Lesbian and Gay Parents: Situated Subjects

What is the current status of lesbian and gay parented families? Have such families moved from conditions of invisibility and hostility towards visibility and respect? The answer varies across socio-cultural contexts. There has been a growth of visibility and rights of lesbian and gay families in the United States and Europe, even as there continues to be a strong assertion of traditional “family values.” In my view, same-sex marriage has been over-emphasised in the current citizenship debates, as if such rights would end the discrimination that lesbian and gay parented families experience. But also, too much research and politics around lesbian and gay families assumes a middle-class family, which is now able to feel socially included. This assumption ignores the real class differences between families, both in terms of material resources and in terms of subjective evaluations about what are “good” or “proper” families.