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Contested Heteronormativities: Discourses of Fatherhood among Lesbian Parents in Sweden and Ireland

University of Essex, UK, rflood{at}essex.ac.uk

This article explores discourses of fatherhood among lesbian parents in Sweden and Ireland, based on interviews with 68 participants. Swedish lesbian parents generally expressed a strong preference for a known donor who would play an active parenting role. In contrast, Irish participants usually chose an uninvolved donor, but nonetheless one whose identity was known, albeit usually only to the lesbian parents. The significance of biology to kinship was both destabilized and reinforced, while gender and parenting discourses were also reinvented in complex ways. Reproductive decision-making among lesbian parents reflects hegemonic discourses of fatherhood in both countries. The ways that these discourses are subverted and reinscribed reveals the situatedness of lesbian parents in national contexts, where the ‘Other’ is deeply embedded in local discourses.

Key Words: fatherhood • Ireland • lesbian parents • reproductive decision-making • Sweden

Sexualities, Vol. 8, No. 2, 189-204 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/1363460705050854


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