Insurgent Parenting: Political Implications of Childrearing and Caring Practices in Spain

Abstract

Contemporary Western societies have accommodated relational rights of queer people, but the link between marriage and filiation rights remains strong. However, parallel to significant alternative family projects that emerged from Black and lesbian feminist studies, current possibilities of parenting enabled by intimate citizenship rights also present interesting practices of care outside the traditional family norm. Drawing on interviews with lesbian and bisexual mothers, and with trans people whose parents were part of their networks of care, this chapter analyses how parenting practices may be a tool to (1) ascribe social visibility to sexual and gender-diverse identities and families; (2) educate children beyond a gender binary system; (3) subvert the neoliberal supremacy of paid work over motherhood; and (4) raise children in a larger network of care, beyond the couple/children norm.