“We are the Unusual Factor”: Queering Family Communication Norms with Gay Adoptive Parents

Abstract

ABSTRACT Same-sex parenting in the United States (U.S.) is a rich site for scholars across disciplines to deepen more nuanced and complex understandings of diverse family dynamics. Despite the existence of this growing population that diversifies U.S. family values, communication scholars have long neglected same-sex households in their research agenda. In this qualitative study, we deploy queer theory to expose and call into question the cultural binary between homosexuality and heterosexuality in determining what is viewed as a good and/or culturally acceptable family, through the voices of gay adoptive parents. These voices aim to present how same-sex parents challenge and interrogate normative family discourses and parenting practices. The findings of twenty in-depth interviews identified two interrelated themes. The first theme, queering heteronormative family imagery, unpacks how participants problematize certain heteronormative ideologies that reinforce the traditional concept of family through everyday communication. The second, queering dominant parenting practices, delineates the discursive and material realities of the parenting culture at the intersection of gender, sexuality, class and age. In all, participants’ voices in this study offer a sense of queer intervention in destabilizing taken-for-granted assumptions on how to do family, and further explore (re)constructions and (re)imaginings of what a socially just family could be.