Children's Views of Family Relationships in Lesbian-Led Families

Abstract

We present a new genogram technique for exploring children's conceptualization of family membership: the Apple Tree Family (ATF). The ATF measure was used to investigate how children born to lesbian mothers via donor insemination (DI) described the composition of their family. Data were gathered from 17 children (age 4 to 11 years old) from 15 lesbian-led households on inclusion of family members on the ATF and the Kinetic Family Drawing Test (KFDT) (Burns & Kaufman, 1971). Also, data on children's inclusion of family members on the ATF were compared with family composition as described by adult family members in a prior interview. Child and adult family members tended to concur on who was in their family, depicting a core unit surrounded by a wider family network that included non-biological and biological kin. In comparison to the KFDT, the ATF enabled children to depict a greater number of family members in a wider variety of non-traditional family relationships. We propose that the ATF is useful as a research and clinical tool for working with the children of GLBTQ parents.

KEYWORDS:

• lesbian mother
• family structure
• assisted reproduction
• parent-child relationship
• genogram

This article is reprinted by permission of the publisher: Tasker, F., & Granville, J. (2010). Children's views of family relationships in lesbian-led families. In P. Thorn & D. Funke (Eds.), Homosexual families—interdisciplinary perspectives. Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript-Verlag. Acknowledgments: Julia Granville wishes to thank her daughters Scarlet and Sian, as well as Lucy and Josh, for all their individual and collective support, tolerance, and contributions of ideas of fun. Fiona Tasker wishes to thank her son Euan for his help in computer-assisted design of the Apple Tree Family.

Notes

^aVariable totals of different types of family relationships are presented in this table since relationships were not applicable in all cases.

^bFisher's exact probability cannot be calculated when row or column totals are zero (i.e., Fisher's exact probability statistic is not applicable [na]).