Challenging Heteronormativity?: Gender Flexibility and Lesbian Parenting

Abstract

In a sense, this chapter is a return to the questions that this book began with, as it explores notions of sameness and difference in relation to lesbian parent families. As noted in Chapter 1, previous research on non-heterosexual families has largely focused on the children of lesbian and gay parents. The majority of this research has been used to refute homophobic myths about lesbian and gay parenting. Typically, these studies have concluded that there is little or no difference between the children raised in LGBT-headed families and children raised by heterosexuals. This research has been used effectively to counteract homophobic myths about these families and has been politically strategic. For example, it has been utilised in custody cases where an LGBT parent has been at risk of losing custody or access due to homophobic assumptions about their children’s well-being. However, more recently researchers have been critical of the impulse in research to ‘prove’ that LGBT parents are ‘just like’ heterosexual parents. Firstly, it has been argued that this ‘assimilative’ research emerges (albeit understandably) from a highly defensive position that ultimately endorses heteronormative ideals by implicitly taking a particular version of heterosexual parenting as the normative standard against which all families should be judged. Secondly, this approach serves to deny positive differences that may exist between LGBT and other families.