Feeding the Hand that Bit You: Lesbian Daughters at Mid-Life Negotiating Parental Caretaking

SUMMARY

Like other women in our culture, lesbians find parental caretaking is a gendered expectation that often falls to them. This article explores how we negotiate competing demands and integrate our parents' needs into our lives. The daughter/parent relationship may have been strained by parental homophobia, exclusion of our partner, “splitting” between our lesbian and birth family lives, and physical distance. We may recall feelings of metaphorical and physical caretaking not offered to us when we came out, when lack of parental support may have brought financial abandonment and emotional upset. Inversion of the relationship into the child as parental caretaker, fraught with mixed emotions, can bring resolution of long-held resentments and pain.

KEYWORDS:

• Lesbian
• caregivers
• elderly parents
• mother–daughter relationship
• elder care

Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges the research assistance provided by Angela La Grotteria and Jeannette Wooden in the preparation of this article.

Susan E. Cayleff is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Women's Studies at San Diego State University. She is the author of four books, one of which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. With her sister, she helped care for their mother who passed away in June 2006 at the age of 91. She continues to care for her father, also 91, who still lives autonomously.