Queer Motherhood: Challenging Heteronormative Rules beyond the Assimilationist/Radical Binary

Abstract

In Spain, same sex marriage and adoption was legalized in 2005, and in 2006 the Law of Assisted Reproduction made this available to every woman regardless of their sexual orientation or marital status. Drawing on interviews carried out in Madrid about assisted conception and lesbian parenting, as well as on previous contributions advanced by queer and gender scholars, this article questions to what extent the assumptions of assimilation to a normative system adequately apply to queer families. Some activists and academics characterize lesbian, gay and/or bisexual partnering and parenting as (hetero)normative, at the same time as the very same forms of constituting a family are the object of rejection from politicians, lawmakers and cultural institutions. Taking this context as the premise, in this article I discuss the need for more diverse analytical instruments which take into account more human and psychosocial aspects of life alongside the political and academic analysis of queer trajectories concerning maternity decisions and everyday experiences of motherhood.