Abstract
Many parents and child-rearing experts prefer that children exhibit gender-normative behavior, a preference that is linked to the belief that children are, or should be, heterosexual. But how do LGBTQ parents—who may not hold these preferences—approach the gender socialization of their children? Drawing on in-depth interviews with both members in 18 LGBTQ couples, I find that these parents attempt to provide their children with a variety of gendered options for clothing, toys, and activities—a strategy that I call the “gender buffet.” However, the social location of the parents influences the degree to which they feel they can pursue this strategy of resistance. Factors such as race, social class, gender of parents and children, and level of support of family and community members contribute to the degree to which LGBTQ parents feel they can allow or encourage their children to disrupt gender norms.
The dominant parenting discourses and practices in the United States are gendered. Parents and child-rearing experts prefer that children exhibit gender-normative behavior, a preference that is linked to the assumption that children are, and ideally should be, heterosexual (Kane 2006; Martin 2005, 2009). However, the increasing visibility and acceptance of gays and lesbians in the United States warrants the question: If gender-typical behavior in childhood is encouraged, at least in part, due to parental preference for heterosexual children, do nonheterosexual parents resist the cultural imperative to raise gender-conforming children?
Using data from in-depth interviews with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer-identified (LGBTQ) parents, this study examines how, why, and in what contexts LGBTQ parents resist the dominant heteronormative paradigm in the gender socialization of their children. Previous research has shown that daughters of lesbian mothers are more likely to be gender nonconforming than the children of heterosexual parents (Stacey and Biblarz 2001), and that both lesbian parents and, to a lesser degree, gay parents are “less inclined than heterosexual couples to promote gender conformity in children” (Biblarz and Stacey 2010, 12). This paper asks whether LGBTQ parents intentionally resist stereotypes of binary gender with their young children, and how such resistance is linked to beliefs about their children’s sexual identities.
This research contributes to the literature on the gender socialization of children by examining ways in which parents’ sexual identities influence how they parent their children. Looking at gender socialization through the lenses of intersectionality and queer sociological analysis, I demonstrate that processes of gender socialization are part of the identity projects of both parents and children. The experiences parents have of navigating a heteronormative social world with a non-normative sexual identity enable and empower them to resist binary gender expectations of their children.
Heteronormativity and Childhood Gender Socialization
Sociologists have long been interested in the gender socialization of children, or how children come to internalize the gendered social order. Early theorists saw the family as the central mechanism in the reproduction of gender identity in children (Chodorow [1978] 1999; Parsons 1943). While subsequent sociologists have recognized that a range of institutions play a role in gender socialization—including schools (Pascoe 2007), peer groups (Thorne 1993), and the mass media (Martin and Kazyak 2009)—parents remain central to the process of gender socialization because they control their children’s exposure to cultural discourses about gender, especially in early childhood (Martin 2009; Meadow 2011).
Heteronormativity is central to this gender socialization process. Scholars have defined heteronormativity as a set of overlapping processes that occur on various levels—including legal, cultural, institutional, discursive, and interpersonal/interactional—that produce and reproduce heterosexuality, and its assumption of two, distinct, complementary genders, as normal, natural, and ideal (Jackson 2006; Kitzinger 2005; Schilt and Westbrook 2009). Heteronormativity operates on each of these levels in contemporary production of “the family,” for example, in laws that privilege parenting by heterosexual couples, in the frequently touted claim that children are “better off” being raised by heterosexual parents, and in interactions in which parents imply that their children will grow up to be heterosexual adults (Martin 2009; Stacey and Biblarz 2001).
Gender and sexuality are inextricably intertwined in discourses about parenting young children. Parents tend to link gender conformity and heterosexuality in their interpretations of and responses to children’s behavior, and, conversely, they associate gender nonconformity with future homosexuality (Kane 2006; Martin 2005; Sedgwick 1991). This is not to say that gender expression and sexual identity are actually linked—while gay and lesbian adults frequently report gender-nonconforming behavior in childhood, gendered behavior in childhood is not a linear predictor of sexual identity later in life. Rather, gender expression and sexuality are discursively linked, and therefore, a connection between the two is often made when interpreting children’s gendered behavior (see Bryant 2006, 2008).
Factors such as the social class, race, and gender of parents influence how parents understand, and undertake, childhood socialization. Annette Lareau (2011) argues that the approaches parents take to raising their children vary along social class lines, with middle-class parents enacting a “concerted cultivation” of their children’s incipient talents, while working-class parents allow their children to experience what she calls “natural growth.” Following on these insights, Kane (2012) argues that middle- and upper-middle-class parents, who see their children’s futures as marked by choice, may be more open to allowing their children to express themselves in a variety of ways, including by resisting gender norms. Parents who see their children’s futures as marked by constraint—particularly working-class parents—may hesitate to allow such freedom of expression for fear that it may hinder their children’s future success. It is less clear, however, how parents’ own gender and sexuality may complicate this division. For the most part, studies of gender socialization assume that parents are heterosexual (for a noteworthy exception, see Kane 2012). This study adds to the literature on childhood gender socialization by examining how LGBTQ parents approach the gender socialization of their children.
All LGBTQ parents “need to contend with the particular array of psychic, social, legal, practical, and even physical challenges to their very existence that institutionalized hostility to homosexuality produces” (Stacey 1997, 108), though how they respond to these challenges varies. In other words, it is not their identity itself, but their experience of their identity within a heteronormative society, that shapes how LGBTQ people parent. Because LGBTQ parents resist heteronormativity through their family structure, it seems logical that they may also resist conventional gender socialization. Previous research, however, has shown that because of a sense of increased public scrutiny, LGBTQ parents often reproduce the dominant heteronormative parenting paradigm with respect to gender (Berkowitz and Ryan 2011; Goldberg 2009; Hequembourg 2007). This research tends to assume—often rightly so—that LGBTQ parents are raising their children in a climate that is hostile toward homosexuality, in general, and same-sex parenting, in particular.
Given the rapidly shifting social climate in the United States, in which homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and same-sex parenting are increasingly legitimized, legalized, and even accepted (Pew Research Center 2015; Baunach 2012; Powell et al. 2012), this sense of increased scrutiny may be diminishing, though likely not in equal measure for all LGBTQ parents. Research shows that the benefits of increased civil rights and recognition accrue mainly to middle-class, white, gay men and lesbians (Stein 2013). In this article, then, I utilize the framework of intersectionality (Crenshaw 1991) to take into account that the commonality my respondents share as sexual minorities does not necessarily indicate a commonality of experience or meaning. I do not treat my respondents as representative of certain categories, such as “white lesbians” or “black gay men,” nor do I attempt to generalize from their experiences to others in shared social locations. Instead, I engage in what Valocchi (2005) calls “sociological queer analysis,” which, following queer theory, rejects binary classifications of gender and sexuality in favor of an understanding of identity as complex and socially constructed, while also drawing on the sociological tradition of examining the everyday, material lives of social actors to gain insight into the ways that identities are socially created and recreated.
An example of such analysis is found in Pfeffer’s (2014) study of cis women partners of trans men. Pfeffer argues that social processes, particularly those of the (mis)recognition of identity, are central to sexual identity formation and management: Our sexualities are interpellated every day, arising from others’ (mis)recognition of the ways in which we see and understand ourselves and our partners. . . . By focusing on how we recognize and misrecognize others’ self-identities, we come to better understand these identities not as individual and predetermined fixed entities, but as dynamic social processes. (Pfeffer 2014, 12)
LGBTQ parents are involved not only in the continual bringing forth of their own self-identities but also in bringing their children’s identities into social being when they, as parents, (mis)recognize gender expression and sexuality in their children.
The increasing legal protection and general social acceptance of same-sex relationships in the United States has been accompanied by the rise of a discourse of natural or biological origins of sexual orientation. The “born this way” discourse, which Walters (2011, 106) describes as the current “reigning ethos” and the “overwhelming ideology” about sexual identity in the United States, centers around the premise that same-sex attraction has a natural origin and that being gay is not a choice. Belief that sexual orientation is innate has been found to be correlated with more accepting or tolerant views about homosexuality, and this discourse has been adopted by LGBTQ groups and individuals in their appeals for rights such as marriage and protection from workplace discrimination (Sheldon et al. 2007). This discourse is also found in the increasing attention being given to gender-nonconforming and transgender children. In her study of parents of gender-variant children, Meadow (2011) finds frequent reference by these parents to genetic, hormonal, or other physical explanations for “innate” gender variance, and argues that parents use this and other narratives to account for their children’s non-normatively gendered interests and behaviors (see also Rahilly 2015).
The “born this way” discourse has achieved near-hegemonic status within American popular culture, inviting the question of how it factors into LGBTQ parents’ narratives of how they socialize their children. How do LGBTQ parents think that their children’s gender expressions relate to their gender and sexual identities? How do these conceptualizations of their children’s identities relate to how they parent their children? More specifically, in what ways do LGBTQ parents resist (or not) the heteronormative imperative that their children behave in gender-conforming ways? These are the central research questions of this study.
Methods
Between July 2011 and March 2012, I conducted in-depth, semistructured interviews with 18 LGBTQ couples with children aged 10 and younger. (See Table 1 for sample characteristics.) The sample includes 22 women with lesbian, gay, or queer sexual identities, 12 men with gay identities, and two transgender/genderqueer individuals, both with nonheterosexual sexual identities. Following Lareau (2011) and Kane (2012), I wanted to explore parents’ ideas and/or expectations of their children’s futures, including future sexual orientation. I, therefore, specifically recruited parents with pre-pubescent children, who are unlikely to have declared a sexual orientation.
Respondent Characteristics
Note: GED = General Educational Development test.
Reflects respondents’ self-identification in response to open-ended questions.
All of the couples I interviewed were in what Biblarz and Stacey (2010) refer to as “intentional” LGBTQ families—families into which the children were brought when the parents were already a couple, and in which both parents identify, and have since the time of family formation, as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer. Parents in this family type have several characteristics that make them well suited for this study. First, as Moore (2011) argues, lesbian and gay parents who become parents after taking on an LGBTQ identity face a different set of issues than do those who come into such an identity after becoming parents. Their LGBTQ identity was likely to be particularly salient when they made the decision to become parents, which allows for deeper analysis of how identity may shape what parents think about gender in childhood. Second, the parents I interviewed are in established couple relationships, rather than being single parents. I theorize that couples with children are likely to be recognized as lesbian, gay, or queer in their daily lives, whereas single parents, without a partner, may be misrecognized as heterosexual (Pfeffer 2014), which may make the salience of sexual orientation more pronounced in the day-to-day interactions of couples. Finally, the decision to be inclusive of various sexual and gender identities (as opposed to only lesbian mothers and/or gay fathers) is based on the premise that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer are not discrete categories, but are mutable and not always mutually exclusive. 1 My sampling method recognizes that couples deploy identity categories strategically (Pfeffer 2014), depending on social context—including the interview context.
There are also limitations to this sampling approach. Whites are disproportionately represented among so-called intentional LGBTQ parents (Gates 2012; Moore 2011), and white sexual minorities are more economically privileged than those who are Black and Latino (Badgett, Durso, and Schneebaum 2013; Gates 2013). These trends are reflected in my sample, which is disproportionately white and middle-class (see Table 1). However, the goal of this study is not to make generalizable comparisons between LGBTQ parents of different races and social classes, but to highlight the role that social location plays in how the parents in my sample approach gender (non-)conformity with their children, in order to explore how participants’ identities as sexual minorities inform their parenting beliefs and practices, and how social structures—including race and class—moderate this process.
I recruited respondents from Massachusetts and Texas. Massachusetts was the first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage, and at the time of these interviews was one of 16 states in which same-sex couples could adopt a child jointly (Human Rights Campaign 2011; Pew Research Center 2015). LGBTQ couples in Massachusetts enjoy a comparatively high level of institutional support; the legal recognition of their relationships may result in a corresponding higher level of support from family, neighbors, school personnel, and other community members. Texas falls on the opposite end of the spectrum. When conducting the research, same-sex marriage was not legal, and same-sex couples in Texas could not adopt a child jointly (Human Rights Campaign 2011; Pew Research Center 2015). LGBTQ families in Texas may experience lower levels of community support than do families in Massachusetts. Interviewing couples in these two states ensures some degree of variation of feelings of social and legal acceptance.
My primary means of recruitment was a call for participants distributed through various Internet channels. I composed an email requesting distribution of my call for participants, which asked for LGBTQ-identified couples with children ages 10 and under to participate in a study about the perspectives and experiences of LGBTQ parents. I sent this call to LGBTQ organizations, including parenting groups and email lists, welcoming churches, and groups oriented specifically for LGBTQ people of color in both states, as well as to acquaintances who had contacts within their local LGBTQ community. Additionally, I set up a website that included my call for participants, some information about myself, and a form that respondents could fill out to request more information or to volunteer for the study, and shared this link via social media. Consequently, my sample is limited to those who have access to the Internet and/or are connected to LGBTQ-focused organizations. Parents for whom being LGBTQ is not a salient identity were unlikely to respond to my call for participants. This may have been important in shaping both the racial and social class makeup of my sample, as Black sexual minorities are less likely than white sexual minorities to identify as lesbian or gay (Moore 2011).
Couples were interviewed together at the location of their choosing. Most interviews took place in the couples’ homes, though two couples opted to be interviewed at coffee shops and one at a respondent’s office. The interviews lasted between 50 and 90 minutes, with the exception of one interview that lasted more than two hours. Each interview had three sections. The first focused on the couple’s parenting philosophies, including whether they believed their sexual identities influenced their parenting philosophies in any way. The second included questions about how they put these philosophies into practice, focusing on the challenges and sources of support they had as LGBTQ parents. The third concerned their goals and hopes for their children’s future, including future relationships. Many of my respondents asked me questions prior to beginning the interview to determine my own investment in the subject; when asked, I told my respondents that I am queer-identified, in a same-sex marriage, and, though I am not a parent myself, I have extensive experience with children. My respondents were likely more willing to speak to me about the complexities of their lives as LGBTQ parents knowing that I did not have an antigay agenda.
I audio-recorded each interview, and transcribed them using standard word processing software. All respondents and their children were assigned pseudonyms to protect confidentiality. Although I went into data collection with a clear set of research questions and theoretically supported ideas, I used the techniques of grounded theory in my analysis, as suggested by Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw (1995). I used a multistage process of coding to analyze the data, using the qualitative coding software Atlas.ti. I engaged in a process of open coding to identify salient themes that arose in the interviews, followed by focused coding to group and further refine these themes, and wrote memos concerning themes, patterns, questions, and insights that arose during this analysis (Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw 1995).
Resisting Gender Norms
The parents in my sample resisted the binary gender categorization of children’s clothing, toys, and activities. Many insisted on offering their children a wide range of gendered options—a strategy that I refer to as the “gender buffet.” Parents deploy this strategy in different ways, with some presenting all options as value-neutral and others, critical of certain manifestations of masculinity and femininity, taking some options off the table entirely.
All of the parents in my sample reported engaging in practices that resisted heteronormative gender norms. Common among these practices was resistance to the binary gendering of children through clothing, toys, and activities by allowing or encouraging their children to have a mix of “boy” and “girl” items and activities. Several felt that assigning certain colors and types of clothing and toys to boys and others to girls was arbitrary, but did not feel a strong need to resist this, especially when their children were babies and were not yet indicating their own preferences or tastes. Other parents actively resisted what they saw as very tight, and even harmful, constraints in the gendering of children through clothes and toys.
Susan and Ana (MA) talked extensively about how difficult it was to find gender-neutral and gender-inclusive clothing and toys for their two-year-old son. Susan liked the range of brightly colored clothing she found in the “girl” sections of stores, but not the ruffles, lacy trim, and curvy, “feminine” cuts. She felt uncomfortable dressing her son in such highly feminized clothing, because of the sense that others scrutinized her choices. She gave this example: “Once when he was a baby, we had him dressed in pink and we were in the store, and someone said, ‘Oh, what a cute little girl,’ and we said, ‘Actually, he’s a boy.’ And they said ‘Oh, well he must have an older sister,’ and we said ‘No.’ And the person looked at us like, ‘Why is he wearing a pink shirt?’” Susan seemed agitated as she recounted this incident. She reported feeling that the person was negatively judging their parenting for dressing their son this way, and this sense of scrutiny seemed to provoke anxiety for her.
Parents of sons may feel more constrained in dressing their children in “appropriately” gendered clothing compared to parents of daughters (Berkowitz and Ryan 2011; Kane 2006). Some parents in my sample shared this perception, remarking that a degree of gender nonconformity was seen as acceptable for girls but deviant for boys. Still, several parents actively sought to expand their sons’ available choices to include feminine items. Michelle (MA) describes her practice of buying pink and purple clothing for her sons as an attempt to resist society’s strict limits on the gender expression of boys and men. At age two and a half, she reports, her older son’s favorite color is purple, and he picks out his purple sneakers to wear most days. Michelle and her wife, Alexis, agree that they carefully allow their son to do this without judgment. Michelle explained to me that while Alexis was pregnant, she was poised to fight against “princess culture” if they had a girl. When they found out they were having a boy, Michelle at first felt a sense of loss at not being able to be a feminist parent in this way, but quickly realized that she could do the same for their son. She came to see resistance as even more important for sons, due to harsher restrictions and penalties for boys and men who defy gender stereotypes.
Many of the parents I interviewed expressed strong opinions about the ways that clothing, toys, room décor, and children’s activities are gender segregated. Stephanie (TX) talked about how she and her wife, Tammy, were trying not to give in to pressure to give their 18-month-old son only “boy” things. Stephanie lamented, “Apparently it’s only puppy dogs and trucks that are appropriate for boys. I think that’s bullshit. You know, my kid wants to wear an angel, or carry around a stuffed animal, or a doll, that’s what he likes.” Stephanie was passionate about this topic, and was very intentional about providing a range of toys, clothes, and activities for her son.
Joseph and Eric (TX), on the other hand, said that they had never felt the need to intentionally buy “pink stuff” for their two sons, ages 4 and 9. Joseph explained, “They’ve never really expressed an interest in more female gender-stereotyped toys. . . . We always kidded each other, well, what if he wants a bright pink pony, and it’s like, well I guess we could.” That being said, they did note that, as toddlers, both of their sons loved playing dress-up with girls’ clothing at day care:
We went in, and he’s in pumps, and has some shawl thing on, and something on his head, and I thought, wow! [laughs]
But the thing is, we’re not going to say, “Oh, you can’t do that! You’re a boy!”
No.
While Joseph and Eric did not see themselves as encouraging their sons to play with feminine toys, they felt strongly that they should not resist such behavior if and when it happened. They also encouraged resistance in other ways; for example, noting their younger son’s love of music and movement, they talked about enrolling him in ballet lessons.
Common among my respondents was the idea that children should be allowed to select their own toys, clothing, and activities. These parents saw their role as providing options from the “gender buffet”: some “girl things” here, some “boy things” there, and a handful of gender-neutral choices when possible, usually offered as equally viable options. As Wendy (TX) put it, “I want her to have the whole world, and then she can just pick what she wants.” Thirteen of the couples I interviewed showed clear use of this strategy, three couples gave some examples of this strategy without seeming to have a strong commitment to it, and two couples only provided examples of allowing gender nonconformity, but not of actively introducing it to their children themselves.
This conversation with Latisha and Maria (MA), about their three-year-old daughter Alivia’s interest in both “boy” and “girl” things, illustrates the concept of the gender buffet:
Once Maria bought her an imitation tool set, because that’s what she was interested in at the time. But she also has microphones, and she also has dolls. But, even like, with her puzzles—she is interested in castles and dragons and things like that. And so that’s the puzzle that we’re going to get, and we don’t think about [whether it is for boys or girls].
But then there’s people’s view on it, like when we bought that tool set. The cashier—it was man—was like, “Oh, you buying this for your son?” And I was like “Actually, no, my daughter.” And he was like, “Whoa! Oh, okay, that’s cool!” But it like, takes people a minute.
Later, Maria added, “If I buy her something, I buy both. I buy the same size, but like, a boy pajama and a girl pajama, just to have the variety and to let her pick.” In intentionally buying their daughter toys and clothes from both the boys’ and girls’ departments, Latisha and Maria constructed a buffet of gendered options—including conventionally feminine options—from which Alivia could choose. They described one day when Alivia came out of her room dressed head-to-toe in pink. Before having kids, they said they wouldn’t be the type of parents who dressed their daughter in all pink, but Alivia wore all pink that day because her moms were committed to letting her choose.
The way parents implemented the gender buffet strategy varied. Some, like Latisha and Maria, offered a variety of options, without judgment, and tried to be aware of their children’s preferences. Of the 13 couples with a strong commitment to the gender buffet, seven fell into this subtype. The other six couples, however, took a more self-consciously politicized approach. They tailored the buffet to include alternate formulations of masculinity and femininity, and to remove options that they saw as representing harmful or dangerous aspects of masculinity and femininity. With this approach, parents sought to challenge a gendered social order in which masculinity is associated with power over women. While the parents who took this more critical approach did so with both sons and daughters, all of them were women or transgender/genderqueer; none of the gay men I interviewed took this approach, and the only two couples who showed no inclination toward the gender buffet strategy were gay men. While I cannot generalize from this sample, this may suggest that gay men face more scrutiny as parents or, alternatively, that they are less inclined to challenge the gendered social order.
One way parents demonstrated resistance to the gender order was through the cultivation of emotion, particularly in sons. They challenged the troubling aspect of masculinity that denies boys and men the vocabulary and skills to experience and talk about a range of emotions. Alexis stated that she has made “a very conscious decision of honoring [her son’s] emotional life by naming it, like ‘That was a very kind thing you did,’ or ‘That was a very thoughtful thing.’” She sees this as a countercultural act, and something that she does not see her straight relatives and friends doing with their sons. Similarly, Cam (TX) said that it was important to cultivate some nonstereotypically masculine traits in her son: “I think it’s important to me that he’s sensitive, that we raise him as a feminist . . . we’d like him to be compassionate, and have empathy for others. I think those things are more important to me than like, what he chooses as a career, or even if he has a career.” 2
While it could be argued that these parents are seeking to restrict their sons’ gender expressions by trying to ensure that they would not become “typical” men, these parents instead articulated this as a way of expanding their sons’ future possibilities. In other words, they saw hegemonic masculinity (Connell 1995) as something that restricts men’s gender expression, rather than as just one of several equally valid ways of being male. These parents take an intentionally critical stance toward some articulations of gender, and thus remove certain options from the gender buffet table. In particular, they resist the association of masculinity with reason and femininity with emotion, by encouraging their sons to develop emotions—such as caring, kindness, sensitivity—that are associated with femininity.
Similarly, some parents of daughters also expressed fears about the dangers of certain feminine stereotypes and hoped to cultivate alternative femininities for their daughters. Rosa (TX) felt it was important that her daughter learn certain stereotypically masculine skills, like basic car maintenance, to “make sure that she’s not helpless.” Jennifer (MA) was anxious about the influence of female beauty standards on her daughter, saying, “There are stereotypes for girls that I think are really dangerous, around body image and stuff like that, that really scare me. . . . I feel like there’s this extra level of consciousness that we have to have for ourselves, and help make her aware of early on, and then keep being hyper-vigilant around.” Jennifer and her wife, Amy, were also critical of others’ dismissiveness of gun play as a “boys will be boys” behavior and had a rule against any toy guns or imaginary gun play in their house. Jennifer and Amy employed the gender buffet strategy with their children—their son showed a very strong preference for “girl” things—but they were careful to explain to their children that articulations of gender are not value-neutral, and in fact, that some were quite damaging.
Reasons for Gender Resistance
All of the parents I interviewed reported at least some instances of resisting binary gender through their children’s clothing, toys, and activities, and most did so using the “gender buffet” strategy. Though these parents did not all explicitly link the gender buffet strategy to their LGBTQ identities, their reasons for using this strategy had very much to do with discourses about, and experiences relating to, non-normative sexualities. As with the parents that Kane (2012) interviewed, these parents held in tension a belief that a person’s gender identity or expression was innate, and a belief that they, as parents, have the potential to alter—for good or for ill—their children’s gender expression. In offering these explanations, many of the parents referenced painful stories from their own childhood experiences. I argue that these stories are illustrative of processes of (mis)recognition, or the ways in which gender and sexual identity are interpreted (correctly or not) by other social actors (Pfeffer 2014). I posit that these parents utilize the gender buffet strategy as a means of avoiding similar moments of (mis)recognition with their children.
Many of the parents I interviewed drew upon the “born this way” discourse of the natural origins of sexual orientation and gender identity. The “born this way” discourse is often used to argue that sexual orientation and gender identity are not a choice, but are innate and unchangeable. Interestingly, parents did not use this discourse to justify a hands-off approach to gender, in which children should just be allowed to be “who they are.” Rather, parents used it to emphasize the importance of countering the heteronormative paradigm that would otherwise restrict children from realizing their innate potential.
Parents frequently used terms like “natural” or “innate” in the interviews to describe their children’s personalities. Jack (MA) explained, “It is clear to us, particularly having three [kids], that they come pre-wired” with certain temperaments. Michael (MA) noted how his son, who they adopted at age two and a half, had shown an interest in the theatrical from a very young age, noting, “Even his birth mother said that he loved to play dress up.” Cam felt that her infant son was already showing signs of innate interests and aptitudes, saying “even right now, he has some interests that seem innate. Like he really loves music, so that might be something that he’s interested in, and we’ll try to foster.” These parents believe that some aspects of a person’s interests and preferences are innate, and that their job as a parent is to provide options so that their children will be able to be, as Jack said, “who they truly are.” Jack believed that his children already had an innate identity, and that his goal as a parent was to allow this identity to flourish. He gave an example: A family friend whose children showed early preference for left-handedness had taught her children to use their right hands, to make life easier. Jack explained, “It just wouldn’t occur to us to make our kids into righties! It’s no different than, well, we’ll make them a little straighter, or make them play the violin, or whatever it is. They are who they are, and I do think that because we are gay, we have some perspective on that.” Jack, and other parents in the sample, felt that just because their children’s identities may be innate, does not mean they are inevitable—the potential exists for social norms and pressures to suppress certain aspects of identity. As parents, they see it as their responsibility to ensure that their children do not feel limited to a narrow view of an acceptable future life.
Narratives marked by unmet parental expectations and shame about not “fitting in” as children appeared frequently in my respondent’s descriptions of how being LGBTQ influenced their parenting style. Many described experiences of being shamed by their parents for gender non-normative behavior and being pressured, or even forced, to change this behavior. These experiences can be interpreted as instances of (mis)recognition, or misreadings of gender and sexual identity by other social actors (Pfeffer 2014). Respondents explained that they altered their behavior to allow their parents or other family members to (mis)recognize them as heterosexual and normatively gendered. Some respondents reported that their parents expressed grief when forced to confront the reality of having an LGBTQ child. Jennifer explained, “When I came out, my mother said to me, ‘when you were born, I thought I knew what your life was going to look like, and now it’s not looking that way, and that breaks my heart.’ . . . And I don’t want them to have to feel like I felt when I was breaking my mother’s heart because I wasn’t doing what she expected me to do.” Similarly, Rebecca (MA) spoke of feeling like she was hiding herself from her mother growing up, and said, “I want for my daughter to not feel like she ever has to hide a piece of her life from me.” Respondents seemed committed to avoiding misrecognizing their own children: Erin (TX) stated that “I’m very purposive about not telling them who they are,” and Stephanie said of her son that she “didn’t want people, before he was even born, deciding who he was.” I argue that these parents, in allowing their children a wide range of possible self-expression, are attempting to protect their children from painful experiences of childhood misrecognition. Drawing on the “born this way” discourse, these parents “recognize” their children, not necessarily as already nonheterosexual, but as potentially nonheterosexual. They use the gender buffet strategy as a means of trying to avoid misrecognition of their own children.
The Context of Gender Resistance
The extent to which the parents in my sample resisted heteronormative gender norms varied depending on their social locations. Factors such as race, class, gender (of both parents and children), local context, and legal protection of the family all intersect in ways that both enable and constrain these parents’ ability—or even desire—to engage in these practices. All parents in my sample reported being inconsistent with their resistance, even at times going against their own convictions. They reported, to varying degrees, feeling observed, scrutinized, or held accountable for their children’s gendered behavior by real or hypothetical others. In this section, I discuss how aspects of each family’s social location work together to enable or prevent gender resistance. Following an intersectional framework, I demonstrate how the social forces that shape the lives, identities, and social location of these parents also impact how they parent their children.
Michelle and Alexis, and Susan and Ana, who discussed their desire to dress their sons in less “masculine” clothing, illustrate the importance of social location for empowering parents to resist gender norms. Michelle and Alexis are both white, hold graduate degrees, have very supportive extended families, and report that their colleagues, friends, and church community affirm their family. They are legally married, a status they referenced when discussing their right to parent their children in countercultural ways. They were comfortable criticizing expert discourses about good parenting. Michelle—self-described as “outspoken”—even felt comfortable calling other parents out on problematic aspects of their parenting practices.
Susan and Ana, on the other hand, expressed far more anxiety about resisting gender norms, worrying about how their resistance might be perceived by other parents, both gay and straight. Though Susan and Ana are also highly educated, Ana is a biracial immigrant, and Susan and Ana described having little support from their families of origin. As recent transplants to Massachusetts, they did not (yet) feel connected to a supportive local community. They are not legally married, though both are legal parents to their son. Though they shared the opinions of Michelle and Alexis about the restrictive nature of gender norms on children, Susan and Ana described far more discomfort with engaging in resistant practices and referred frequently to their anxieties about being judged as unfit parents: they worried that straight people would judge them for trying to “make” their son gay, but, on the other hand, that lesbian and gay people would see them as being too normative. Overall, Susan and Ana felt far more scrutinized, and less free to resist, than did Michelle and Alexis.
Gendered assumptions about the parents themselves also seem to matter for parents’ ability to resist gender norms with their children. Recall Stephanie and Tammy, and Joseph and Eric: both couples reside in Texas and are parents of only boys. Stephanie took a more proactive approach to resisting gender than did Joseph and Eric—she purchased toys, clothing, and room décor for her son as a way to take a stand on the potentially harmful effects of gender constraints. Joseph and Eric also criticized these constraints, but took more of a “wait-and-see” approach. While they were adamant that they would never deny their sons a “bright pink pony,” they didn’t feel the need to buy one unless and until one of their sons requested it. Joseph and Eric explained that when they adopted their children, they had felt scrutinized for being gay men adopting sons, as if people thought they would try to turn their sons gay. Other gay fathers I interviewed expressed similar anxieties; this may be part of the reason why lesbian mothers, rather than all LGBTQ parents, are more likely to have gender-nonconforming children (Biblarz and Stacey 2010).
The social location of the children also affected how parents felt about resisting gender norms. Laura (MA) reported that prior to being a parent, she assumed she would be “one of those moms” whose son played with dolls and wore dresses, but upon actually becoming a parent, she felt much more cautious about such practices, in part because her son “already had enough on his plate” as an adopted, African American child of interracial, lesbian parents. Laura worried that her son might feel ostracized from or stigmatized by his peers, and thus hesitated to encourage him to break gender stereotypes, because doing so might damage him in a way that it might not other children.
The practices of these parents are also influenced by their perceptions of the local and more general societal acceptance of LGBTQ people. The Texas parents were more likely than the Massachusetts parents to discuss intense feelings of scrutiny from others; of the five couples who discussed this at length, four were in Texas. However, parents in both states spoke about the even greater importance of acceptance by their local communities and school districts. Those who felt their local communities were more accepting and supportive generally felt comfortable allowing their children to engage in gender-nonconforming behaviors, though this feeling of acceptance was not only structured around sexuality. Laura and her wife, Gabrielle, for example, had moved multiple times over the course of only a few years to find a neighborhood that they felt was racially diverse and queer-friendly, and Latisha and Maria had recently moved their daughter from a predominantly white preschool with several other LGBTQ families to a racially diverse school where they were the only LGBTQ family.
Parents also varied in their interpretations of the overall degree of social acceptance of LGBTQ people, which factored into how they imagined their children’s future relationships and sexual orientations – though not necessarily into how they felt about gender nonconformity. Though all of the parents in my sample stressed that they did not want their children to feel as if they were expected to be straight, two of the parents admitted—both with an embarrassed tone—that they hoped their children would be straight. Latisha expressed anxiety about the possibility of her three-year-old daughter, Alivia, being a lesbian. Choking back tears, she explained how she was continuing to deal with a sense of hurt and estrangement from the Black church that was central to her racial identity (see Moore 2011). Like many of the women in Moore’s study of Black lesbians, Latisha displayed ambivalence about the church of her upbringing: She remained deeply invested in her Christian identity, and reported listening to Black preachers on the radio, but she and Maria now attended a gay-friendly, but not historically Black, church. She felt that because she had not yet resolved her own feelings about this sense of loss, she would be ill-equipped to advise Alivia on how to deal with that same hurt. Though Latisha had reported resisting gender constraints, she worried that other factors, including racial identity and the religious beliefs of her community, could limit Alivia’s ability to be happy in whatever kind of life she chooses. In part, this was because she inferred from her own experience of alienation that various outcomes for Alivia’s future were not value-neutral.
Similarly, Timothy (TX), who was raised in a Catholic family in Appalachia, admitted, “I don’t even want to say this, but I hope that they are straight. Because I don’t want them to go through the struggles that I went through growing up. So I hope that they’re not—I mean, I’ll support that, which’ll probably be easy for us, but I would prefer them to be straight.” Timothy, like Latisha, saw the possibility that his children’s lives could be more difficult if they are not straight, with his own experience as an example. Timothy and Latisha do not see homosexuality as deviant; rather, they understand the challenges that can come from being LGBTQ in a heteronormative society. Interestingly, Timothy’s partner and Latisha’s wife, both of whom have strong ties to their families and communities of origin, strongly disagreed with their partners on this point, stating that they did not think their children being gay or lesbian would impact their children’s future happiness.
A few parents in my sample even expressed a slight hope that one of their children would be gay. Jack and Mark talked about how it would be “kind of fun” if one of their three children were gay, although they didn’t really have a strong preference about this. Wendy and Lisa (TX) joked about being sad knowing that chances were better that their daughter would be straight than not, but, in Lisa’s words, “we’ll love her anyway!” Jack and Mark are a well-off couple, both respected in their professions and having strong ties to their families, and this privileged status may have helped them to see their children’s futures as being happy no matter their sexual orientation or gender identity. Wendy and Lisa, on the other hand, had fewer marks of privilege than did Jack and Mark. They are white, but not economically advantaged, and they don’t report much support from their local community or their families. They are both “deviant” mothers in other ways, as Lisa has a visible disability and Wendy, in her fifties, is an older mother. Wendy and Lisa serve as a reminder that social location is not a perfect predictor of resistance to gender norms. Rather, these findings suggest that social location and related identity categories are configured through often unequal social processes, and these same social processes impact the way in which LGBTQ parents raise their children.
Conclusion
The LGBTQ-identified parents I interviewed negotiate a complex, even contradictory, set of cultural discourses in seeking to be good parents to their children. On the one hand, the dominant heteronormative parenting discourse insists upon the importance of childhood gender conformity: thus, a “good parent” is one who raises their children in a way that conforms to these expectations. On the other hand, these parents see the construct of heteronormativity, with its assumption of binary gender, as something that can harm their children. They draw upon their own experiences of feeling that their expression of their gendered and sexual selves was constrained growing up in a heteronormative society, experiences from which they hope to shield their children. The LGBTQ parents I interviewed all articulated a desire to raise their children in ways that challenge the dominant, heteronormative paradigm of childhood—though to varying degrees and with varying levels of consistency.
This article makes three contributions to our understanding of gender, sexuality, and parenting. First, this article highlights the importance of parents’ sexuality in the gender socialization of their children. While Kane (2012) finds that parents’ beliefs about the origins of gender expression plays a role in the degree to which they allow or encourage gender-nonconforming behaviors, I find that parents draw not only on belief but also on their own gendered experiences. The parents I interviewed drew upon their own experiences of having their gender expressions or sexual identities (mis)recognized by their parents in explaining their attempts to not constrain their children’s gender. They invoked the “born this way” discourse, not as a way of justifying a hands-off approach to gender but to explain the importance of actively expanding their children’s options for their expression and identity, both as children and in the future. They maintain that this identity can be constrained or allowed to flourish. These parents acknowledge that the society in which they are raising their children is heteronormative, and that heteronormativity can impact their children’s emerging senses of self. They see it as their job as parents to do what they can to counter this. These parents’ own childhoods were marked by (mis)recognition, giving them insight into the role that parents play in the identity-making project of childhood gender socialization. Navigating the (heteronormative) world as LGBTQ social agents impacts how these parents socialize their own children. This highlights how childhood gender socialization is an interactional process that is influenced by the material realities of both the child and the parents. It also pushes in new directions the understanding of the different child-rearing approaches highlighted by Lareau (2011), demonstrating that, when it comes to children’s gender socialization, some parents intertwine elements of both cultivation and natural growth. This research makes it clear that these child-rearing approaches are themselves gendered processes, and thus are affected by parents’ own beliefs about, and experiences of, gender.
Second, this article further complicates our understanding of the potential impact of the rise of “born this way” discourse. Despite criticism by scholars and queer activists alike of this narrative and its restrictive understanding of sexual identity as being completely outside of “choice” (Walters 2011; Weber 2012), this study demonstrates that this narrative can also be used to facilitate parents’ ability to raise their children “queerly,” in ways that challenge normativity and may allow children more freedom to make choices about their identities (Meadow 2011; Rahilly 2015). However, these parents navigate the world at the intersection of multiple social identities, which impacts the degree to which they feel comfortable allowing their children such freedoms. Future research involving diverse LGBTQ family structures, especially those in which less privileged parents are more heavily represented, will allow for a more robust exploration of the influence of social location. For scholars and activists who seek to diminish binary, heteronormative gender norms for children, this finding that parents’ ability to resist heteronormative gender norms for their children is constrained by their social location should be of utmost importance, as it points to one of the areas in which overlapping systems of social inequality produce variation in the experiences of LGBTQ parents.
Finally, and centrally, this article identifies a particular strategy that parents use to resist the heteronormative childrearing paradigm, which I call the “gender buffet.” With this strategy, parents seek to offer their children a variety of gendered options for clothing, toys, and activities and interests, including feminine, masculine, and gender-neutral choices. Some parents using this strategy present all options in a value-neutral way, whereas others take a more politicized, critical approach, labeling some characteristics of masculinity and femininity harmful or dangerous, and thus taking these options out of the buffet for their children. The existence of these two approaches to the gender buffet raises questions about the resistance potential of the gender buffet strategy. On the one hand, the strategy may align with a model of gender “equality” that is focused on individual choice but which lacks a critique of power relations. On the other hand, as we see with the parents who take a more critical approach to the gender buffet, this strategy can also include an intentional, politicized challenge to gendered power relations, evident in the goals some parents had of raising sensitive, nonviolent, feminist sons and capable, independent daughters. What impact the use of this strategy may have on gender more broadly, then, may depend on which approach to the strategy dominates.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Joya Misra, Mary Bernstein, and the anonymous reviewers from Gender & Society for offering very helpful feedback; Christine Williams for her advice and comments throughout the preparation of this article; Debra Umberson, Shannon Cavanaugh, Brandon Robinson, and the 2012/2013 members of Fem(me) Sem at UT-Austin for their comments on various drafts; and Sanden Averett for her editing assistance.
Versions of this article were presented at the 2013 meeting of the American Sociological Association and the 2014 conference “Fun with Dick and Jane: Gender and Childhood” at the University of Notre Dame. The article was awarded the 2015 Norval Glenn Prize by the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, and received an honorable mention for the 2015 Sally Hacker Award from the Sex & Gender section of ASA.
This research was funded by a predoctoral research grant from the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin.
Notes
Kate Henley Averett is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. She researches gender and sexuality in childhood and the family. Her dissertation is on discourses of childhood gender and sexuality in the homeschooling movement.