The outdated views on family structure and lesbian families

Congratulations to Brigette Sainsbury for being a winner in our recent IBSS blog competition! Brigette wrote an excellent blog entry on lesbian parent families.  In her blog she comments on society’s difficulties in accepting lesbian families who conceive through artificial insemination. Furthermore Brigette remarks on the impact this can have on the everyday life of young children. This blog makes for a thoroughly interesting read. Many thanks to Brigette Sainsbury.

Having watched the L Word (a programme about lesbian life in the USA), and seeing the prejudice towards lesbian couple Bette and Tina who conceived a child through a known sperm donor, my eyes were opened to how people perceive lesbian families. This led me to want to found out more about “what is best for the child” and the acceptance of this diverse type of beanpole family.

It is not very often you hear about lesbian families in today’s society. Being such a conservative country and government, the whole gay and lesbian taboo is often played down. The only time you really hear of homosexuality is when celebrities decide they are gay, Lindsay Lohan for example, in which case it is thrown in to the public eye. Other than that, all you hear are damning reports from closed-minded people stuck in the ways of the, ironically called, “New Right”.

For years, members of the New Right have promoted how family is the ‘cornerstone of society’, and yet they are only willing to accept nuclear families as valid ones. Another prominent message they put across is that homosexuality is bad and will be one of the reasons for society’s downfall. But surely if the family is really the ‘cornerstone of society’, should it really matter what it’s structure is as long as it is a healthy and happy one? Should it really matter whether parents are heterosexual or homosexual as long as the child is loved, well cared for and is growing up in a healthy environment? Is that not what is more important?

After searching the IBSS I came across an article called Families in transition: parents, children and grandparents in lesbian families give meaning to ‘doing family’. This article presents research into lesbian-parented families. It produces evidence which shows that ‘the outcomes of children in lesbian-parented families world wide demonstrate convincingly that children’s psychosocial adjustment and intellectual development is influenced more by family processes such as conflict between parents than it is by family structure’ (Bewaeys et al., 1997; Parks, 1998; Fitzgerald, 1999; Patterson and Chan, 1999; Clarke, 2000 Anderssen et al., 2002 and Golombok et al., 2003). This proves that it is better for a child’s development for it to be in a happy lesbian-parented family than it is in an unhappy, conflicting nuclear one. However, some people would argue that although this maybe true, the child would still lack having a male role model. But what most people don’t realize is that although both parents are female, most children still have regular contact with important men in their life, such as godfathers, grandfathers and uncles etc. These people also play an important part in the child’s socialization.

One part of the article is headed Being a child in a lesbian-parented family. It puts across a really poignant message to people that feel these children don’t have a normal life. Dempsey (2004) interviewed a 5-year-old girl who has lesbian parents. She knew she had been conceived through an unknown sperm donor. On her first day at school her new headmaster asked her about her father, she told him that she didn’t have one, just a donor. At this he argued with her and insisted that she must have a father, he was so closed to the ways of family diversity that he tried to suppress her knowledge with his own ideals of what a family “should” be. Ray and Gregory (2001) interviewed a group of children aged between 5 and 8 years old. They reported that many of the children they interviewed held firm on the simple fact that they have two mothers, despite curious and persistent questioning from their peers. The children were asked how they would define a family. They answered that a family was having two loving parents, they did not say having a mother and a father.

It seems to me that the only thing making lesbian families to be wrong are people with out dated ideals on how the family should be rather than caring whether it is really good for the child.

If you are interested in reading more on this topic a quick search on IBSS for articles relating to ‘lesbian*’ and ‘family’ pulls up 325 results. A search for ‘same-sex*’ yields 1,450 results while a narrowed search for ‘same-sex relationships’ comes up with 260 results. IBSS has an extensive number of indexed articles that focus on same-sex relationships and issues facing the gay community in today’s society across the globe.

Is it hard for working-class women to cope in higher education?

The IBSS team would like to offer our congratulations to Katy Higgs, who was amongst the winners of our recent IBSS blog competition.  Her entry, posted below, concerned working-class women and their ability to integrate into the higher education system.  My own investigation into the subject using the IBSS database yielded 189 results from the keywords ‘working-class’, ‘women’ and ‘university’, showing that there is a wide array of information held on this specific issue…

Everyone is being affected by the current economic climate; the recession is raging with no sign of an end. Recently the credit crunch has been having a particular effect on those studying, or planning to study at university. NatWest’s 2008 Student Living Survey showed that 25,000 more undergraduates had taken up a part time job than in 2007. The Guardian recently published figures that show a 20% rise in rent prices during the last 4 years. Even students’ social lives are taking a hit as alcohol sales have fallen by 50% over the last 10 years according to NUS Supplies.

Perhaps most affected are the working class, in particular the women. They not only have to fit into universities that are predominantly middle class in intake, but also have to fight financial hardship. I have used IBSS, in particular a study by Yvette Taylor[1], to find out about the experiences that working-class females have while attending university.

Working-class women are traditionally expected to pursue caring professions and social work. But many go to university in an attempt to better themselves and get rid of their working-class identity. Though universities never name a class barrier there is a hidden expectation that you need to be from a middle class background. In university, middle-class people see working-class girls as outsiders that are ‘spoiling the fun’. In many cases they are perceived as people who ‘just want to get by’ and set up families, not having any real ambition. Even the way the working class present themselves is criticised. The way they speak and dress is not feminine or respectable. The working class are shy and reserved, while the middle class are confident with their opinions. These women feel humiliated and angry. They blame themselves for not being able to change.

As if fitting in with other people were not a big enough challenge for working-class women, they also have to cope with financial pressure that going to university entails. While the middle class assume that they will go to university, the working class have much more to think about and always fear that they have made the wrong decision. The working class feel a sense of unfairness as the middle class’s loans are supplemented by their parents whilst they must do part-time work to make ends meet. This in turn affects the quality of their studies. Many hold the view that university makes finance an issue when it shouldn’t be when it comes to education. Women felt that the middle class took advantage of funding opportunities while the working class were not provided for.

There also seems to be a gender inequality in the working class. Males felt that they could cope with the middle-class climate of higher education and remain untouched. Men also seem to face less pressure to make personal adjustments to fit in with others. There also seems to be a positive view of working-class masculinity, so the working-class men are seen as sex symbols and to be admired while the women are simply seen as ‘slutty’.

In the end, working-class women seem to get the bad end of the deal as even when they have achieved their degree, they are still expected to pursue low-paid, feminised work.

I think that although this evidence seems to suggest that your class is a big issue, it doesn’t have to be. If you do not advertise your class, then there is no reason why you can’t fit in with those of a higher class. I’m sure in many cases middle-class people at university suffer the same financial problems as the working class. And this will surely increase more and more during the recession.

Katy Higgs

 

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[1] ‘Going up without going away? Working-class women in higher education’, Yvette Taylor (2007)

The incest taboo

Josef Fritzl is currently on trial in Austria over the imprisonment and rape of his daughter. The case is grotesque, and because of this, I venture, also morbidly fascinating. It also brought back to The Times ‘most read’ section an article I was intrigued by over the summer – ‘I had sex with my brother but I don’t feel guilty’ – in which the author puts across the other side of the story: a relationship that was clearly consensual, and a positive experience for both.

I decided to search IBSS to look for articles on incest. There are c. 500 records dealing with the subject, and many are from the ‘abuse’ perspective, looking at how to identify and prevent cases of abuse, and how to help victims deal with their trauma. Pertinent to the Fritzl case, perhaps, is ‘Decisions to offend in men who sexually abuse their daughters’ (in the Journal of Sexual Aggression, 2007); or ‘Acting out the Oedipal wish’: father-daughter incest and the sexuality of adolescent girls in the United States, 1941-1965’, R. Devlin (2005), which takes a psychoanalytic approach. Though rarer, there is also a literature on mothers as abusers, for example ‘Speaking about the unspeakable: exploring the impact of mother-daughter sexual abuse’, Tracey Peter, (2008).

Many articles, however, take a cultural look at the subject rather than a psycho-social, and look at different attitudes to incest across diverse societies. Among them: ‘Incest between adults and children in the Medieval world’ (a chapter in the book ‘Children and sexuality: from the Greeks to the Great War’, Palgrave:2007); ‘Close relationships – incest and inbreeding in classical Arabic literature’, Gelder (2007); ‘Le bain mystérieux de la Tu’i Tonga Fefine. Germanité, inceste et mariage sacré en Polynésie’, F. Douaire-Marsaudon (2002) which looks at kinship, incest and sacred marriage in Polynesia); ‘Full brother-sister marriage in Roman Egypt: another look’, S. Parker (1996); and ‘Rudras Geburt: systematische Untersuchungen zum Inzest in der Mythologie des Brahmanas’, J. Deppert (1977) – a look at incest in Brahman mythology. I could go on – there is really a fascinating range.

Given the widely different cultural approaches to incest over time and place, an interesting question is whether the aversion most people have to incest is cultural or biological. Two sides of the coin are represented by ‘Il tabu dell’incesto: un problema culturale’ (The incest taboo – a cultural problem), G. Marucci (1975) on the one hand; and on the other ‘The biological foundations of the incest taboo’, N. Bischoff (1972). Around 20 articles look at the Westermarck thesis, which I presume, therefore, is influential: ‘Westermarck proposed that humans have an incest avoidance instinct, triggered by frequent intimate contact with family members during the first several years of life. Westermarck reasons that (1) familial incest will tend to produce less fit offspring, (2) those humans without instinctive incest avoidance would hence have tended to die off and those with the avoidance instinct would have produced more viable offspring, and hence (3) familial incest would be, as indeed it is, universally and instinctively avoided.’ (quoted from ‘Instinctive incest avoidance: a paradigm case for evolutionary psychology evaporates’, J. Leiber, 2006). However this evolutionary approach does not seem to be as popular a field of research as that of the ‘cultural taboo’ surrounding incest. Among the more off-the-wall papers dealing with this subject is ‘Crossing the final taboo: family, sexuality, and incest in Buffyverse fan fiction’, K.Busse (2002) – a reference to the issue in Buffy the Vampire Slayer!

Some articles suggest that Western culture overplays the taboo, and that the line between familial love and sexual love is a rather finer one than we like to think. In her article ‘’I could eat my baby to bits’; passion and desire in lesbian mother-children love’, Jacqi Gabb (2004), asserts that ‘The legal-moral boundaries that are invoked prohibit intergenerational desire, upholding the incest taboos that dominate Western culture. However the construction of these boundaries neither stop adult-child ‘border skirmishes’ nor quash children’s ‘natural’ exploration of their sexuality. I explore how bodies and bodily boundaries are used to manage sexuality and desire in families.’ The author of the Times piece mentioned above might well agree.

Milk

Having really enjoyed Gus Van Sant’s Milk, and being a big fan of San Francisco, I’m keen to see what IBSS can tell me about the history of the gay rights movement in California.

The film Milk stars Sean Penn as America’s first openly homosexual politician in public office, Harvey Milk. For the last eight years of his life Milk was a gay activist in San Francisco, and was assassinated one year after being elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. Milk is based on true events and shows many issues faced by the gay community in the ‘70s, rather than focussing exclusively on Harvey Milk’s rise to political prominence. I thought it would be interesting to see how I could supplement what I’d learnt from the film with academic research in the social sciences.

I decide to focus more on the historical events covered in the film than on Harvey Milk himself, so I search for ‘homosexuality’, ‘history’ and ‘San Francisco’. This is really successful, uncovering papers on several issues which the activists in Milk focussed their efforts on. The most shocking of these, and an issue which brought Harvey Milk into direct conflict with his eventual assassin Dan White, is Proposition 6, or the Briggs Initiative, which attempted to ban homosexuals and even supporters of gay rights from teaching in California’s public schools. In ‘Butterflies, whistles, and fists: gay safe street patrols and the ‘new gay ghetto’, 1976-1981’ C. Hanhardt (2008) discusses the Butterfly Brigade in Castro, San Francisco’s gay district, and their role in the protest against the Briggs Initiative. Their role in the Coors beer boycott, another event covered in the film, is also explored. I learn that the Butterfly Brigade was established to respond to the police’s ineffectiveness in dealing with violent homophobia. Operating from a bakery delivery truck in Castro, members of the brigade recorded homophobic acts and were police informants.

An insight into the police’s relationship with the gay rights movement is provided by C. Agee’s ‘Gayola: police professionalization and the politics of San Francisco’s gay bars, 1950-1968’ (2006). This is very interesting as Milk has many scenes in gay bars. Agee’s paper is a case study of John Mindermann’s work as a police officer in San Francisco in the 1960s. Mindermann gives a first hand account of police crackdowns on gay bars, and the relationship between the San Francisco Police Department and homosexuals. Agee explores the idea that police crackdowns were key to making the gay rights movement better organized and more effective. This theme is developed in ‘Wide-open town: a history of queer San Francisco to 1965’, N.A. Boyd (2005). Boyd suggests that communities in gay bars had a strongly politicised identity which developed in response to contemporary policing. The book looks fascinating in its variety of sources: it uses police and court records, oral histories, tourist literature, and manuscript collections from local and state archives. I think the book would be complemented nicely by S. Stryker and J. van Buskirk’s (1997) ‘Gay by the bay: a history of queer culture in the San Francisco Bay Area’, which has over 200 photos of the gay rights movement.

Searching for ‘Social movements’ and ‘San Francisco’, I discovered E. Armstrong’s 2005 paper ‘From struggle to settlement: the crystallization of a field of lesbian/gay organizations in San Francisco, 1969-1973’, which discusses how the social movement changed over time. Armstrong argues that “In 1968 gay liberation displayed a contradictory mix of civil rights, identity, and revolutionary political ideologies. By 1972 the movement had stabilized around building gay identity and pursuing civil rights.” She suggests that the collapse of the New Left movement in 1970 allowed activists to unite around central themes, and made their aims less fragmented. In ‘Movements and memory: the making of the Stonewall myth’ (2006), E. Armstrong and S. Crage compare the effect of the Stonewall riot and 4 other gay activists riots in the 1960s (including ones in Los Angeles and San Francisco) on collective memory in the gay rights movement.

I’m impressed by the number of records in IBSS which are specific to the history of gay activism in San Francisco. Much of the research taps into first hand accounts of the events covered in Milk. I end with a straight search for Harvey Milk, and one particular hit corroborates the film’s description of Harvey Milk as “Icon. Inspiration. Hero.”: a Harvey Milk Institute has been established in San Francisco for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender studies.

Pour homme, pour femme ?

Rachida Dati, the French Minister for Justice, caused a stir last week (9^th January 2009) when she returned to work just five days after giving birth to her first child.  Whatever the minister’s reasons for foregoing the standard three-month maternity leave period, the truth is that it has been a long and, at times, futile struggle for women hoping to enter the upper echelons of the French political system.

 

Ambitious and media-savvy, Mme Dati no doubt saw an opportunity to heighten her profile and to send a clear message to President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is expected to reshuffle his current crop of ministers in the coming weeks.  However, this is not to underestimate the pressure that inevitably comes with being such a high-ranking female politician: pressure that has led Mme Dati to prioritise attending cabinet meetings over spending time with her new-born daughter.

 

France, it is true, has had a female prime minister in the past (Édith Cresson, 1991-1992), and last year there was a realistic opportunity of Ségolène Royal becoming the country’s first female president.  However, women still remain vastly under-represented in parliament (just 18.5% of members) and the number of women holding ministerial positions has rarely numbered more than a half-a-dozen, and frequently in peripheral departments. 

 

Looking further into the issue of women and  politics in France, a search of these terms in the IBSS database brings up 286 results – of which 117 are actually French-language articles.  Very quickly, it becomes apparent that the articles returned cover three main themes: There are those that offer a brief history of the position of women within the French political system, for example, ‘Fifty years of feminising France’s Fifth Republic’ (Murray, Rainbow, 2008); articles which focus more specifically on Ségolène Royal’s ill-fated bid for the presidency, such as, ‘A French-style primary: the designation of Ségolène Royal by the Socialist Party’ (Dolez, Bernard and Laurent, Annie, 2007); and, most prominently, articles which analyse the effect of France’s gender-parity law of 2000.

 

The gender-parity law was introduced in an attempt to create equality of representation by requiring fifty percent of all French electoral candidates to be women.  Scanning a sample of the abstracts returned from my search, the tone of these articles appears to doubt the law’s success, citing the “competing and contradictory demands” it places on French political parties (‘How parties evaluate compulsory quotas: a study of the implementation of the ‘parity’ law in France’; Murray, Rainbow, 2007) and the adverse effect of “both the electoral system and the attitudes of political parties” (‘Increasing women’s political representation: the limits of constitutional reform’; Freedman, Jane, 2004), which remain as obstacles to equal political representation.

 

This being the case it is even more important to acknowledge the achievement of the few women who have made it to positions of real power within such a male-dominated arena.  Their success is encouraging and inspirational to women in many walks of life.  The French political system may have a long way to go in terms of reaching its stated aims of gender parity of representation but women like Rachida Dati are at the forefront of the effort.  Her decision to return to work so soon after giving birth has divided opinion both in France and across Europe, but it can also be seen as the act of a woman eager to prove that she can succeed and thrive in an environment that for too long has been dominated by men.

Marriage, same-sex marriage. What is all the fuss about?

marriage, n.
The condition of being a husband or wife; the relation between persons married to each other; matrimony. The term is now sometimes used with reference to long-term relationships between partners of the same sex. (Oxford English Dictionary online)

The Californian Supreme Court’s ruling in favour of the legalization of same-sex marriage has sparked much media debate. Will the social and cultural meaning of marriage be changed forever? If so will it be for better or for worse? By granting homosexual couples the right to marry the court goes against the argument that marriage should be reserved for the union of a man and a women, as per ‘tradition’.

What is the ‘tradition’ of marriage? Is it the same as a traditional wedding? Surely not, the latter could almost be said to have morphed into marketing jargon to be used by wedding planners keen to keep the lucrative ‘fairytale wedding’ dream alive. The very nature of marriage has changed, and will continue to do so, in line with the evolution of society. What is deemed socially acceptable today is a far cry from that of recent decades. I searched for articles on same-sex marriage in IBSS to better understand the controversy surrounding gay marriage. Here I found a surprisingly vast array of articles and books on homosexual marriage in regions ranging from the USA, Latin America, Canada, the Netherlands, Britain and South Africa to name but a few, with articles dating back as far as the early 1950s (covering societal issues concerning marriage), and the early 1970s (with a focus on same-sex marriage).

In the swinging ‘60s marriage was often deemed to be old fashioned. This mood is aptly captured in Nina Simone’s song, Marriage is for Old Folks, in which she sings “One husband, one wife, what do you got? Two people sentenced for life”. Along with social change the meaning embedded in the term ‘marriage’ inevitably changed too. As divorce became more common the tradition of being married ‘till death do us part’ lost much of its meaning. In a similar way the term ‘family’ no longer signifies what it once did. The nuclear family continues to change shape. Divorce, while perhaps not favoured, is now socially accepted. If society can radically redefine the core meaning of ‘family’ and ‘marriage’ than why is it so hard to include those in the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) community?

Same-sex marriage has become such a hot topic that it has even found its way on to the American presidential election campaign. On one hand a rather uncomfortable looking John McCain can be seen voicing his opposition to gay marriage on the Ellen DeGeneres show. DeGeneres, one of the most famous lesbians in the United States, plans to marry her long-term partner in the coming months. Barack Obama, on the other hand, is in favour same-sex marriage. Public opinion on this issue in the coming months may greatly contribute to the outcome of the presidential elections. Can the social meaning of one little word really be weighted with such importance?

If marriage had failed to evolve over time I doubt it would continue to prove so popular today. The first steps toward legalizing same-sex marriage in many countries has been to grant homosexual couples the right to a civil partnership whereby they have similar, if not the same, legal rights as married couples. While a positive first step in the quest for equal rights, such partnerships fail to capture the essence of marriage. To take a simplistic view of marriage, not everyone who weds does so purely to get their paperwork in order. Where is the romance in that? As declared by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts in 2003, denying same-sex couples the right to marry “violated constitutional principles of respect for individual autonomy and equality” (Pinello, Daniel R., 2006. America’s struggle for same-sex marriage ). The “fight for same-sex marriage is about honouring the feelings that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) individuals have for their partners” (Alderson, Kevin G., 2004. A phenomenological investigation of same-sex marriage ).

Why is marriage so complicated? Should it not be available to all couples who wish to be wed in the eyes of the law? Or should religious beliefs govern ones right to marry? The recent Church of England wedding-style blessing service carried out for two gay clergymen has proved highly controversial in the religious community. (Hammond-Sharlot, Rhonda and Booth, Penny, 2008. Talking shop: same-sex marriage and the Church of England ). Attitudes towards same-sex marriage vary greatly across religious denominations (Olson, Laura R., Cadge, Wendy and Harrison, James T., 2006. Religion and public opinion about same-sex marriage ). Do we marry because we are religious or because we are in love?

I have been engaged to the love of my life for just over a year. I am by no means a religious person nor would I consider myself to be traditionalist or old fashioned in anyway but for some reason, a reason I cannot explain, I long to be married to my beloved. I like to think it’s the romantic in me that wishes to wed. In much of the media coverage I have read on this hot topic there has been little or no mention of romance. Should love and marriage go hand in hand? For me at least, marriage should be available to all couples who chose to enter into a(n ideally) life-long union. Rather than hearing Nina Simone’s views on marriage I prefer to listen to the more sentimental and romantic words of Sinatra as he sings “love and marriage…you can’t have one without the other”.

Food, sex and gender

I was surprised by the findings of a study by the Universities of Exeter and Oxford which claimed that women who ate high energy foods – especially breakfast cereals and bananas – while trying to conceive were more likely to have a boy. The study investigated the eating habits of 740 women who were pregnant for the first time, and found that ‘56% of women with the highest energy intake around the time of conception had boys, compared to just 45% among women with the lowest energy intake’. The report struck me as a little preposterous, so I thought I’d investigate it further and see what international perspectives IBSS would uncover on beliefs surrounding food, sex and gender.

My slight unease with the implied existence of ‘manly’ foods was corroborated by an article (Ehrhardt, Julia C., 2006) which highlights the relationship between attitudes to food and gender ideology. ‘[F]ood practices and beliefs reinforce and resist heterosexual gender ideologies’. An insight into beliefs surrounding perhaps the most stereotypically gendered foodstuff – chocolate – was found in ‘Chocolate, Family, and Disorderly Women in Late-Seventeenth- and Early-Eighteenth-Century Guatemala’ (Few, Martha, 2005). The article highlights beliefs in the ability of chocolate to be put to ritual use by women both in sexual witchcraft practice and in casting supernatural illness. Surprisingly, although work on food and gender was prevalent, I did not find specific material on beliefs about how food consumption could influence the sex of foetuses.

It occured to me that the Exeter and Oxford study could have rather worrying implications for population dynamics if people use its results to try to influence the sex of their offspring. I searched IBSS for attitudes to the sex of offspring and found an article entitled ‘Son Preference and its Consequences (a Review)’ (Shah, Mussawar, 2005) which outlines socioeconomic and cultural reasons for the prevalence of son preference in South Asia. In Bangladesh, Pakistan and India the dowry system means that sons are less costly for a family to marry off than daughters. In Hindu tradition, sons are desirable because of the important ritual functions which they perform in rites of passage: ‘only sons could pray for and release the souls of their dead parents and only males could perform, death and marriage rituals’. With some cultures arguably having reasons for wanting to determine a child’s sex beyond the whimsical, will the study affect food consumption patterns during pregnancy or does global food distribution mean that the potential for such dubious practice is the sole reserve of people in overfed developed nations?