“We are both her mothers and I want the world to know that”: Parent term selection among lesbian co-parents with children conceived through donor insemination

Abstract

Drawing on accounts from 22 lesbian couples with children conceived using donor insemination, this chapter explores how the respondents’ selection of parent terms, such as “momma” and “mommy,” influences day-to-day negotiation of parenthood. Term selection was affected by personal meanings respondents associated with terms as well as how they anticipated terms would be publicly received. Couples utilized personalized meanings associated with terms, such as terms used by families of origin or reflected in a parent’s cultural background, to help non-biological mothers feel comfortable and secure in their parenting identities. Some families also avoided terms that non-biological mothers associated too strongly with biological motherhood and felt uncomfortable using for themselves. Families also considered whether parent terms, and subsequently their relationships to their children, would be recognizable to strangers or cause undue scrutiny to their family. However, not all of the families selected terms that were easily decipherable by strangers and had to negotiate moments in which the personal meanings and public legibility of terms came into conflict. Overall, these accounts illustrate the importance of parent terms for lesbian-parent families, and other nontraditional families, as a family practice negotiating both deeply personal meanings surrounding parent–child relationships and how these terms, and the families, are normatively recognizable in public spaces.

Citation

Colonna, R.J. (2013), "“We are both her mothers and I want the world to know that”: Parent term selection among lesbian co-parents with children conceived through donor insemination", Visions of the 21st Century Family: Transforming Structures and Identities (Contemporary Perspectives in Family Research, Vol. 7), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 77-104. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1530-3535(2013)0000007006