter the foster care system remain there longer, are moved more often, and receive the least desirable placements of any group of children. When prospective parents are not permitted to foster or adopt because of their sexual minority status, the outcome for many Black children is continued upheaval and non-placement (Washington, 2008). By situating the concerns of same-sex parents and their children not only in relation to issues of gender and sexuality but also in relation to larger structures of racial and economic inequality, these scholars are expanding the discourse around sexual minority parenting in needed directions.

Hispanic and Latina/o Americans

According to a 2005 report, 12% of all same-sex partner households in the 2000 U.S. Census include at least one Hispanic partner. This percentage is likely to have increased in the last decade, given the accelerated growth of Hispanic and Latina/o populations in the USA (Passel & Cohn, 2008). Cianciotto’s (2005) analyses of U.S. Census data revealed that Hispanic same-sex partners were twice as likely as non-Hispanic, White same-sex partners to be raising children. Among interethnic same-sex couples in which one partner was Hispanic, 54% of female couples and 41% of male couples were raising one or more children under 18. For same-sex couples in which both partners were Hispanic, parenting rates increased to 66% of female couples and 58% of male couples. Hispanic same-sex partners were raising children at nearly the same rates as Hispanic different-sex partners and shared many other characteristics in common with the overall population of Hispanic Americans. Same- and different-sex Hispanic American couples resided in the same areas of the country, with large concentrations in Arizona, California, Florida, and Texas, all states that have, at one point in time, passed constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage.

Hispanic same-sex partner households in the U.S. Census reported a lower median annual household income ($37 K) and lower rates of home ownership (48%) than did non-Hispanic White same-sex partner households ($64 K and 71%, respectively). Same-sex couples in which both partners were Hispanic received public assistance at higher rates (10% of women, 6% of men) than interethnic same-sex couples in which only one partner was Hispanic (6% of women, 3% of men) and same-sex couples in which both partners were non-Hispanic White (3% of women, 2% of men). Of all these groups, families headed by two Hispanic women were most likely to qualify for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). However, heterosexual marriage promotion, fatherhood promotion, faith-based initiatives, and paternity requirements for TANF promoted under the Bush administration made it more difficult or impossible for many of these mothers and their children to access needed benefits (Cahill, 2010; Cianciotto, 2005).

A key component of Cianciotto’s (2005) report is its discussion of immigration and citizenship. Among interethnic same-sex couples in which one partner is Hispanic, 6% of women and 8% of men were noncitizens; among same-sex couples in which both partners were Hispanic, those percentages rose to 38% of women and 51% of men (compared to just 2% of women and 3% of men in non-Hispanic White same-sex households). Cianciotto notes that U.S. immigration policy is largely based on the principle of “family unification,” which allows US citizens and permanent residents to sponsor their spouses and other close family members for immigration purposes. Family unification policies are heterosexually defined and do not include provisions for same-sex partners and families headed by same-sex couples. The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) prevents US citizens and permanent residents from sponsoring their noncitizen same-sex partners, putting many binational same-sex couples in the difficult position of living apart, moving outside the USA, or finding ways to stay together illegally under a constant threat of deportation. Binational same-sex couples who are parents must additionally protect the welfare of their children without adequate support from the State. Research on immigration, citizenship, and mixed-status families needs to be better integrated with research on sexuality minority parents and their children, for whom these issues are a central concern.

Asian and Pacific Islander Americans

The 2000 U.S. Census showed 38,203 Asian and Pacific Islander (hereafter API) Americans in households headed by a same-sex couple. Between 3% and 4% of all same-sex partner households included at least one API partner (Gates et al., 2006). In 2005, the largest ever nationwide survey of LGBT API Americans was administered by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute (Dang & Vianney, 2007). Of the 860 API survey respondents, 4% reported living with one or more children under 18 and 3% were biological parents of those children.

In 2000 U.S. Census data reported on by Gates et al. (2006), API same-sex partner households were shown to have more in common with API different-sex partners than with White same-sex partners. Like API different-sex couples, API same-sex couples are ethnically diverse and reside in areas of the country that have large populations of API Americans, with the top three states being California, New York, and Hawaii. API same-sex couples reported higher levels of education than their non-API counterparts, yet earned less on average ($55 K median household income) and were less likely to own their homes (52%) than same-sex couples in which both partners are non-Hispanic White. This pattern is consistent with research by Campbell and Kaufmann (2006) showing a penalty for API Americans in translating educational attainment into income and wealth. Disparities between API same-sex couples and non-Hispanic White same-sex couples are reflective of racial disparities in the broader US population.

Similar to findings for Hispanic and Latina/o Americans, immigration and citizenship emerged as key issues for LGBT APIs. API LGBT survey respondents ranked immigration as the number one issue facing all APIs in the USA, and one of the top four issues facing API LGBT Americans (other top issues were hate violence/harassment, media representations, and marriage equality) (Dang & Vianney, 2007). Census data show that there are 35,820 binational same-sex couples living in the USA, and in 45% of these cases, the foreign partner is Asian. Thus, it is estimated that approximately 16,000 Asian nationals are currently affected by immigration policies that prevent their US-citizen partners from petitioning for them to remain in the country (Romero, 2005). According to a 2004 report by the Asian American Federation of New York, also based on 2000 U.S. Census data, approximately one-third of all API lesbians and gays living in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles are noncitizens. Victor Romero (2005) argues that “family unification” is a long-held value among Asian Americans and one that directly challenges the anti-Asian legacy of U.S. immigration law. But not all API families are protected under the principle of family unification. API lesbian and gay couples and their children are still feeling the legacy of immigration law that constructs certain groups (formerly Asians, now lesbians and gays) as unassimilable. Romero challenges the larger API community to think carefully about its values and history and to throw its weight behind measures that would extend unification to all Asian and Pacific Island families, including those API families that include same-sex couples.

Implications for Studying Sexual Minority Parenting

In surveying the demographic characteristics of racial and sexual minority populations, we have determined that a number of new analytic approaches to the study of same-sex parenting are warranted. Several scholars have argued that same-sex parenting and related laws and policies should be framed as matters of racial and economic justice, with close attention to intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and social class (Cahill et al., 2003; Cahill & Jones, 2001; Cianciotto, 2005; Dang & Frazer 2004). Immigration and citizenship need to be more central to the study of sexual minority family formation (Cianciotto, 2005; Dang & Vianney, 2007; Romero, 2005). These analytic shifts require scholars to rethink the issues that are relevant to sexual minority parents and their children and to include such issues as racial disparities in homeownership and income, access to welfare benefits, and family unification in our academic conferences and papers, clinical practice, advocacy, and other work on behalf of sexual minority parents, families, and communities. Intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and social class highlighted in this section inform multiple dimensions of family life and are evident in the research studies discussed throughout this chapter, including pathways to and experiences of parenting, as we explore next.

Racial Variance in Pathways to and Experiences of Parenting

In the literature on same-sex parents and their children, many researchers have focused narrowly on those pathways to and experiences of parenting that are most prevalent among White, middle- and upper-income lesbians and gay men, such as alternative insemination through in vitro fertilization and co-adoption in the context of a same-sex relationship. Pathways to parenting that are more common among working-class and racial minority families receive less attention, often because of how researchers define their samples (Moore, 2011b). This omission has persisted despite evidence that a majority of parents in same-sex relationships are working class, and upper-income White gay couples are the least likely group among all same-sex couples to be parenting (Rosenfeld, 2010).

Here we consider two pathways to parenting that remain under-examined in the literature on same-sex parent families: parenting children from a prior heterosexual union and taking on the role of a mother or father to children in the extended family or racial community. We discuss how multiple minority statuses shape these pathways as well as the parenting experiences that follow, drawing examples from research on African-American and Jamaican lesbian mothers, American Indian Two-Spirit parents, and Black and Latino gay fathers. We then consider a third pathway to same-sex parenting, interracial adoption, and discuss how race matters in the lives of White parents who adopt racial and ethnic minority children.

Parenting Children from a Prior Heterosexual Relationship: The Case of Lesbian Mothers

Many researchers have framed their studies of lesbian motherhood in certain ways as to make the results comparable to those of other empirical studies of family structure and family process in heterosexual two-parent families. Such an analogous research design makes it easier to address central assumptions in the literature regarding the division of household labor and the distribution of childcare and childrearing tasks (Gartrell et al., 1999, 2000; Patterson, 1995). Research on lesbian-headed families also tends to be framed around long-held assumptions about lesbian identity, particularly the idea that lesbians as a group are egalitarian in their distribution of paid work, housework, and childcare, and that they organize their households and interact with each other in ways that support this principle (Dunne, 2000; Sullivan, 2004). Unfortunately, restricting samples so that they only include women who take on a lesbian identity before becoming parents biases research studies, and the literature more generally, toward the experiences of White, middle- and upper-income lesbians, who are better able to afford costly insemination procedures and who are more likely to support the ideological principles of egalitarian feminism (Moore, 2011a). Maintaining such a narrow definition of who is a lesbian parent does a disservice to our understanding of the complexities of lesbian motherhood because it overrepresents the less common route to a lesbian identity status and lesbian family formation. That is, the majority of today’s mothers who identify as lesbian became parents by bearing a child in the context of a prior heterosexual relationship (Morris, Balsam, & Rothblum, 2002).

In her research on African-American lesbian families, Moore (2008, 2011a) found that many women who had become mothers in the context of prior heterosexual unions continued to make a concentrated effort to satisfy the societal definition of a “good mother” that is implicitly linked to heterosexuality. This expectation produced a conflict for these mothers, who had to contend not only with the construction of lesbian identity as deviant but also with negative stereotypes around race and Black women’s sexuality. Their sexual orientation forced a sexual self into visibility in the context of motherhood, which frightened some and went against a politics of silence in this arena (for more information on the politics of silence, see Hammonds, 1997; Hine, 1989).

Makeda Silvera (1995), writing about lesbian motherhood for Jamaican women in the USA, says that it is the “sexual mother” that frightens the community and forces family members to close their eyes. She recalls one of the biggest criticisms she experienced from family and friends was that in openly raising her daughters as a Black lesbian in her racial community, she was flaunting her sexuality “like a red rag, a flag on a pole” (Silvera, 1995, p. 315). She says they could tolerate her as a lesbian and as a mother, but not as a lesbian mother living with a woman lover. This was “counter-culture, counter-Black, counter-mother” (p. 316). Silvera’s (1995) experience and Moore’s (2008, 2011a) research both illuminate the centrality of race to discourses about motherhood. While lesbian mothers across marginalized racial groups may struggle to be viewed as “good mothers,” the standards to which they are held are shaped not only by gender and sexuality but also by constructions of race, racism, and intraracial group dynamics.

Accounting for racial variance in pathways to and experiences of parenting reveals the substantial diversity of mothering experiences among lesbian-identified women. Just as importantly, it introduces new frameworks for research and analysis of lesbian parenting and parenting more broadly, which explore how parenting discourses are gendered as well as racialized.

Parenting in Extended Families and Communities

In many racial and ethnic communities, family responsibilities, including the provision of financial and emotional support, elder and child caretaking, and other household duties, are shared throughout social networks that may involve extended family and friends’ participation in a variety of familial roles (Meyers, Han, Waldfogel, & Garfinkel, 2001; Wilhelmus, 1998). Research on Black families has shown that kinship arrangements commonly include multigenerational family structures as well as other types of extended family households (Mays, Chatters, Cochran, & Mackness, 1998). Several researchers have found that Latina/o and Asian immigrant families sustain complex networks that join households and communities—even across geographic borders—to provide assistance and support after immigration (Itzigsohn, Cabral, Medina, & Vazquez, 1999; Vidal de Haymes, Kilty, & Segal, 2000). Sexual minority family members are also a part of these multigenerational and extended family networks. In addition to their own biological, foster, or adopted children, many lesbian and gay people are “parenting” other children in their family networks by providing financial and emotional support to siblings, nieces and nephews, and grandchildren (Mays et al., 1998; Moore, 2011a). These parenting and family arrangements are not showing up in research studies that define same-sex parenting more narrowly.

Some scholars have begun to integrate sexual minority parent and family research with the broader literature on racial and ethnic minority families. Mays et al. (1998) build on literature on multigenerational African-American households and extended kin networks to analyze questionnaires returned by a national sample of more than 1,000 African-American lesbian women and gay men. Among the quarter of respondents who reported living with one or more children under 18, many lived with and assumed parenting responsibilities for grandchildren, nieces and nephews, younger siblings, and other children in their extended family networks. The researchers argue that exclusion of lesbian and gay people from family networks is disadvantageous for all members of the family, as it cuts off the flow of financial and emotional contributions that lesbian and gay people give and receive.

Other research reveals that many people are assuming parenting roles to contribute not only to their extended family networks but also to their broader racial and ethnic communities. Gilley (2006) spent 6 years living and working with members of two southwestern organizations for Native people who identify themselves as Two-Spirit. His work explores many dimensions of what it means for contemporary Indian people to “become” Two-Spirit through a synthesis of male and female qualities, and gay and Native identities. Historically, one of the most important roles Two-Spirit people assume is that of teacher and caregiver for children. Two-Spirit people teach children (especially girls) about Indian ceremonies and other cultural practices, and care for children when their parents are not able to do so. In Gilley’s research, Two-Spirit men cared for nieces, nephews, and other family members, supervised organizations for local teens, and reached out in formal and informal ways to support gay Indian youth. In keeping with their Two-Spirit identity, the men were called upon to stand in as both male and female role models for young people. The men did not describe their parenting activities in terms of a personal desire to have children or form a nuclear family together with a same-sex partner. Instead, their parenting roles were virtually indistinguishable from their obligations to the larger family, community, and tribe. By teaching children and youth about Indian culture, Two-Spirit people positioned themselves as integral to Indian life.

A second example of parenting to sustain the larger community emerges from Lewin’s (2009) research on gay fathers. Drawing from interviews with 95 gay fathers in Chicago, Los Angeles, Iowa City, and the San Francisco Bay area, Lewin analyzed the meanings gay men attach to their parenting roles and aspirations as they move across spaces defined as “gay” and those defined as related to “family” (and thus “not gay” by conventional standards). Among other meaning-making strategies, gay men in this research constructed fatherhood as “the right thing to do” in moral terms, often in response to stereotypes of gay men as morally deficient. While gay fathers across racial and ethnic categories shared how their particular heritage and family traditions shaped both their desire to be parents and their approach to childrearing, for Black gay fathers, the moral impetus for fatherhood took on a special urgency, framed as a responsibility that extended beyond their immediate circle of kin. While non-Hispanic White gay men as well as racial and ethnic minority gay men described fatherhood as “doing the right thing,” for Black gay fathers, this included doing the right thing for the broader racial community by caring for Black children who might otherwise languish in the foster care system. Lewin’s research shows the salience of race even in patterns that occur across racial groups. While non-Hispanic White gay men and racial and ethnic minority gay men used similar narrative constructs to describe their parenting, these took on different contours for Black gay fathers, who were most likely to connect their parenting narratives to larger issues of systemic racism and the survival of Black children and youth.

Latino gay dads in Lewin’s (2009) and Mallon’s (2004) research also stressed the significance of sharing an ethnic heritage with their children, drawing on biologized notions of kinship to construct their families, and placing importance on the intergenerational transmission of Latino culture. Many of the parenting activities described by these Latino gay fathers—such as observation of special holidays and other ethnic group traditions—are similar to those performed by indigenous and immigrant women whom Billson (1995) and Espiritu (2001) have recognized as being “keepers of the culture.” As keepers of the culture, women are held responsible not only for bringing up their own children but also for sustaining the larger racial, ethnic, and often transnational community. Theories of gendered parenting roles relative to the preservation of culture and community would be greatly enriched by the inclusion of sexual minority parent experiences and practices.

Transracial Adoption

Transracial adoption is the placement of a child who is of one race or ethnic group with adoptive parents of another race or ethnic group. In the USA, transracial adoption occurs primarily (though not exclusively) when White adults adopt racial minority children born in the USA or abroad. As the numbers of sexual minority parent-headed families increase, so do the numbers of White sexual minority parents raising racial minority children (Farr & Patterson, 2009). Racial minority lesbians and gay men have pointed out that race matters in lesbian and gay communities as much as it matters in the broader society (Greene, 1997). That race matters is something that parents of color know through life experience. White sexual minority parents who are raising racial minority children may or may not understand race in this way.

In Mallon’s (2004) interview study of gay fathers living in Los Angeles and New York, White gay fathers varied in how much or how little they felt race mattered for their families. Some made special efforts to prepare their children and families to deal with racism and to connect their children with a larger racial or ethnic community, while others did not feel that this was necessary, or engaged with race only superficially, viewing it primarily as an issue of “culture.” For example, one White gay father who had adopted two Latino children said that he did not do much about “instilling the native culture” in his children other than eating in Mexican restaurants (Mallon, 2004, p. 119). The literature on transracial adoption shows that the inability and/or unwillingness of parents to address questions about race, racial inequality, and ethnicity with their children may produce barriers for children’s successful racial/ethnic identity integration (Samuels, 2009; Spencer & Markstrom-Adams, 1990; Viladrich & Loue, 2009). Children have a more difficult time when they lack access to role models who have been able to successfully integrate racial identities with other identities (Spencer, 1983; Spencer & Markstrom-Adams, 1990). A growing body of research shows that race and color consciousness, not “color blindness,” is the best practice approach to transracial adoption (Quiroz, 2007; Samuels, 2009). Thus, White sexual minority parents who adopt racial minority children need to be prepared to engage with questions about race and racial inequality, or these issues may be neglected or subsumed into a discourse of cultural diversity as they were for some of the fathers in Mallon’s study.

Intersections of race and sexuality are highlighted in Richardson and Goldberg’s (2010) research on White lesbian adoptive mothers of racial and ethnic minority children. Richardson and Goldberg interviewed 20 White lesbian couples (40 women) pre- and post-adoption, asking about the challenges these women faced with regard to multiple minority statuses and their preparedness to deal with such challenges. Prior to adoption, many mothers expressed concern about the discrimination their child might face, including discrimination from members of their own families and communities who held racist and homophobic views. Many of these concerns were realized as early as 3 months post-adoption, when most couples had encountered negative feedback related to the child’s race. Mothers in this research also described positive experiences pre- and post-adoption and identified particular strengths they perceived themselves to have as lesbian parents forming multiracial families. While their perspectives on and experiences of race varied, overall these mothers espoused a color conscious rather than a color-blind ideology with regard to transracial adoption.

Stephen Hicks (2011) argues that transracial adoption by lesbian, gay, and queer parents forces us to consider how race might be relevant to the ways parenting is conceptualized and carried out. Questions of adoption, foster care, and race are related to those of resemblance and belonging—what it means to “look like” family. In interviews with lesbian adoptive couples creating multiracial families, Hicks shows the importance to many of these mothers of “looking like” a family with regard to skin color, often in anticipation of how their family might be perceived by others. While lesbian and gay parenting has a capacity to destabilize notions of racial inheritance and biological bonds, and while parents explicitly challenge these ideals, they should also be acutely aware of ways in which racism may be expressed through insistence upon “likeness/fit” as a criterion for family formation.

Implications for Studying Sexual Minority Parents

In this section, we have reviewed work on pathways to and experiences of parenting among racial and sexual minority families, as well as White lesbian and gay parents of racial minority children. Collectively, these cases reveal the limitations of current definitions of same-sex parenting, which tend to focus narrowly on families formed through pregnancy or adoption in the context of a same-sex relationship and preexistent lesbian or gay identity. This approach excludes the majority of working-class and racial minority same-sex parents, who enter into and experience parenting in other ways (such as parenting children from a prior heterosexual union or caring for children of relatives). In addition, many lesbian and gay family scholars have focused primarily or exclusively on how gender and sexuality shape same-sex parenting, but have not considered how race and culture also shape parenting discourses and practices. Researchers focusing on populations outside the USA have raised closely related critiques of current definitions and approaches to same-sex parenting, as we explore in the final section of this chapter.

Sexual Minority Parenting in International Contexts

Studies of sexual minority parents in international contexts are important to consider, as this research reveals the rich diversity of sexual minority families globally and provides new approaches to theory, clinical practice, and public policy that emerge from the unique experiences and perspectives of these households. Three themes surface in this international literature. First, we stress the importance of moving away from the typological approach common in family scholarship, which classifies parents and households as either “heterosexual” or “same sex.” This distinction is artificial for many subjects in the studies we review and one that has seriously limited the scope of family research in Africa, Asia, and other parts of the world. Second, we problematize another feature of this typological approach: the ranking of “same-sex” parents against “heterosexual” parents, using sameness as a criterion for equality and a measure of parental success (e.g., the more similar to heterosexual parents they are shown to be, the more deserving same-sex parents are of equal treatment). We take inspiration from studies of sexual minority parents in rural Indian and indigenous New Zealand communities who are not seeking sameness with heterosexuals, but rather emphasizing those traits that make their families unique. Third, we stress the role of the State in shaping the life chances of sexual minority parents and their children. In earlier sections of this chapter, we highlighted the impact of State policies and practices in the USA, such as welfare reform, on racial and sexual minority families. Here, we expand this analysis to consider how heteronormative definitions of family are constructed and enforced in different geopolitical contexts, citing examples from Japan and Chile. These examples offer a glimpse of the diverse forms heteronormative policies and practices can take. We conclude that further research is needed which considers socio-legal and citizenship issues for sexual minority parents living under different forms of governance.

Rethinking the Distinction Between “Heterosexual” and “Same-Sex” Parents

Wekker’s (2006) ethnographic research on women engaged in “the mati work” in Paramaribo, Suriname, is especially instructive with regard to the limitations of a heterosexual/same-sex typology for analyzing parenting. Mati refers to love and sexual intimacy between women, conceived of as a pleasing behavior rather than as the basis of an individual or collective identity. Over a period of 10 years, Wekker immersed herself in the lives of 25 working-class Afro-Surinamese women, who ranged in age from 23 to 84 at the start of the research. Wekker found that women who mati usually have children by men and maintain sexual relationships with the fathers of their children, often in exchange for men’s financial contributions to their households. Their primary emotional and romantic attachments, however, are to other women, and most rely on the help of other women to bring up their children. Women doing “the mati work” described their relationships with men as primarily transactional, and their relationships with women as more passionate, imbued with strong feelings of infatuation, desire, love, jealousy, and expectations of fidelity. These women did not, however, think of themselves as essentially different from women who form relationships exclusively with men.

Wekker (2006) uses the case of Afro-Surinamese women who mati to show the limitations of the Western concept of homosexual identity. We use it here to show the limitations of the concept of same-sex parenting. Women who mati are actively parenting with other women and are finding sexual and romantic fulfillment in these same-sex relationships; however, they do not adopt a lesbian identity or see themselves as belonging to a community based on their sexual object choice, nor do they necessarily discontinue all sexual relations with men. Wekker’s findings are consistent with reports that in African and other non-Western societies, women who are engaged in same-sex relationships “have” men to fulfill certain functions, one of them being to reproduce (Aarmo, 1999; Potgieter, 2003). Conventional approaches to defining and studying same-sex parenting have not accounted for these kinds of arrangements.

In addition, many women outside of the USA who have same-sex desires enter into or remain in heterosexual marriages concurrently with their same-sex relationships. Drawing on her ethnographic research with lala (lesbian) identified women in Beijing, Engebretsen (2009) presents three case studies to highlight a range of lala family arrangements. One woman in the study remained heterosexually married and mothered a child in the context of this marriage, while also dating her lala partner. Two other lalas created a marriage-like relationship with one another and merged families, sharing care work for elderly parents. In the third case, a self-identified chunde T (pure T; similar, though not equivalent, to “stone butch”) chose to marry a gay male friend to satisfy her parents. Those who married men were able to maintain what Engebretsen calls “hetero-marital face,” but found it difficult to form and keep lasting same-sex relationships because of the demands their marital and family arrangements placed on them. The women who formed a marriage-like relationship with one another found more lasting satisfaction in that relationship, but expressed deep regret at their inability to have a child together. Engebretsen does not conclude that any one of these family arrangements is superior to or ultimately more satisfying than the others. Instead, she critiques Western discourses that prioritize certain marital ideologies and relationship strategies, without fully recognizing the diversity of nonnormative sexualities globally.

By classifying households as either heterosexual or same sex, family scholars exclude those households where parenting arrangements are shared among multiple adults who may be romantically and/or sexually connected to one another. The international literature shows that these arrangements are much more common than family scholars account for given existing typologies, and the studies we reviewed require family scholars to think more broadly about what sexual minority parenting might look like. A broader approach is also needed in research on US populations, where the heterosexual/same-sex distinction is no less problematic [see, for example, scholarship by Pfeffer (2010) on transsexual and transgender families, and by Moss (2012) on bisexual and polyamorous families in the USA, which raise similar concerns about how these families are classified].

Moving Beyond “Sameness” as a Measure of Parental Success

The international literature on sexual minority parenthood reveals that many of these adults do not seek “sameness” with heterosexuals as a way to legitimate their parenting—a common trope in discourses about lesbian and gay parenting in the USA (Biblarz & Stacey, 2010). Instead, they make conscious choices to parent differently from those around them and pursue different goals for their children’s futures. In Swarr and Nagar’s (2003) case study of a sexual minority female couple raising two daughters in rural India, the couple chose not to arrange marriages for their daughters despite familial and community pressure to do so. They also made the decision not to adopt a son, which would have ensured their own later life social security. These mothers explained that they wanted their daughters to receive an inheritance so that they would have the option not to marry; if they had a son, he would receive the entire inheritance. They connected their vision for their daughters’ future independence to their own struggles for independence from compulsory heterosexual marriage, and their desires to transform marriage and family to make these institutions fairer for women and sexual minorities.

Glover, McKree, and Dyall (2009) used focus group interviews to study fertility issues and access to reproductive technologies in Maori (New Zealand indigenous) communities. Among takatapui (nonheterosexual) women interviewed, the issue of sperm donation was discussed at length. Some takatapui women reported that they preferred gay male sperm donors because they wanted to limit the influence of heterosexuality on their children, and because they wanted to pass on the “gay gene” if such a thing should exist. The significance of these comments becomes more apparent when we consider the social and political climate in New Zealand, where the largest sperm bank banned gay donors until 2006. After the ban was lifted, a Professor of Genetics at New Zealand’s Canterbury University said people who received sperm from gay men should be informed that a “gay gene” might be passed to their children (Glover et al., 2009, p. 305). In a context where discourse around the possible existence of a “gay gene” has been used to directly attack sexual minority communities, takatapui mothers and prospective mothers are offering a subversive counter-discourse by constructing the “gay gene” not as a social menace, but as a positive and desirable trait.

When taken together, the two themes we have presented—rethinking the distinction between same-sex and heterosexual parents, and moving beyond “sameness” as a measure of parental success—produce alternative ways of conceptualizing the particular needs, desires, and social roles of sexual minority parents. Many of these adults have not constructed an individual or collective identity based on sexual object choice, and they do not see themselves as belonging to a different social category than people who prefer different-sex partners. However, they see themselves as making efforts to instill particular values in their children that may differ from some of the more traditional values in their cultures of origin. Neither identity-based social movements nor comparative research that measures same-sex parenting, against heterosexual parenting, is likely to hold significant meaning for these parents. While exposing the limits of existing paradigms, studies of non-Western sexual minority parenting focus on the aspects of individuals’ lives that parents and families themselves find most salient.

The Role of the State in Regulating Same-Sex Parents and Their Children

Drawing on 6 years of ethnographic research in the Japanese lesbian community, including multiple life histories with 10 lesbian women ranging in age from mid-20s to early 50s, Chalmers (2002) argues that the processes of marriage, childbearing, and childrearing consolidate Japanese women’s status as adults, “whole people”, and full citizens in contemporary Japan. She traces the contemporary idealization of Japanese motherhood to the Meiji period, the institutionalization of the concept of ryosai kenbo (good wife, wise mother) and the accompanying ideology of the “mothering instinct,” which the Japanese government promoted as a part of the process of modernization. She additionally notes the relationship between institutionalized heterosexuality and children’s citizen status. A Japanese child is classified as “legitimate” only if the child is acknowledged by the household head, defined as the child’s father. Although attempts to equalize birth status were made in 1995, legitimate children continue to accrue social advantages as they navigate the household registration system, the education system, and other social institutions. In 1993, the Prime Minister of Japan was quoted as saying, “discrimination against children out of wedlock, in order to promote respect for legal marriage, is a reasonable distinction to make” (Chalmers, 2002, p. 115). A mother’s marital status therefore matters greatly not only for her own social standing but also for the social standing of her children. For the lesbian women in Chalmers’ study, the social penalty attached to being an unwed mother caused equal or greater anxiety than the social penalty attached to being a lesbian. Some of these women chose to enter or remain in marriages to men because they wanted their children to have socio-legal legitimacy.

Herrera (2009) uses ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews with 29 Chilean lesbian mothers ranging in age from 25 to 72 to explore how lesbians in Chile understand and carry out parenthood. Her respondents were acutely aware of their erasure through State policies and practices, such as the absence of any legal recognition or protection for same-sex relationships, and the denial of adoption and reproductive technologies to lesbians. Many of these women hid their sexual orientation from their families and communities (and especially from their ex-husbands) because they feared losing custody of their children. They saw their motherhood and their lesbian relationships and identities as compatible, yet recognized that they would be viewed and treated as “bad mothers” within the court system because of their lesbian sexuality. Herrera (2009) notes that a legitimate fear of having one’s children taken away “profoundly marks the way [Chilean lesbians] experience motherhood” (p. 50).

Research studies like those by Chalmers (2002) and Herrera (2009) highlight the role of the State in regulating same-sex parents across societies and the diversity of forms this regulation can take. Through such constructs as illegitimate children and unfit mothers, courts of law and other State apparatuses are shaping the life chances of same-sex parents and their children, in many cases excluding them from full citizenship. Family scholars have begun to use the lens of citizenship to analyze lesbian and gay parenthood in the USA (see, for example, Lewin, 2009; Ryan-Flood, 2009). This conversation needs to be expanded to include sexual minority parents who are creating families under a variety of forms of governance and taking on unique socio-legal challenges in their respective national contexts.

Implications for Studying Sexual Minority Parents

Raewyn Connell (2007) argues for a transformation of social science disciplines through the inclusion of sources of knowledge production that originate from “the global south”—regions outside the dominant European and North American metropole. Theoretical approaches advanced from these areas have the potential to speak to and about European and North American life by challenging us theoretically and in ways that are relevant to the study of populations within as well as outside the USA. This work offers a contribution to the field of sexuality studies more broadly as well as to the study of specific sexual minority populations by destabilizing the same-sex/heterosexual typology and the problematic measurement of same-sex parents against their heterosexual counterparts, advancing new understandings of sexuality and the State. We have tried to show key ways that international research can inform our analytic approach to sexual minority parenting. Further research in international contexts is needed to develop our understanding of sexual minority family formation and to expand the theory, practice, and policy decisions concerning these families.

Directions for Future Research

An emerging body of work on racial and sexual minority parents demands more of scholars in several areas. To make the conversation about sexual minority parenting more inclusive and comprehensive, researchers need to be cognizant of how methods and sampling have shaped what we know, and do not know, about sexual minority parents and their children. Social scientists must rethink definitions of “same-sex parenting” and parenting in general, to account for the variety of ways in which people create families and bring children into those families. Current definitions exclude many common practices, such as parenting children from prior heterosexual unions, bearing and rearing children in the context of on-going heterosexual marriages or transactional sexual arrangements maintained concurrently with same-sex relationships, and parenting children in extended family and community networks. By relying on narrow definitions of who “counts” as a sexual minority parent (often defined as subjects who entered into a lesbian or gay identity prior to becoming parents through artificial insemination or adoption), researchers implicitly bias the data toward White, middle-class families, who are more likely to conform to such definitions, but less likely to be parenting than racial and sexual minority families.

Social science researchers also need to recognize a wider range of issues that are of key concern to sexual minority parents. Issues of immigration and citizenship are not often included in public conversations about same-sex parenting, yet are profoundly important to many racial minority same-sex parents and their children. How the State constructs sexual citizen subjects has implications for parenting and family formation within and across societies in ways that scholars are just beginning to analyze. Sexual minority parenting might be framed as an issue of racial and economic justice, yet political and legal debates tend to focus exclusively on the gender and sexual orientation of parents, without regard for the racial implications of laws and policies about same-sex marriage, fostering, and adoption. In addition to rethinking who counts as a sexual minority parent, as we have argued above, researchers need to rethink the issues that are shaping the quality of life for sexual minority parents and their children, and pay more attention to such issues as immigration law and welfare reform, which are ranked as important by families themselves.

By accounting for the racial variance in pathways to and experiences of parenting, and by expanding our research beyond White, Western populations, this chapter also opens up new entry points into some of the central debates within family and sexuality studies. Issues of sameness and difference are raised by Biblarz and Stacey (2010) in their article on the ways gender and sexuality of parents relate to children’s well-being. They argue that having outcomes equivalent to those of heterosexual parents is an inherently problematic way to legitimate same-sex parenting. Studies discussed in the present work extend this line of reasoning. Rather than seeing heterosexual parenting as the benchmark for success, some racial and sexual minority parents consciously alter their parenting styles in pursuit of different outcomes for their children. Parents and families in much of this work challenge heteronormativity in deeper ways than a discourse of “sameness” can accomplish.

The work we have reviewed lends empirical support to intersectionality theories that motivate us to move beyond additive models of structural location. Racial and sexual minority families interact with their social worlds in ways that are not reducible to theories of race and racism, or to theories of sexuality and heterosexism. Reintegrating racial and sexual minority parents and their children into research, practice, and policy promises to expand our knowledge about the population of same-sex parent-headed families, at the same time that it enriches existing theories and questions, and offers new possibilities for moving forward as a field.