This is a Conversation I'll Need to Have: Converting the Consciousness of Gay Parenthood

• In Event: 504 - Regular Session. Social/Cultural Impacts on Parents and Parenting

Abstract

This paper analyses the contexts in which young lesbians, gay men and bisexual people develop their awareness of the possibility to become parents in non-heterosexual circumstances. It presents findings from the research project Future Intimacies, which explores views about parenthood in a young generation of lesbian, gay and bisexual people in Great Britain. Drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews with men and women in their twenties and early thirties, conducted in multiple locations across England and Wales, this project examines early stages of non-heterosexual reproductive decision making and family planning. The paper’s focus is on how young people who form same-sex relationships communicate about potentially becoming parents or remaining childfree; it discusses situations in which curiosity and personal interests provoke questions about parenting desire or the lack thereof. Findings suggest that young non-heterosexuals see their approaches to intimate life as largely similar to those of their heterosexual peers. However, non-heterosexual experience is often shaped by observations that same-sex couples ‘can’t have a baby by accident’ and that, in today’s Britain, there are no clear cultural expectations about whether a same-sex couple will have children or not.

Author

• Robert Pralat, University of Cambridge