Families We Keep: LGBTQ People and Their Enduring Bonds with Parents

LGBTQ adults don't end troubled ties with parents, even if they refuse to support their gender identity, sexuality, or both. This is due to the sociocultural power of compulsory kinship, which creates and sustains the natural and inevitable connection between parents and adult children. Reczek and Bosley-Smith's book Families We Keep challenges this belief and gives us permission to break free of family bonds that are not in our best interests.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 224 pages
Publication date: 09 May 2022
Publisher: New York University Press

Families We Keep is a fascinating exploration of the enduring connections between LGBTQ adults and their parents. Alongside the significance of "chosen families" within the queer community, Rin Reczek and Emma Bosley-Smith have discovered that a remarkably small percentage of LGBTQ individuals opt to cut ties with their parents, even when those parents refuse to accept their gender identity, sexual orientation, or both. Through in-depth interviews with over seventy-five LGBTQ individuals and their parents, Reczek and Bosley-Smith delve into the intricate bonds that unite families, both positively and negatively. They unveil the compelling reasons why many feel compelled to maintain even tumultuous and sometimes harmful relationships with their parents. They argue that this enduring connection persists because what we perceive as the inherent and inevitable bond between parents and adult children is actually fostered and sustained by the sociocultural force of compulsory kinship.

After exposing the underlying factors that maintain even the most troubled intergenerational ties, Families We Keep provides us with the freedom to break free from those family bonds that are not in our best interests. Reczek and Bosley-Smith challenge our deeply ingrained belief that family, and particularly our relationships with our parents, should be upheld at all costs.

Families We Keep sheds light on the evolving significance of family in America and the challenges that LGBTQ individuals face as they navigate its complexities as adults.

Weight: 354g
Dimension: 152 x 229 x 17 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781479813339