Susan Golombok - We Are Family: what really matters for parents and children

We are family

Susan Golombok is Professor of Family Research and Director of the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge, and a Professorial Fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge. Her pioneering research on lesbian mother families, gay father families, single mothers by choice, and families created by assisted reproductive technologies has been instrumental to our understanding of both child development and social and ethical issues related to family life.

Scribe Publications
2 John St, Clerkenwell, London, WC1N 2ES, United Kingdom
1820 Edward St, Brunswick, Victoria 3056, Australia

First published by Scribe 2020

Copyright Susan Golombok 2020

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Some names and biographical details have been changed to protect individuals privacy.

Eighty-six (86) words from The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak (Penguin Books 2008, 2019) Copyright Elif Shafak, 2007

Excerpt from WE ARE FAMILY, Words and Music by Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers 1979 Bernards Other Music (BMI). All rights on behalf of Bernards Other Music administered by Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp. Reproduced by permission of Sony Music Publishing, London W1F 9LD

Susan Golombok, Research on Assisted Reproduction Families: A Historical Perspective, ed. Gabor Kovacs, Peter Brinsden, & Alan DeCherney, In-Vitro Fertilization: the pioneers history , 2018, Cambridge University Press 2018, reprinted with permission

Susan Golombok, Modern Families: parents and children in new family forms , 2015, Susan Golombok 2015, published by Cambridge University Press, reprinted with permission

Excerpt from Red Dust Road by Jackie Kay Jackie Kay 2010, reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear

9781912854370 (UK edition)
9781925713701 (Australian edition)
9781925938203 (ebook)

Catalogue records for this book are available from the National Library of Australia and the British Library

scribepublications.co.uk
scribepublications.com.au

To John and Jamie, my family

When you have absolutely no idea what kind of man your father is, your imagination fills in the void. Perhaps I watch him on TV or hear his voice on the radio every day, without knowing its him. Or I might have come face-to-face with him sometime, someplace. I imagine I might have taken the same bus with him; perhaps he is the professor I talk to after class, the photographer whose exhibition I go to see, or this street vendor here You never know.

ELIF SHAFAK, THE BASTARD OF ISTANBUL , 2007.

***

What is the family? Time was when most people probably thought the answer was not merely clear but obvious. Today it is more complex Children live in households where their parents may be married or unmarried. They may be brought up by a single parent, by two parents or even by three parents. Their parents may or may not be their natural parents Some children are brought up by two parents of the same sex. Some children are conceived by artificial donor insemination. Some are the result of surrogacy arrangements. The fact is that many adults and children, whether through choice or circumstance, live in families more or less removed from what, until comparatively recently, would have been recognised as the typical nuclear family. This, I stress, is not merely the reality; it is, I believe, a reality which we should welcome and applaud.

SIR JAMES MUNBY, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE FAMILY DIVISION OF THE HIGH COURT AND HEAD OF FAMILY JUSTICE FOR ENGLAND AND WALES, 2018.

We are family

I got all my sisters with me

We are family

Get up everybody and sing

SISTER SLEDGE

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Research cited

Resources for children

Preface

It began by chance with a copy of the feminist magazine Spare Rib, delivered to my doorstep in Camden, London in September 1976. Recently arrived from my native Scotland, I was beginning a Masters degree in child development at the University of London, and the magazines cover story caught my eye. It showed a photograph of three women and their three children underneath the headline, Out of the closet into the courts: why could one of these women lose custody of her child? I flipped open the magazine and began to read.

The journalist, Eleanor Stephens, described how, almost without exception, lesbian mothers fighting custody battles against their former husbands were losing the right to live with their children, in stark contrast to the experiences of heterosexual mothers who were practically always awarded custody in those days. At the time the article was published, not a single lesbian woman had been awarded custody of her children by a UK court. There was no actual evidence that lesbian women were poor parents, and yet they were being separated from their children on the grounds that it was against a childs best interests to be raised in a lesbian household. This immediately struck me as unjust and whats more unscientific.

The article called for a volunteer to carry out an objective study into the wellbeing of children in lesbian mother families, something that had never been done before. I had been searching for a subject for my Masters dissertation, and felt that it was cruel to break up these families, especially in the absence of any evidence against them. So I responded to the call for help, offering my services as a fledgling researcher. Little did I know that this would be the start of a research project that would continue for the rest of my working life.

I got in touch with Action for Lesbian Parents, the group of women mentioned in the article who were dedicated to publicising the unfairness of the legal system and were looking for researchers to investigate children growing up in lesbian mother families. A woman called Berni Humphreys answered my call and invited me to come to her home in Cambridge where the group was based. Bernis house was a large, grey-stoned Victorian villa, with childrens drawings on the walls inside. I was nervous throughout the meeting. The women in the group were all mothers, which seemed terribly grown-up to my 22-year-old self, and some were involved in fierce child custody disputes with their ex-husbands. They understandably wanted to make sure that I could be trusted to carry out an independent study, and were especially concerned that I did not hold preconceived ideas about lesbian mother families. They asked me about my background and questioned me in great detail about how I would conduct the research. Some of the women were researchers themselves and gave me a tough grilling. But somehow, I passed their test, and they agreed to put me in touch with organisations that could help me find families who were willing to take part.

Many years later, I moved to Cambridge to become the director of the Universitys Centre for Family Research. Whenever I pass that grey-stone house I think of the drawings on the walls and wonder where those children are today. I also think about how the families in that house who had to fight so hard for their existence, let alone acceptance paved the way for many different types of families, families I could not even imagine in 1976.