Gay Fatherhood: Narratives of Family and Citizenship in America
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.43 (928 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0226476588 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 248 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-03-23 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
"Gay Fatherhood is doubly a magnificent achievement: it not only offers an exemplary investigation into the lived experience of gay parenting, but also shows how the struggles and triumphs of these gay men and their children can act as a kind of lens into how American cultures more broadly understand family, love, responsibility, and belonging." - Tom Boellstorff, University of California, Irvine"
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. The toxic combination of these two stereotypical views has led to a lack of serious attention being paid to the experiences of gay fathers. 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 shed
Ellen Lewin is professor in the departments of Women’s Studies and Anthropology at the University of Iowa. She is the author of Recognizing Ourselves: Ceremonies of Lesbian and Gay Commitment and Lesbian Mothers: Accounts of Gender in American Culture.