What Makes a Queer Family Queer? A Response to Cristyn Davies and Kerry H. Robinson. (March 2013)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Silin, Jonathan
• Is Part Of: Contemporary issues in early childhood. Volume 14:Number 1(2013)
• Page Start: 54
• Page End: 59
• Publication Date: 2013-03
• Subjects: Child development -- Periodicals; Early childhood education -- Periodicals; Children -- Periodicals; Social work with children -- Periodicals; 305.231
• DOI: 10.2304/ciec.2014.14.1.54
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1463-9491

Abstract

In this essay I respond to Cristyn Davies and Kerry Robinson's research on queer families by remarking on the distance GLBTQI people have travelled in the last half century. I raise critical questions about the potential gains and possible losses that may result from bringing heretofore subjugated knowledges into the school curriculum. Drawing on my own biography, I also interrogate the radical edge that our outsider status once allowed us, the rapid normalization of gay life, and the foreclosure of options which that normalization has brought. Finally, I pose a distinction between non-traditional and queer families as a prompt to further investigation of how vectors of identity such as class, race, ethnicity, and religion intersect with the choices people make about constructing families and raising children.