Abstract
The study presented here considered heterosexual women who chose to conceive and raise children together with gay men outside marriage. In-depth interviews with 10 Israeli mothers who had established hetero-gay families revealed their motivations for choosing this family configuration and the characteristics they sought in the fathers. The findings revealed that the women maintained traditional values with respect to the ideal parental model, two-gender parenting, and the attributes they sought for the coparents of their children. Rather than overtly challenge institutional patriarchy, these women chose to establish an alternative family that circumvented patriarchal impositions.
Keywords
In their book about changes in the quality of marriage in the United States, Amato, Booth, Johnson, and Rogers (2007) stated that over the past several decades, marriage lost much of its power as the institutional anchor with regard to sex, childbearing, child rearing, and adult intimacy. In keeping with this trend, the study presented here examined a unique subgroup of heterosexual women who chose to conceive and raise their children together with gay men outside marriage and thus to decouple childbearing and parenting from marriage (Gibson-Davis, 2011; Smock & Greenland, 2010). They constitute a distinctive subgroup of families “living apart together” in which the family extends across households (Cherlin, 2010).
Nonmarital motherhood has increased dramatically in most industrialized countries (Burns & Scott, 1994) and has become especially salient among women in their late 30s and 40s (Bock, 2000; Hertz, 2006). In Israel, the number of never-married mothers rose almost 80% between 2000 and 2009 (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2011a). The largest increase in nonmarital births has been among women aged 35–39 (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2008). The sharp rise in nonmarital childbearing among mature single women in Israel and worldwide points to the emergence of a distinct group of unmarried mothers, who have been referred to as “single mothers by choice” (Bock, 2000; Mannis, 1999).
The term single mothers by choice conflates two distinct groups: privileged, upper- middle- class, highly educated, well-employed, and financially secure women who choose single parenthood (Bock, 2000; Hertz, 2006; Mannis, 1999) versus poor, less educated, and financially insecure “single mothers” whose unmarried status, by implication, is deemed not to have been their choice (Bock, 2000). Furthermore, the term is ambiguous. Does the “choice” refer to their unmarried status or to their motherhood? Previous research suggested that the choice typically refers to the women’s motherhood. Most heterosexual single mothers by choice would have preferred to fulfill their motherhood by creating a traditional family with a marital partner (Hertz, 2006; Hertz & Ferguson, 1997; Jones, 2008), stressing that raising a child on their own is a “second best choice” resulting from the inability to find an eligible partner (Ludtke, 1997).
Still, the question arises as to why these mothers do not find a suitable marital partner. Explanations in the literature have generally been based on an individual psychological perspective. Qualitative studies about single mothers by choice have indicated that while many of these women support the institution of marriage, they tend to harbor an idealized image of what marriage should be (Siegel, 1995), and they are unwilling to settle for less (Bock, 1995; Hertz, 2006). Another explanation is that single mothers by choice tend to be cautious about intimate relationships with men because they fear that such relationships may undermine their autonomy and independence (Bock, 1995). Indeed, Segal-Engelchin’s (2008) quantitative study showed that single mothers by choice have a significantly higher fear of intimacy in close heterosexual relationships than do married mothers.
An alternative explanation, based on an institutional gender perspective (Ferree, 2010; McDowell & Fang, 2007), suggests that these women are seeking a nontraditional partner who has a strong egalitarian outlook on role expectations for men and women (Bock, 1995; Gerson, 2009). Although there have been important changes in the division of labor and power between husbands and wives, gender inequalities persist (Cooke, 2007). A decision to forgo marriage and raise children alone is further facilitated by changing social norms that do not stigmatize unwed mothers and diverse family lifestyles (Amato et al., 2007; Gibson-Davis, 2011), especially if the unwed mothers are educated and financially autonomous.
One route to single motherhood for a heterosexual single woman in Israel is to conceive and raise children together with a gay man outside marriage. In this family configuration, which we term the “hetero-gay family,” both birth parents share parental responsibilities, including financial responsibilities of child rearing, although they do not share a residence. While the children in these families typically reside with their mothers, both birth parents are actively involved in their children’s daily lives and in child-related decisions. In most cases, the birth parents negotiate a shared parenthood agreement before the child’s birth that is designed to determine parental rights and responsibilities, including the child’s primary residence, visitation schedules, and child support (for a comprehensive description of the hetero-gay family, see Segal-Engelchin, Erera, & Cwikel, 2005).
This path to motherhood has been institutionalized in Israel, as reflected in the establishment in 1994 of the Alternative Parenting Center, a nongovernmental organization to assist gay men and heterosexual women who are seeking shared parenthood outside marriage. The center offers its applicants a unique setting for getting to know people who want to engage in shared parenthood. It also provides professional guidance to the prospective parents from the decision to become parents, through the drafting of a partnership contract, to the arrival of the newborn to the family unit, the hetero-gay family (Segal-Engelchin, et al., 2005).
To date, 300 children have been born via the assistance of this center (see http://www.alp.org.il for further information). Over the past decade, additional nonprofit organizations, as well as websites, which are aimed at assisting heterosexual women and gay men to find suitable coparents, have been established in Israel (see, e.g., http://www.gobaby.co.il; http://www.babyli.co.il). Thus, it is estimated that the number of children who are being raised in hetero-gay families in Israel is much higher.
The phenomenon of hetero-gay families has gained considerable media attention in Israel. However, to the best of our knowledge, hetero-gay families have not been included (or identified) in any published study. An exception is Oren’s (2006) unpublished master’s degree thesis, which investigated the experiences of parenthood among Israeli gay couples who chose to conceive and raise a child together with a woman. In that study, however, gay couples who coparented with lesbian women and gay couples who coparented with heterosexual women were studied as a unitary group. In addition, Oren’s study did not address the experience of coparenting from the point of view of the women in these families. Consequently, little is known about women who choose this family configuration. The exploratory study presented here examined two topics: (1) the motivations of these women for choosing the hetero-gay family context of parenting and (2) the characteristics that they were seeking in selecting the fathers.
Method
Participants
The participants were 10 single mothers, each of whom coparented with a gay man. The women were recruited in two ways: through the Alternative Parenting Center mentioned earlier and through a snowball sampling technique. The women who participated in the study agreed to refer us to other heterosexual mothers who were coparenting with gay men. The eligibility criteria for inclusion in the study were that they were heterosexual women who had chosen to conceive and raise children together with gay men outside marriage and were not residing with the children’s birth fathers.
The participants ranged in age from 39 to 46 (M = 42), and their average age at entry into motherhood was 38 (range 35–41). Of the 10 participants, 9 had never married and 1 had married and divorced before she conceived. Six participants had academic degrees, two had a post-high school education, and two had a high school diploma. All but one participant were employed, with the majority working full time. Seven participants characterized their economic status as “fair,” and three characterized it as “good.” Seven participants had one child and three had two children shared with the same father. The children ranged in age from 5 months to 9 years (M = 4). None of the participants was involved in a romantic relationship at the time of the interviews. Five of the participants’ gay coparents cohabited with an intimate partner, and five were single, unpartnered gay men.
Interviews
Semistructured interviews were used to explore the participants’ motivations for choosing the hetero-gay family as the context for raising their children. The interview schedule, comprising of of open-ended questions and probes, was designed by the researchers. It encompassed the following issues: the decision-making process regarding the method of choice to become a single mother, the participant’s reasons for choosing coparenting as the path to single motherhood, the characteristics that the participant was seeking in selecting the father, the participant’s attitudes toward gay men, and the participant’s suggestions for other women who contemplate the option of single motherhood. At the end of the interview, each participant completed a demographic questionnaire.
The interviews were conducted by the first author and a trained research assistant. The time and place of the interview were determined by the participant. Nine interviews were conducted in the participants’ homes, and one was conducted in a coffee shop. The interviews lasted 2–3 hr. All the interviews were tape-recorded, with the permission of the participants, and fully transcribed.
Data Analysis
A content analysis of the transcribed interviews was performed by the first two authors, based on the procedures suggested by Strauss and Corbin (1990). The first stage of analysis focused on open coding, defined by Strauss and Corbin as “the process of breaking down, examining, comparing, conceptualizing, and categorizing data” (p. 61). This analysis included four procedures: (1) identifying and labeling the phenomena by “giving each discrete incident, idea, or event, a name, something that stands for or represents a phenomenon” (Strauss & Corbin, 1990, p. 63); (2) categorizing through “grouping concepts that seem to pertain to the same phenomena” (Strauss & Corbin, 1990, p. 65); (3) labeling the categories; and (4) finding the properties and dimensions of the identified categories, namely, the “attributes or characteristics pertaining to a category” and the “locations of properties along a continuum” (Strauss & Corbin, 1990, p. 61). This analysis paved the way for the conceptualization, grouping, and labeling of the diverse factors involved in choosing coparenting as the path to single motherhood and in selecting a coparent.
The second stage of analysis focused on axial coding, defined by Strauss and Corbin (1990, p. 97) as “a set of procedures whereby data are put back together in new ways after open coding, by making connections between a category and its sub-categories.” This stage consisted of identifying the causal conditions, the context and properties, and the consequences of the phenomena that were studied. The axial coding in this study highlighted the social influences affecting a participant’s decision to coparent with a gay birth father as well as the attributes the participant was seeking in selecting the father. Finally, the inductively generated categories, which reflected the frame of reference of the participants, were compared to findings from previous research on single mothers by choice, single-parent families, and traditional heterosexual families.
To strengthen the rigor of the content analysis, we used the following strategies: analytic induction, in which we generated and then tested hypotheses against each successive case or instance of the phenomenon (Denzin, 2007), and the closely related strategy of negative case analysis. In applying negative case analysis, we sought data that seemed to contradict emerging explanations to improve the hypothesis and further elucidate the underlying conception of the problem to which the hypothesis applied (Becker, 1998). For example, we hypothesized that women would prefer single men to match their own single status. However, one woman viewed a stable gay couple as more desirable. Examining her description, we understood that the key factor for her and all other women in selecting a coparent was the man’s stability. Being in a long-term committed relationship was for some indicative of such stability. Contrary to our initial hypothesis, several women expressed a preference for partnered coparents.
In addition, the first two authors conducted peer debriefing throughout the content analysis of the data to help us identify our biases and assumptions. It also provided an opportunity for us to test the plausibility and trustworthiness of emergent hypotheses. As feminist researchers, our discussion and implications do not focus only on the women under study but on gender-related issues, as well as issues of power and social justice within a specific political, economic, social context.
Findings
In this section, we consider the various factors that motivated the participants’ decision to coparent with the birth fathers and the considerations and attributes they described as central to choosing the coparents.
Choosing the Hetero-Gay Family Context to Fulfill Motherhood
The findings revealed four main factors underlying a woman’s decision to coparent with the birth father: (1) the child’s best interests, (2) wanting to establish a family, (3) financial need, and (4) wanting to share the burden of parenting.
The child’s best interests
The child’s best interest, as perceived by the women, was cited by most as the major consideration when choosing the hetero-gay family context of parenting. The women’s basic assumption was that their children’s best interests dictated having a relationship with both a father and a mother and was at the heart of their choice to coparent with the biological fathers. The women’s approach to their children’s best interests, emphasizing the importance of the biological fathers’ involvement in the children’s lives, was especially prominent when asked about the sperm bank alternative. Many stated that they wanted to give their children a real-life father figure who could play a significant role in the children’s lives:
The more I thought about going to the sperm bank . . . and asking and checking with women who did do it through the sperm bank, whose kids are a bit older, the more I decided that I wanted a father for my kid. Kids constantly search for a father figure; it doesn’t matter how many brothers they have or how many uncles or friends who are male they have, they look for a father and cling to anyone, to any man, as a father to them. Even if the mother is divorced and the father left for good, there are still photos, there’s the father’s family, there’s something to hold on to, . . . and when it’s the sperm bank and there’s nothing, there’s just one big emptiness! . . . I wanted a dad who’s active, who’ll want his kids . . . . I wanted a father that the kids will also know is their dad. I truly believe, and that, at the end of the day, led us to the Alternative Parenting Center, that a child needs a defined and tangible mom and dad. For me it has nothing to do with it being the norm, that’s not it. It’s balance. When there’s only a mom, something about that is out of balance . . . and when a kid has two parents, he has two points of reference, he has more balance in his life. There’s balance in the sense that things I may be less good at, the dad can do, and things the dad is less good at, I can do. I felt it was really important for the kid to have another figure. Not necessarily a father figure, I don’t believe in that stuff too much, but another figure. So that he [the child] doesn’t base all his developing personality on one source, and it was important to me that he have another parent. It was very clear to me. I know at least one lesbian couple who has a kid, and the fact that there are two moms is not a negative thing, that’s what I think, because there are plenty of male figures and female figures around us. But I thought, not too deeply, that it’s best for him to have a dad.
Although some of the women tended to attribute little importance to two-gender parenting, they ultimately chose to provide their children with a father figure. Presumably, being heterosexual women, coparenting with a man, homosexual though he may be, is perceived as more “natural” than is coparenting with a woman and a preferable alternative to single parenting.
Wanting to raise a family
Some participants associated choosing the parental partner with their dream of raising a family. These participants explained that family is associated not only with the presence of the mother and child, but with that of the biological father, emphasizing the influence that their families of origin had on their perceptions. In the absence of “couplehood,” they saw coparenting as an alternative means by which to recreate the “standard” family unit they grew up in, which symbolized their ideal family format:
I wanted a family. The same kind of family I had [family of origin] . . . mom, dad, a couple of kids and a dog, and a backyard as well . . . . Anyway, kids without a father seemed to me like something they would feel is missing. That it’s incomplete, not the kind of family . . . . In my mind, I did see a family unit like the one I grew up in, maybe it’s just because that’s how it was when I was growing up that it seemed ideal to me. But when I saw that it wasn’t going to happen, I looked for the closest alternative; maybe that’s the best definition, it’s the closest thing to what I really wanted. When I was . . . 34 or 35, I saw an article on alternative parenting. There was a story at the time in the Haaretz newspaper, and I said: “Wow, that works for me! That’s exactly what I want: there’s parenting, there’s family.” I really did see it as a family, while also not having the romantic commitment.
Financial security
Another key factor that emerged from the interviews is the women’s need for financial security. Many participants mentioned the financial aspect as one of their main considerations:
I had thought of doing it by myself, through the sperm bank, because I’m a real individualist and I’m very independent. I hate it when people tell me what they think I should do and say—“do this, do that.” But financially, I’m not all that independent. I mean I am independent, but my financial situation is not as great as to have a child on my own . . . . Financial security was important to me. It was important to me to make a living as well . . . . yes, equal not in his sense of the word, but in mine . . . . I don’t know, it’s a sign of independence as far as I’m concerned . . . . It’s the way I feel about myself. I don’t know, I have these huge sensitivity issues about this thing. I don’t think anyone should provide for me, no! If anything were to happen, God forbid, and stuff . . . then you can get some help. But . . . I don’t know, I’m . . . this “being dependent” on someone else . . . I . . . I . . . I just can’t seem to get it.
Sharing the burden of parenting
Some women mentioned the advantages of sharing parental responsibilities with a coparent:
I knew that I could never, emotionally, physically, or financially, raise a kid on my own. I can’t do it, and I don’t want to! . . . My cousin showed me all the aspects of doing it [parenting] with a partner: that you have a father, emotional support, financial support. Your whole life is different when you have a partner . . . . This way I have someone with me, and I don’t feel alone.
Considerations in Determining the Selection of a Coparent
Most women described a lengthy process of meeting candidates for coparenting before they chose their coparent. Two dimensions were prominent in the women’s choices of the coparent: choosing a gay man and choosing specific attributes in the desired gay coparent.
Choosing a gay man for a coparent
The data suggest that choosing gay men as coparents was influenced by three key factors: the perceived scarcity of straight men, the difficulty of finding straight men who are willing to commit to coparenting, and preferring parenting without sexual relations with the coparent.
Many women pointed to the scarcity of heterosexual men who wish to coparent outside a marriage. One woman claimed:
There aren’t a lot of men who say, “Now ’I’m looking for a co-parent.” No, most say, “I’ll get married, and once I’m married, I’ll have a kid.” If they do reach that stage, it’s very late in life, maybe when they’re 50, when suddenly they realize they’ve missed out on something, and then they try to do it through some sort of agreement. It’s not hard to find a gay man who is ready to be a parent; there’s a thousand of them! Show me one straight guy who is ready to be a parent! A straight guy who’s ready to be a parent, ready for a relationship, who’s normal . . . over the age of 35, doesn’t exist. Simply hardly exists! The good ones are taken, and some are also caught up in really bad marriages and come out all scarred and come off as the bad ones . . . . We’ve met those kind of guys as well. I think that I would personally look funny at a straight guy who makes this choice . . . . I myself am a straight woman who made this choice, but I would find fault with a guy like that. . . . Even though I’m quite fond of the alternative approach, even to me it seems problematic . . . . It seems suspicious to me, charged, as if it’s giving off something a little deranged. In a relationship between a straight woman and a gay man, it’s an advantage not to have sexual tension. And it’s really easy; it makes the whole thing devoid of emotional baggage, devoid of sexual baggage, I mean, we both know ahead of time that we can’t fall in love; all that’s left is for us to be friends. I mean, a straight guy, I don’t want just to have a kid with. With a straight guy, I want a relationship. I don’t want him to have a kid with me and go out with a different girl every night, leaving me to sit at home and raise the kid. With a gay guy, I have no problem with it, ‘cause like, I hope that one day I’ll have it [a relationship], too. There’s no competitiveness, no jealousy, no boy-girl stuff.
Choosing Specific Attributes in the Desired Gay Coparent
The interviews revealed several criteria that guided the women when choosing a coparent: stability, readiness for child rearing, and manliness. The importance of these attributes was described by the women in terms of both the child’s best interests and their personal preferences.
Stability
Stability came up repeatedly when the women were asked about the characteristics they sought in their coparents. Some judged this emotional stability by the men’s romantic relationships:
Being single and having gone in and out of relationships and been on emotional roller-coasters, it was important to me that the father of my child be emotionally stable. I mean, that he would have one steady relationship for many years, rather than falling in love with someone else each time and breaking his heart . . . someone who’s emotionally stable. It was important to me that he have a partner. It was important to me that the father be stable . . . because I didn’t want the child to see a new man around the house every other day . . . Stable means seeing a steady partner. And not falling in love every other day, that he focuses his attention [on the child, rather than on flings and romances]. When I met my son’s father, he’d been in the same relationship for some years. The fact that he was in a long-term relationship told me that he was a serious person, that he was consistent, and [that he] didn’t go out to bars every other day looking to get laid . . . . And that’s also the convenient thing about a relationship, that you know before there’s a child involved who the people are, and no one suddenly brings you someone new to get to know. I wouldn’t have gotten involved with someone who didn’t make an effort to go out and work. I was less interested in income, but I looked for someone who was making an effort to go out and work and knowing he has a responsibility as the provider. It was very important to me that he [the co-parent] have a steady job and a steady income . . . ‘cause from me, the kid stood to get nothing. I don’t have anything . . . . And it was important to me to secure his [the child’s] future financially . . . . It’s very important to me that my kid have his own apartment, money for school, just that he have a good financial starting point.
Readiness for child rearing
Readiness for child rearing was cited by some women as the main attribute they were looking for. Although their search for a coparent led them to meet only with men who declared that they were interested in raising a child, they did not take the men’s actual readiness to become parents for granted. For some, the men’s lifestyle was indicative of their readiness for child rearing:
I was looking for someone . . . who wanted to have a baby. Not someone who fantasized about having a kid to show the guys, but someone who was truly ready to have a child. Who was over and done with the “show and tell,” the going to clubs, and all that. Because I also went through that phase, and I was past it. I wanted someone . . . with a great involvement in the child . . . because involvement is also in the declaration of intent . . . Even his extreme anxiety . . . that might have driven me away a little, but also gave me a lot of confidence because it showed me that it was really important to him.
Manliness
Another factor that some women mentioned was choosing a coparent who projected manliness, declining feminine-like gay men. This concern was reflected in the following comment:
I personally wouldn’t have been able to have a baby with a feminine gay guy. I’d have a problem with it, yeah. I have no problem with the thing itself [his being gay]. I have a problem with . . . yeah, with a feminine gay guy. I need him to be a man. Yeah, yeah, totally. [I was looking for a co-parent] who is manly, not one of those feminine ones, like, so he’s not more feminine than me. I have no patience for stories about creams and . . . lotions and for those who are too self-absorbed. I knew some gay guys before; it wasn’t new to me . . . I knew this area. First of all, you look for someone who looks good ‘cause you’re looking for genes here; this isn’t a matter of love. He should be good-looking, not too short, not fat, not feminine, because they had [at the Alternative Parenting Center] one or two of the feminine ones that I don’t . . . like . . . anyway; I’m looking for a man.
Discussion
How a family forms, who forms it, and in what context are recurrent issues posed by nontraditional families thereby challenging our assumptions about kinship and family (Smock & Greenland, 2010). This study considered a distinctive subgroup of single mothers by choice, mothers who chose the hetero-gay family context of parenting. Unlike most single mothers by choice, these mothers deliberately selected male partners who sought to be actively involved in the parenting process.
Although all the women in the study had established hetero-gay families, they all regarded the traditional family as their family of choice, deemed a “real” and “best” family. Determined not to forgo their dream of family for the lack of a suitable marital partner (Hertz, 2006; Ludtke, 1997), the women, similar to women in previous studies, consciously chose to decouple parenting from marriage (Gibson-Davis, 2011; Hertz, 2006; Smock & Greenland, 2010). However, unlike many women in other studies who chose to create families in which men may be involved but not as traditional fathers (Bock, 2000; Hertz, 2006; Jadva, Badger, Morrissette, & Golombok, 2009), the women in our study were determined to provide their children with a traditional father figure.
The women’s traditional approach reflects the culturally dominant view, which posits that both a mother and a father are essential to a child’s development (Biblarz & Stacey, 2010). The best interest of the child, as the women perceived it, indeed appeared to be the major determinant in their decision to coparent with the birth father. Most women placed a high value on the active involvement of the birth fathers in their children’s lives, stressing their belief that children need both a mother and a father, regardless of whether they are married or unmarried, viewing the biological mother and father as the best parental figures for the children. The underlying assumption is that the two parents, female and male, complement one another, thereby creating more balanced parenting. The few women who downplayed the importance of two-gender parenting nevertheless chose to provide their children with a father figure, rather than another mother. The women’s traditional view of the ideal parental model paradoxically led them to their choice of a nontraditional family.
The combination of traditional perceptions about the family and parenting coexisting with a unique family configuration may be explained, at least in part, by the context of Israeli society. Although Israel is industrialized and urbanized, it maintains a traditional family orientation, which is reflected in its higher marriage and fertility rates and lower rates of divorce, childlessness, and nonmarital births (Lavee & Katz, 2003; Lewin-Epstein, Stier, & Braun, 2006). Despite the significant changes with respect to its family patterns during the past few decades, compared to other industrialized countries, Israel is still a family-oriented society that values the traditional family (Fogiel-Bijaoui, 2006).
The belief that the active participation of the birth father is essential to the creation of a “real” family was a major factor in the women’s decision. The women expressed their strong wish to establish a “standard” family, viewing coparenting with the birth father as a way to create a family that is in accord with their ideal family model. This ideal reflects the dominant view that holds the traditional family structure as the norm against which other family structures are compared (Erera, 2002; Hertz, 2006; Mannis, 1999). This perception devalues other family structures that are viewed from a deficit perspective (Erera, 2002; Rice, 1994). Viewing mother-headed families as incomplete, these women sought to construct their nontraditional family unit in a manner that conforms to the traditional two-parent family model in many respects.
Despite being well employed and financially independent, many participants expressed concern over their ability to assume the sole financial responsibilities of child rearing. Being aware of the economic hardships entailed in lone motherhood, these women perceived coparenting as a means to secure their children’s economic well-being. Many single mothers by choice do indeed view finances as a major problem area (Morrissette, 2008; Segal-Engelchin & Wozner, 2005). This is not surprising, given the social barriers and gender gap in wages that typically confront women, including those who are well educated, in Israel and other Western countries (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2011b; Swirski, Konor, Swirski, & Yecheskel, 2001). Thus, the participants’ method of choice for becoming single mothers may be seen as an affirmative response to a patriarchal social order by which they prepared for the potential hardships of single motherhood.
The women associated their family choice with the various benefits of having a coparenting relationship with the children’s birth fathers. From their point of view, the benefits of coparenting were both having a participating father in their children’s lives and having a partner with whom they could share child-rearing responsibilities. Being well aware of the physical and emotional burdens associated with lone motherhood, these women wanted to share parental responsibility with a partner. The choice to cope with the stresses of single motherhood by creating a coparenting relationship with the birth father is at variance with many single mothers by choice who elect to create supportive networks of friends and kin to help with child care tasks prior to becoming mothers (Bock, 1995, Hertz, 2006; Ludtke, 1997).
Another important issue that emerged from the study is the participants’ motivations for choosing gay men as coparents. For many women, this choice was tied to the scarcity of “normal” heterosexual men who wanted to commit to coparenting outside marriage. When they referred to heterosexual men, they emphasized that the “good ones” had already entered into marital relationships, portraying those who had remained single or had become single following divorce as problematic. The participants’ negative portrayal of single heterosexual men reflects the commonly held assumption that singleness is a deficit identity (Reynolds & Taylor, 2004). This assumption stems from the ideology of marriage and family, which posits that everyone wants to get married (Sharp & Ganong, 2011) and that there is something wrong with anyone who is not married (Morris, Sinclair, & DePaulo, 2007). The participants’ stereotypical views of single men are somewhat surprising, given that they themselves are single. Bock (2000) argued that by passing the stigma attached to single mothers onto to teenage and welfare-dependent mothers, single mothers by choice claim a higher place on the “mother hierarchy.” In a similar vein, it may be that by passing the stigma of being single onto single men, the women were able to position themselves higher up on the “single hierarchy.”
At least in stereotype, compared to straight men, gay men are more willing and able to undertake such “feminine” roles as raising children, rather than leaving the mothers to undertake the lion’s share of parenting. In that respect, gay fathers are deemed more egalitarian than straight men. This perception is consistent with previous studies, which found that compared with heterosexual couples, same-sex couples are much more egalitarian than are heterosexual couples (Gotta et al., 2011; Kurdek, 2004). In our study, most mothers stated that an important criterion in choosing their gay coparents was the coparents’ desire to share parenting responsibilities actively with them.
Seeking a more egalitarian division of parenting responsibilities between themselves and their gay coparents, it seems surprising that the women expressed a preference for “manly” coparents. Although for some women “manliness” referred to the men’s appearance, manliness usually meant men who are not narcissistic and self-involved. This view is consistent with the mothers’ explicit preference for actively involved fathers who will share the tasks of everyday parenting with the mothers.
Could they have gotten such an egalitarian division of labor if the coparents were straight men in traditional families? The findings from other studies suggest that they would not. Numerous studies have documented the persisting gender inequalities in marriages in which women still retain responsibility for the private sphere, regardless of their labor force participation (Coltrane, 2000; Cooke & Baxter, 2010).
The women in our study were educated, independent, and professionally and financially secure. The literature tends to depict strong, powerful, and independent women as having to pay a price for their privileges, as reflected in the relatively high rate of women who remain single. Compared to men, working women tend to be single or divorced and either childless or to have fewer children (Tower & Alkadry, 2008). Nevertheless, we question whether choosing not to have traditional families is, indeed, a “price” or, in fact, a “bonus.” The women’s decision to pursue motherhood outside a marital context came from a position of power and empowerment, suggesting that they viewed themselves as agents, rather than as passive victims, of their life circumstances (Jones, 2008; Segal-Engelchin, 2008).
The hetero-gay family shares some key characteristics of three family configurations: the traditional two-parent family, the single mothers-by-choice family; and the postdivorce family. While incorporating key characteristics of these three families, the hetero-gay families in our study rejected other attributes, suggesting active modifications of these family styles.
Consistent with their stated view of the traditional family as the ideal family, the women chose to raise their children in a two-parent family of a biological father and mother. However, their behavior—of decoupling marriage from parenthood and explicitly choosing committed and actively involved fathers—suggests that they wanted an “improved” traditional family in which all the aspects of parenting and caregiving are more equally divided between fathers and mothers than in the average traditional family.
In a similar vein, by parenting with actively involved coparents, these mothers sought to avoid the economic hardship and the overload that lone mothers experience because they have to manage both a job and full-time parenting (Erera, 2002; Ludtke, 1997). At the same time, these mothers had the independence, control, and mastery that many lone mothers enjoy (Riessman, 1990; Smith, 1997).
In decoupling intimacy and marriage from parenting, the women did not necessarily view marriage as the institutional anchor with regard to childbearing, child rearing, or adult intimacy (Amato et al., 2007). In that, hetero-gay families resemble postdivorce binuclear families. However, by choosing, a priori, committed and actively involved coparents, the women in this study “improved” on the predicament of more than half the postdivorce mothers whose children are not receiving child support (Menning, 2002; Nelson, 2004) or are not visited by their fathers (Nelson, 2004).
The mothers in our study created families that provide them and their children with the benefits of the traditional, single mother-by-choice, and postdivorce families without the prevalent challenges that are associated with each of these families. In that sense, they “have the cake”—raising children and having involved and committed coparents who shoulder child-raising responsibilities with them. At the same time, the women avoided the prices of patriarchy that women pay with traditional, single-parent, and postdivorce families.
Men reap greater gains than women for virtually every outcome affected by marriage (Ferree, 1990; Nock, 1998). Hence, while increased earnings lead men to “buy into” family roles (Cherlin, 1992), women use theirs to “buy out” of marriage (Espenshade, 1985). The findings of this study are consistent with Ferree’s (2010) feminist conclusion that like single mothers by choice and other diverse families, the hetero-gay family is shaped, to a large extent, by gender relations. They are also consistent with previous studies that have suggested that the political, economic, and social contexts affect gender power by shaping women’s alternatives to marriage (Cooke, 2007; Cooke & Baxter, 2010).
The women’s statements regarding their preferred family life, two-gender parenting, and the attributes they sought for the coparents of their children fall under traditional values or preferences. These traditional views are also apparent in what the women did not say. Not one woman voiced any criticism of the traditional family, including its traditional gendered division of labor, which suggests their support of existing norms pertaining to families. The women may be considered “reluctant pioneers” (Hertz, 2006). Rather than overtly challenging the institutional patriarchy, these women established an alternative lifestyle that circumvents patriarchal impositions. In that sense, they chose adaptation, rather than transformation. This choice suggests that while women have many more options for raising children and creating families, they are still constrained by oppressive restrictions regarding employment, child care, and gender relations, as well as oppressive norms regarding gender roles, which many women have internalized. The widespread institutional patriarchy further underscores the importance of maintaining social welfare policies that provide women with the supports they need for raising children irrespective of the family style that they choose.
The findings of this study illustrate how the structural constraints of patriarchy influence choices about family formation and child rearing. Men as well as women are constrained by patriarchal institutions and conceptions of appropriate gender roles and behavior. As social workers, we must continue to advocate for changes in the key spheres governed by patriarchy: employment, family policy, and gender relations in family life. Advocacy for policies that are supportive of women and families assumes even greater importance today when gains achieved decades ago are under assault by those who are seeking to turn back the clock and reaffirm women’s subordination to men.
To be effective agents of change, social workers need to examine their own values and assumptions regarding gender relations, gender roles, and the division of labor in families; the function of blood ties between parents and children; marriage; parents’ gender; and family diversity, including gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender families and women-headed families. As social workers who value self-determination and being where the client is, this praxis is essential for combating the discrimination and oppression of women.
Although more apparent in mother-headed families, the tensions between work and family exist for all mothers. Social workers need to advocate for policies that help create a healthy balance between wage work and family work for both women and men and to strive to establish policies, like paid family leave, that recognize caretaking responsibilities as work.
The findings of our study underscore the critical importance for social workers of maintaining a gender-sensitive perspective, especially with respect to family issues. As the study has shown, the template of the traditional two-parent family still holds powerful sway even though it has been far surpassed in number by diverse, nontraditional families. The traditional family template engenders a false conception of “normalcy” that may lead family members to experience a sense of failure and restrict their choices. Members of these diverse families should not be expected to justify their legitimacy or to imitate the traditional family in aspects that are out of step with their family of choice.
The role of caretaker is an all-consuming uncompensated responsibility. Women who assume full-time caretaking are dependent on the income of men, which binds them to marriage and traditional family lives. It places them in a situation of subordination to men (Allen, 1997). The stereotype of the “natural” mother as the principal caretaker of children is instrumental in domesticating mothers and upholding a gendered division of labor within the family. Challenging the social construction of motherhood is a tough order, but social workers need to take an active part in abolishing this oppressive state of affairs.
Further research is needed to examine the ways in which women resist patriarchy and seek social justice and liberation within both traditional and diverse families. Such studies need to take into account the intersecting identities, positionalities, and categories of difference of these women, including race, ethnicity, class, age, nationality, ability, sexualities, religion, and sexual orientation.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.