Predator, Pet Lesbian, or Just The Nanny? LGBTQ Parents of Children With Disabilities Describe Categorization

ABSTRACT

How are lesbian/gay/bisexual/trans/queer (LGBTQ) parents of children with disabilities categorized by service providers, and how do parents anticipate, interpret, and respond to such categorizations? This intersectional study investigated the experiences of LGBTQ parents of children with disabilities with service providers in Toronto, Canada. Parents described pressures to “fit” into providers’ limited understanding of family. Some parents described facing overt discrimination, including one parent who was seen as a possible sexual predator. Some described being perceived as representatives of “diversity” for organizations, or “pet lesbians” in the words of one couple. Others described being misread as a non-parent, as in “just the nanny,” particularly in conjunction with their racial minority status. Parents described how their experiences of being “outside the mainstream” helped them challenge systems and normative beliefs. Findings suggest that a context of scarce disability resources shapes parents’ experiences of how LGBTQ identity comes to matter.

KEYWORDS:

• Disability
• discrimination
• education
• ethnography
• health care
• intersectionality
• interviews
• LGBTQ parents
• service providers
• social services

Funding

This research was funded by a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and an Ontario Graduate Scholarship.

Notes

^1. Following S. Bear Bergman, I use “being read by others” rather than “passing” as the central way of discussing how other people categorize and attribute racial, sexual, relational, disability, and gender identities to an individual or a family (Bergman, 2009, pp. 105–112). This approach is also consistent with West and Zimmerman’s analysis of gender as interactional and intimately connected with social control (1987).

^2. I retain scare marks around “special needs” since this designation is usually institutionally imposed rather than personally claimed, and it has been troubled by disability studies scholars (see, e.g., Runswick-Cole & Hodge, 2009).

^3. See Judith Butler (1993) for a consideration of the interpretive and material aspects of “matter.”

^4. There is, of course, other sociological work on categorization. For example, Zerubavel’s exploration of the social aspects of cognition could contribute to an understanding of the processes through which parents or providers understood each other and themselves (Zerubavel, 1999). However, the focus of the present work is on LGBTQ parents’ everyday experiences with disability service systems as a site where institutional categorization has material effects that can be observed and analyzed.

^5. As an example of a recent controversy in LGBTQ parent research focused on child outcomes, see (Regnerus, 2012), and a response from (Cheng & Powell, 2015). Regnerus’s paper has been thoroughly debunked by the larger research community.

^6. Study protocols were approved by the University of Toronto Health Sciences Research Ethics Board.

^7. In families with multiple children, totals indicate how the child with disabilities came into the family.

^8. For more on intersectional identity among White LGBTQ parents with racial minority children, see (Richardson & Goldberg, 2010).

^9. Respite workers offer regular care in the home; in this case, the worker would have been in the family home every day.

^10. For more on LGBTQ parents’ experiences with adoption systems in Ontario, see (Ross, Epstein, Anderson, & Eady, 2009).

^11. See (Ahmed, 2006, p. 96) for another account of a queer girlfriend being read as a “sister” or a “husband.” See also (Ahmed, 2014) on how race can render relationships and identities inherently questionable.

^12. The potential legal vulnerability of LGBTQ parents continues to be a common community concern and was noted by several key informants as a concern of LGBTQ parents. Participants who had separated or divorced expressed an eagerness to avoid court involvement.

^13. None of the male or bi-gender participants had been in heterosexual/“non-queer” parenting arrangements.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and an Ontario Graduate Scholarship.