The Family of Woman Lesbian Mothers, Their Children, and the Undoing of Gender [Paperback]

Amidst the shrill and discordant notes struck in debates over the make-upor breakdownof 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 Womanchronicles 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.

Maureen Sullivanis Assistant Professor of Sociology, Northern Illinois University.

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 Womanis that precious raritya genuinely original, profound scholarly work that is a joy to read. Judith Stacey, author ofIn 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 ofSex and Sensibility: Stories of a Lesbian Generation

A notable document of the quiet social revolution that is producing new forms of the family. Maureen Sl¢