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University of California Press

The Family of Woman

Lesbian Mothers, Their Children, and the Undoing of Gender
by Maureen Sullivan (Author)
Paperback eBook
Price: $34.95 / £30.00
Publication Date: Sep 2004
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 323
ISBN: 9780520937413
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About the Book

Amidst the shrill and discordant notes struck in debates over the make-up—or breakdown—of the American family, the family keeps evolving. This book offers a close and clear-eyed look into a form this change has taken most recently, the lesbian coparent family. Based on intensive interviews and extensive firsthand observation, The Family of Woman chronicles the experience of thirty-four families headed by lesbian mothers whose children were conceived by means of donor insemination.With its intimate perspective on the interior dynamics of these families and its penetrating view of their public lives, the book provides rare insight into the workings of emerging family forms and their significance for our understanding of "family"—and our culture itself.

About the Author

Maureen Sullivan is Assistant Professor of Sociology, Northern Illinois University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. The Emergence of Lesbian-Coparent Families in Postmodern Society
2. Becoming Parents: Baby Making in the Age of Assisted Procreation
3. Being Parents: The End of Oedipus and the Expansion of Intimacy
4. Undoing the Gender Division of Labor
5. Truth and Reconciliation: Families of Origin Come Around and Come Out
6. Becoming Familiar in the Community of Strangers
7. The Structure of Donor-Extended Kinship
8. The Theoretical Future of a Conscious Feminist Kinship

Appendix: Families by the Bay: The Study Design, Method, and Participants
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Reviews

“An important and much needed contribution to family studies and gay and lesbian studies.”
— American Journal of Sociology
"Maureen Sullivan has set a new standard not only for students of gay and lesbian life in America and for followers of the "family values" debates that have become increasingly bitter in recent years, but for ethnographic research more broadly defined. The Family of Woman rarely falters in its emphasis on paying close attention to the voices of its narrators. The author is refreshingly free of ideological agendas and the reader feels neither manipulated nor left adrift. Her work is fully grounded in the scholarship of others across the disciplines but not slavishly devoted to any particular line of inquiry."
— Theory and Society
“A major contribution to earlier challengers of the so-called family normative.”
— Multicultural Review
"By providing a very good insight into the lives and struggles of lesbian mothers and their children, Sullivan helps to fill the gap in the literature dealing with gay and lesbian families."
— Journal of Marriage and Family
"As lesbian mothers boldly go where no family has gone before, Maureen Sullivan bears witness to their courageous ingenuity and achievements. Providing the most illuminating, theoretically sophisticated account to date of how the lesbian co-parented family is quietly shattering the existing gender order, this book expertly weaves captivating ethnographic family portraits into the broader social and political tapestry of our fiercely fought contemporary family revolution. Scholarly, provocative, witty, and deeply humane, The Family of Woman is that precious rarity—a genuinely original, profound scholarly work that is a joy to read."—Judith Stacey, author of In the Name of the Family

"Sullivan makes a compelling argument that lesbian families challenge, at root, the very basis of patriarchal familial norms, and indeed modern notions of biological fixity. A provocative, fascinating study."—Arlene Stein, author of Sex and Sensibility: Stories of a Lesbian Generation

"A notable document of the quiet social revolution that is producing new forms of the family. Maureen Sullivan tells the stories of the lesbian women who have created coparenting families, and have made them viable, often in the face of prejudice. Her research is carefully reasoned and insightful. The implications for our understanding of families, gender equality, and child development are immense."—R.W. Connell, author of Gender and Power