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Cette expérience est le fruit d'une étude sur quatorze grands-mères et bellesmères lesbiennes qui se sont manifestées vers l'adolescence de leurs enfants ou un peu plus tard, ce qui a précipité des conflits ou un éloignement temporaire. Plusieurs ont rapporté des liens familiaux très fans, toutes ont exprimé leur plaisir dans leur rôle de grandparentalité homosexuelle et l'ont inté
Better one's own path, though imperfect, than the path of another well made.
-Participant's email footnote
There is a growing body of research on contemporary lesbian families. In Canada, significant changes since the mid 1990s in the application of family law have helped lesbian parents to be more secure and integrated into mainstream society (Arnup). While these families continue to experience marginalization and stigma (King and Black), economic difficulties (Black, Makar and Sunders), and negative initial reactions of children in response to mothers adopting a lesbian identity (Van Voorhis and McClain), the general consensus of studies is that lesbian families tend to be effective in negotiating the challenges of parenting, in spite of the hardships (Parks).
Very little is known, however, about lesbian grandmothers; those lesbians who negotiated parenting in the less accepting decades of the 1970s and 1980s. Dana Rosenfeld calls this era "post-Stonewall," in reference to the early years of the gay liberation movement. In urban centers, newly "out" gay and lesbian people built a rich and diverse culture, free from much of the restrictions of the 1950s. However, there was a world of separation between urban "gaybourhoods" and the suburban and rural neighbourhoods where families and children dwelt. Courts were not generous with lesbian mothers, and loss of custody was a strong deterrent to "coming out" as a lesbian mother (Arnup). Many women in such circumstances coped by living either as a mother (suppressing or denying lesbian inclinations) or as a lesbian (accepting childlessness as the price of lesbianism). As children grew up and left home, and as the social and financial barriers to living without male patronage relaxed, many mothers came out in midlife as lesbians, and now identify as lesbian grandmothers.
Study Method
In May of 2004 I contacted lesbian grandmothers to participate in an informal study. Using a snowball technique, where participants received a questionnaire and were then invited to...