Lesbian Couples Transition To Parenthood

During the 1920’s, the ideal family would be the dad would be the breadwinner and provide for the family, and the mother would be the housewife who would cook, clean, and watch the kids. There seems to be a similar pattern in today’s society. Men are less frequent to take a paternity leave than women, which results in a gender imbalance in employment (Pesonen). This defaults to sex stereotypes in the balance work and family demands between men and

In the article “ A Mother's Day Kiss Off,” author Leslie Bennetts claims that even through all of the obstacles that women have had to go through to get to this point, they are still discriminated against when it comes to parenting. Bennetts explains how gender roles still exist. The author tries to give examples of how women should work to improve the roles of women with families. In the article “The Myth of Co-Parenting: How It Was Supposed to Be. How It Was.” author Hope Edelman claims it was not her choice to be the commanding “parent” (55). Throughout the article the author talks about the struggles her and her husband have had. Edelman thought marriage was 50/50, but figured out that that is not always true. The author

Transforming Law 's Family is a book that examines the specific difficulties confronted by planned lesbian families as they endeavor to characterize their parental rights and explore a family legal framework that does not generally grasp option types of parentage. Fiona Kelly, an associate educator in the faculty of law at the University of British Columbia is the author of the book. With her critical awareness of the law’s breaking points, joined empirical research, and hypothetical engagement, to argue the lawful issues raised by lesbian parenthood, focusing principally on legal parentage. The book is broken down into six chapters. the first chapter discuss the legal and social context of planned lesbian parenthood , the second chapter talked about the terms of gay and lesbian family social

There is much debate on what constitutes as a family today. However, Ball (2002) states, “The concept of the traditional family…is not an immutable one. It is a social construct that varies from culture to culture and, over time, the definition changes within a culture” (pp. 68). There is a growing diversity of families today including the commonality of sole-parenting. In order to explore aspects of sole-parenthood objectively, I need to reflect and put aside my personal experience of growing up in sole-parent household. Furthermore, this essay will explore the historical origins, cultural aspects discussing the influences and implications of gender identity, and social structures of sole-parent families, as well as consider the

Divisions of household labour and child care, which have been argued to be markers of love and intimacy, differ to a great deal depending on a couple’s gender ideology. Greenstein (1996) undertook an important study drawing on existing qualitative data from the National Survey of Families and Households attained via interviews and surveys, to re-examine the relationship between equality and labour. Greenstein (1996) found that egalitarian women are less likely to do more housework than their partners and are more likely to perceive the division of household labour as unjust. Supporting this, Hochschild & Machung (1989) have noted that a couple’s gender ideology leads to the division of labour within the relationship. Moreover, findings from

The job that most women are pressured to have is motherhood. Only recently has it became socially acceptable for husbands to stay home and take care of the children. Due to the fact that women were not allowed to participate in the affairs of men like work, school, and politics, they have been pigeonholed into the stay at home category. In fact, according to Beauvoir “a man would feel that he was lowering himself by helping with tasks hitherto assigned to women” (Beauvoir). Contemporary Women’s Issues Database is active in educating the world on gender inequality. They believe that, “gender feminists believe that the husband-wife relationship is inherently oppressive to women and that the traditional family propagates this ‘oppression’… gender feminists envision a brave new world in which reproduction is socially-constructed, rather than biologically-determined” (Contemporary Women’s Issues Database). Women have broken that hold in the last five years and are pushing forward. There are still gains that need to be made, but the world is in that

Many studies examine the influences of the child-care practices of employed moms on kids, however, disregard how employed moms' experience of motherhood influence their own lives and their childrearing limits. Susan Lewis in her article “Motherhood and Employment: The Impact of Social and organizational Values (1991)” examines the social development of parenthood and occupation and their effect on moms. “Cultural directives prescribe that women should become mothers and subsequently reduce their involvement in paid work, or, more recently that women can fulfill all the demands of full-time exclusive mothering and full-time paid work, without modifying the demands of either” (Lewis 195). She points out the connection between “employment” and

A vast majority of individuals believe that maternity leave only affects women; however, that is not the case. Not only does maternity leave affect women, but it affects: children of the soon-to-be-mothers, husbands, boyfriends, significant others, but also the workplace of those mentioned. The workplace struggles because managers are forced to temporarily replace the mother expecting, which may result in a delay in performance management for the sake of the company (Li, 2015). Women of all ages are affected by maternity leave, as long as they are able to bear children and if they decide to do so in the future. In addition, mothers who choose the additional responsibility of adoption should be included in this bracket. Hegemony plays a large

In “House full of Love: Bringing up Children in Polyamorous Relationships”, Alessandra Iantaffi (2009) shares a personal narrative of her experience as a participant in qualitative research on queer polyamorous relationships. Iantaffi leaves the audience with an authentic experience of lives lived outside heteronormativity, in the process, trying to create space for alternative family models other than the conventional nuclear family typically dictated by Western ideology. This article provides a basic understanding of queer polyamorous relationships and what they look like as part of a family unit and in parenting. Iantaffi does not paint a fantastical vision of the lives of queer polyamory, rather

Indicative of a shifting political and cultural landscape, lesbians are entering into parental roles in greater numbers than ever before. A ‘gayby boom’ in North America has occurred over the last 30 years (Johnson and O’Connor 2002; Salholz 1990; Gartrell, Hamilton, Banks, Mosbacher, Reed, Sparks and Bishop 1996) and projections indicate further growth (McManus et al 2006; Roberts 2006). Lesbians, and specifically butch lesbians, have always had babies and been mothers; however, the recent growth of lesbian families is simultaneously occurring with an emergent presence of lesbian familial relationships in popular culture. To ascertain if representations are serving the growing community they represent, it is vital to understand how these pop cultural representations portray and affect lesbian mothers.

Public discourse relies on tropes of motherhood, parenting, and family: The bodies of mothers belong to feminine (Hine 2013; Kinser 2010), heterosexual, monogamous, married women (Morris and McInerney 2010). Heavily entrenched in these tropes is the notion of monomaternalism. Monomaternalism has been defined by Shelley Park (2013) as an ideology and practice that upholds the heteropatriarchal nuclear family, residing at the “intersection of patriarchy, heteronormativity, capitalism, and Eurocentrism” (7). Despite the growing number of lesbian parents, evidence suggests that many, including political and legal institutions, struggle to conceive of how a child might have more than one mother, or how lesbian and gay people are able to have children.

Western households are a site for ‘traditional’ family values because they espouse rigid gender identities and compulsory heterosexuality (Erhart 2013). Lesbian and queer families are excluded from ‘traditional’ notions of family and reproduction which constitute the ideological locus of domesticity (Hammock 2009; Seidman 1997). Societal attitudes mandate lesbian compulsory childlessness (Parks 1998) because lesbians present a threat to heterosexual family values, and are distinctly non-procreative (Thompson 2002). This rhetoric is a dynamic/static binary of family. Dynamic family forms represent ‘traditional’ families which are White, heterosexual, and functionally procreative (Thompson 2002; Farrow 2014). Unable to fulfill the

In this chapter, I compare and contrast representations of gender and motherhood in two pop culture sites—the film The Kids Are All Right, the television series The Fosters. My intention is to examine representations of gender and motherhood and uncover these discourses affect lesbian parents and lesbians more broadly. The following sections divide into individual discussions of each cultural text to reveal the cogs within each site. I then compare and contrast both texts to investigate the tensions between both productions and how the discourses thematically collude. Finally, this comparative analysis considers who is harmed and who benefits from the disciplinary discourses of gender and motherhood these productions

In this article, Doucet focuses on the question of why there are preexistent gender differences surrounding parenting and the responsibility for children in heterosexual couples. Although there has been an increase in fathers’ involvement in childcare, mothers still remain strongly associated with the responsibility for children. This trend has not shifted even when mothers are involved with the same amount, or even more paid employment than their husband. Consider the fact that Canadian studies have discovered that although women have increased their involvement in paid work, they still did more domestic work than men (Baker, 2014). Which lead us to wonder, why is there this bond between women and their children? Doucet believes that to erase these gender differences in parenting, the notion that women are the ‘homemaker’ and men are the ‘breadwinner’ needs to be forgotten. Doucet focuses on paid work and child caring during the first year of parenting, and emphasizes it as a crucial time period for the development of either equal or unequal parenting roles. It is suggested that long-term gender equality in caregiving among heterosexual couples can be lead by gender equality in caregiving during the first year of parenting (Doucet, 2009). Doucet states that most fathers don’t take this time to be with their baby, leaving the mother to be the primary caregiver. Some men can’t get the time off work, while others honestly just feel like they don’t need to be at home and

Many employees encounter extreme difficulty with striking the balance between work and family responsibilities. Such a challenge is due to the majority of working people take responsibility to take care of their children, disabled family members of children. As a result, the work-family conflict occurs due to the failure of the current American labor market to effectively adjust to the need and concerns of the working parents, particularly when it comes to single mothers. However, there exist a range of laws and rights which protect single mothers from discrimination in the workplace, such as the Family and Medical Leave Act, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act (Kaminer, 2016). Additionally, Kaminer (2016) assumes, “ther are numerous reasons why women work and, consequently, the problem of balancing work and parenting obligations is not going to disappear” (p. 5). Hence, many women work for supporting their families because of low incomes, which increase the issue of single parent families and increase in divorce rate. Similar to many male workers, women are also aware of the personal satisfaction and accomplishment from their employments.