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Reinventing the Family: The Emerging Story of Lesbian and Gay Parents - Hardcover

 
9780517587430: Reinventing the Family: The Emerging Story of Lesbian and Gay Parents
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A close-up look at the changing face of the modern family examines the growing numbers of gay and lesbian parents, discussing such issues as how to raise a child in a homophobic world, custody, foster parenting, and child development. 15,000 first printing.

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About the Author:
Laura Benkov is Supervising Psychologist at Children's Hospital in Boston, and an instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
From Kirkus Reviews:
A stirring but ponderous study of legal and psychological issues facing homosexual parents, by an uncloseted psychologist and teacher (Psychology/Harvard Medical School). Benkov's struggle with her own ``unwavering passion'' for motherhood led her to conduct ``discussions'' (under unspecified conditions) with gays and lesbians who achieved parenthood by various methods: artificial insemination, surrogacy, fostering, joint-parenting arrangements, adoption. She found that despite the ``lesbian baby boom'' of recent years, homophobic judges and state bureaucrats continue to presume homosexuals unfit as parents and seldom grant them custody. Those who bypass the courts confront a yawning chasm of novel questions: What should the parents be called? Whose surname should the child have? What role, if any, should a sperm donor play in the family? How should the nonbiological mother cope with her partner's breastfeeding? How should the parents deal with homophobia in the child's public school? Benkov is best at depicting how an apparently unscientific sampling of parents have answered such questions for themselves and their ``reinvented'' families. She also provides shattering accounts of ``children at risk,'' such as Kristen, the little girl from Florida whose biological grandparents wrested her away from her nonbiological lesbian mother after their daughter died. But the author's legal analysis consists mainly of rehashing law review articles and incredulously quoting the homophobic dicta of unnamed judges. Her scholarship is further undercut by a tendency to hyperextend her metaphors and to comment periodically on her own ``urgent move toward self-integration.'' Benkov doesn't know who her audience is: the unconverted straights whom she harangues with platitudes (e.g., ``In the end, our families will be what we make them'') or homosexual mothers and fathers craving practical and spiritual guidance. An overdue examination of gay and lesbian family life, better for its privileged glimpses into kitchen windows then for its scholarship. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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  • PublisherCrown
  • Publication date1994
  • ISBN 10 0517587432
  • ISBN 13 9780517587430
  • BindingHardcover
  • Edition number1
  • Number of pages289

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780517884867: Reinventing The Family: Lesbian and Gay Parents

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ISBN 10:  ISBN 13:  9780517884867
Publisher: Harmony, 1995
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    Random..., 1997
    Hardcover

  • 9780517171875: Reinventing the Family

    Random..., 1996
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. First Edition (stated). FIRST PRINTING of the First Edition (stated). A study of the emerging phenomenon of gays and lesbians choosing to have children and thus creating cultural changes in which family and marriage are being inevitably re-defined, offering the various methods used to accomplish their childbearing, legal challenges and individual trials that have taken place, much more. Hardcover with dust jacket, contains notes, bibliography, indexed, 289pp. A very nice copy, the jacket neatly encased in an acid-free archival plastic protector. Rare. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Former Owner Stamp & Signature. Book. Seller Inventory # 00013386

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