Gay Fathers, Their Children, and the Making of Kinship

Gay Fathers, Their Children, and the Making of Kinship PDF Author: Aaron Goodfellow
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823266052
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
While the topic of gay marriage and families continues to be popular in the media, few scholarly works focus on gay men with children. Based on ten years of fieldwork among gay families living in the rural, suburban, and urban area of the eastern United States, Gay Fathers, Their Children, and the Making of Kinship presents a beautifully written and meticulously argued ethnography of gay men and the families they have formed. In a culture that places a premium on biology as the founding event of paternity, Aaron Goodfellow poses the question: Can the signing of legal contracts and the public performances of care replace biological birth as the singular event marking the creation of fathers? Beginning with a comprehensive review of the relevant literature in this field, four chapters—each presenting a particular picture of paternity—explore a range of issues, such as interracial adoption, surrogacy, the importance of physical resemblance in familial relationships, single parenthood, delinquency, and the ways in which the state may come to define the norms of health. The author deftly illustrates how fatherhood for gay men draws on established biological, theological, and legal images of the family often thought oppressive to the emergence of queer forms of social life. Chosen with care and described with great sensitivity, each carefully researched case examines gay fatherhood through life narratives. Painstakingly theorized, Gay Fathers, Their Children, and the Making of Kinship contends that gay families are one of the most important areas to which social scientists might turn in order to understand how law, popular culture, and biology are simultaneously made manifest and interrogated in everyday life. By focusing specifically on gay fathers, Goodfellow produces an anthropological account of how paternity, sexuality, and masculinity are leveraged in relations of care between gay fathers and their children.

Gay Fathers, Their Children, and the Making of Kinship

Gay Fathers, Their Children, and the Making of Kinship PDF Author: Aaron Goodfellow
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823266052
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Get Book

Book Description
While the topic of gay marriage and families continues to be popular in the media, few scholarly works focus on gay men with children. Based on ten years of fieldwork among gay families living in the rural, suburban, and urban area of the eastern United States, Gay Fathers, Their Children, and the Making of Kinship presents a beautifully written and meticulously argued ethnography of gay men and the families they have formed. In a culture that places a premium on biology as the founding event of paternity, Aaron Goodfellow poses the question: Can the signing of legal contracts and the public performances of care replace biological birth as the singular event marking the creation of fathers? Beginning with a comprehensive review of the relevant literature in this field, four chapters—each presenting a particular picture of paternity—explore a range of issues, such as interracial adoption, surrogacy, the importance of physical resemblance in familial relationships, single parenthood, delinquency, and the ways in which the state may come to define the norms of health. The author deftly illustrates how fatherhood for gay men draws on established biological, theological, and legal images of the family often thought oppressive to the emergence of queer forms of social life. Chosen with care and described with great sensitivity, each carefully researched case examines gay fatherhood through life narratives. Painstakingly theorized, Gay Fathers, Their Children, and the Making of Kinship contends that gay families are one of the most important areas to which social scientists might turn in order to understand how law, popular culture, and biology are simultaneously made manifest and interrogated in everyday life. By focusing specifically on gay fathers, Goodfellow produces an anthropological account of how paternity, sexuality, and masculinity are leveraged in relations of care between gay fathers and their children.

Gay Fathers, Their Children, and the Making of Kinship

Gay Fathers, Their Children, and the Making of Kinship PDF Author: Aaron Goodfellow
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780823266067
Category : FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
"Gay Fathers, Their Children and the Making of Kinship' explores the status of fatherhood when paternity can no longer be tied to procreative sex. It addresses how the anxiety associated with securing the paternal relation is assuaged when the biological anchors that commonly assure paternity are not readily available"--

Gay Fatherhood

Gay Fatherhood PDF Author: Ellen Lewin
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226476596
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Men are often thought to have less interest in parenting than women, and gay men are generally assumed to prefer pleasure over responsibility. The toxic combination of these two stereotypical views has led to a lack of serious attention being paid to the experiences of gay fathers. But the truth is that more and more gay men are setting out to become parents and succeeding—and Gay Fatherhood aims to tell their stories. Ellen Lewin takes as her focus people who undertake the difficult process of becoming fathers as gay men, rather than having become fathers while married to women. These men face unique challenges in their quest for fatherhood, negotiating specific bureaucratic and financial conditions as they pursue adoption or surrogacy and juggling questions about their future child’s race, age, sex, and health. Gay Fatherhood chronicles the lives of these men, exploring how they cope with political attacks from both the "family values" right and the "radical queer" left—while also shedding light on the evolving meanings of family in twenty-first-century America.

Gay Men Choosing Parenthood

Gay Men Choosing Parenthood PDF Author: Gerald P. Mallon
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231508379
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
Gay parenting is a topic on which almost everyone has an opinion but almost nobody has any facts. Here at last is a book based on a thorough review of the literature, as well as interviews with a pioneering group of men who in the 1980s chose to become fathers outside the boundaries of a heterosexual union—through foster care, adoption, and other kinship relationships. This book reveals how very natural and possible gay parenthood can be. What factors influence this decision? How do the experiences of gay dads compare to those of heterosexual men? How effectively do professional services such as support groups serve gay fathers and prospective gay fathers? What elements of the social climate are helpful—and hurtful? Gay Men Choosing Parenthood challenges a great deal of misinformation, showing how gay fathers from different backgrounds adapted, perceived, and constructed their options and their families.

Gay Fathers

Gay Fathers PDF Author: Robert L. Barret
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
ISBN:
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Explores a group caught betwen the homosexual and heterosexualworlds This greatly expanded edition of Gay Fathers contains a wealth ofnew real-life stories and up-to-date information that celebratesthe power of gay fatherhood. Inspiring, definitive, scientificallyresearched, and experientially based, this thoroughly updatedvolume offers the most current data and concrete suggestions fordealing with the myriad and complex issues of gay parenting. GayFathers is the definitive resource for the more than one milliongay fathers and their families and loved ones living in the UnitedStates and Canada.

Gay Dads

Gay Dads PDF Author: Abbie E. Goldberg
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814708153
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
When gay couples become parents, they face a host of questions and issues that their straight counterparts may never have to consider. How important is it for each partner to have a biological tie to their child? How will they become parents: will they pursue surrogacy, or will they adopt? Will both partners legally be able to adopt their child? Will they have to hide their relationship to speed up the adoption process? Will one partner be the primary breadwinner? And how will their lives change, now that the presence of a child has made their relationship visible to the rest of the world? In Gay Dads: Transitions to Adoptive Fatherhood, Abbie E. Goldberg examines the ways in which gay fathers approach and negotiate parenthood when they adopt. Drawing on empirical data from her in-depth interviews with 70 gay men, Goldberg analyzes how gay dads interact with competing ideals of fatherhood and masculinity, alternately pioneering and accommodating heteronormative “parenthood culture.” The first study of gay men's transitions to fatherhood, this work will appeal to a wide range of readers, from those in the social sciences to social work to legal studies, as well as to gay-adoptive parent families themselves.

Father-Daughter Relationships

Father-Daughter Relationships PDF Author: Linda Nielsen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000005178
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
In this fully revised new edition, Father-Daughter Relationships: Contemporary Research and Issues summarises and analyses the most relevant research regarding father-daughter relationships, aiming to break down the persistent misconceptions regarding fatherhood and father-daughter relationships and encourage the reader to take a more objective and analytical approach. The research is brought to life with compelling personal stories from fathers and daughters, including well-known celebrities and politicians. Boxed quizzes and questionnaires show students how the research can be applied to their own lives while others highlight the relationships between real-life fathers and daughters. Nielsen discusses the father-daughter relationship within a diverse range of family structures, including divorced and separated parents, gay parents, adopted children and children of sperm donors. Covering a wide range of topics, including the father’s impact on his daughter’s cognitive, academic, social and physical wellbeing, ethnic minorities, and incarcerated or abusive fathers, Father-Daughter Relationships: Contemporary Research and Issues gives panoramic view of the most recent research and statistics. This book is essential reading for upper level undergraduate and for graduate students, as well as for practitioners working with families, such as social workers, mental health professionals and family counsellors. It is especially relevant for courses in psychology, sociology, women’s studies, and counselling. Linda Nielsen is a Professor of Adolescent and Educational Psychology at Wake Forest University. A member of the faculty for 35 years, she is a nationally recognized expert on father-daughter relationships.

Gay Dads

Gay Dads PDF Author: David Strah
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101665408
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Inspiring portraits of gay men and their families from all across America. An evolution has quietly been occurring in the world of parenting. Recent surveys reveal that millions of children have found loving homes either by being born to, or adopted by, gay men. This book is a celebration of these remarkable new families. Gay Dads includes twenty-five personal accounts from men describing their unique journeys to fatherhood and the struggles and successes they have experienced as they raise their children. This is the first book to provide such an expansive exploration of this extraordinary new family unit. With beautiful black-and-white photographs of each of the families, Gay Dads is a moving tribute to familial love.

Families We Choose

Families We Choose PDF Author: Kath Weston
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231110938
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
This study brings together two areas of investigation: relationships of gay and lesbian individuals with their biological families, and lesbian and gay relationships in the context of research on alternative forms of family.

Not in This Family

Not in This Family PDF Author: Heather Murray
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812207408
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
Many Americans hold fast to the notion that gay men and women, more often than not, have been ostracized from disapproving families. Not in This Family challenges this myth and shows how kinship ties were an animating force in gay culture, politics, and consciousness throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. Historian Heather Murray gives voice to gays and their parents through an extensive use of introspective writings, particularly personal correspondence and diaries, as well as through published memoirs, fiction, poetry, song lyrics, movies, and visual and print media. Starting in the late 1940s and 1950s, Not in This Family covers the entire postwar period, including the gay liberation and lesbian feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s, the establishment of PFLAG (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s. Ending her story with an examination of contemporary coming-out rituals, Murray shows how the personal that was once private became political and, finally, public. In exploring the intimate, reciprocal relationship of gay children and their parents, Not in This Family also chronicles larger cultural shifts in privacy, discretion and public revelation, and the very purpose of family relations. Murray shows that private bedrooms and consumer culture, social movements and psychological fashions, all had a part to play in transforming the modern family.