New Choices, New Families: How Lesbians Decide about Motherhood

• 6. Negotiating Lesbian Support Networks
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• Johns Hopkins University Press
• pp. 87-103
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CHAPTER SIX
Negotiating Lesbian Support Networks

In order to actualize their mothering desires, lesbians seek support from a variety of social networks, one of the most important of which comes from lesbian communities. Lesbians who want to remain childfree look to other childfree lesbians for social outlets and emotional support. Lesbians who want to become mothers look to lesbian mothers who can lend them emotional support and help them through the process of becoming a mother. Lesbian networks help cushion the blow of homophobic families and communities of origin, heterosexist policies, and external homophobic attitudes that can wear lesbians down, regardless of their mothering decisions. For lesbians of color, support networks also create a cushion against a world that discriminates along multiple axes of race, class, gender, and sexuality. This chapter examines women’s relationships to lesbian social networks and how lesbians weigh those relationships in their decisions to become mothers or remain childfree.

Throughout their history, lesbians have created social networks that revolve around community building, educating the public, taking political and legal action, and providing social support for lesbians themselves (Dunne, 2000; Morningstar, 1999). For many lesbians, however, any one network rarely provides all the support they need. Because of this, they often rely upon a variety of networks. However, this can cause friction as support networks may collide with, and contradict, one another. For example, lesbians of color may find networks that support them along lines of sexuality, but not race, and vice versa.

Social networks for lesbians of color can clash with one another because of racial discrimination within larger LGBT communities and homophobia within communities of origin (Bennett and Battle, 2001; Lee, 1992; Mays, Cochran, and Rhue, 1993; Morales, 1990; Rust, 2006; B. Smith, 1998). The result is that lesbians of color sometimes exist in the borderlands between communities of color and lesbian communities (Anzaldúa, 1999). Living within these borderlands, lesbians often create their own social support networks (Silvera, 1995) or they choose one support network over another. Not only divided along racial lines, lesbian communities are divided along class lines as well (Kennedy and Davis, 1993). Unlike those in the borderlands, lesbians who are privileged along lines of race and class are more likely to be centrally located and better integrated into social networks that support most of their needs.

In addition to being divided by race and class, lesbian communities are also divided by mothering decisions. As discussed in chapter 1, there is an ideological division within larger lesbian communities regarding lesbian motherhood, with some believing that lesbians are transforming motherhood by overcoming a patriarchal family structure, and others believing that lesbian mothers are assimilating into a heterosexual and patriarchal institution in an effort to gain heterosexual privilege. Concurrent with the debate about transformation and assimilation, lesbian communities are also divided on the basis of logistics. Much like heterosexual mothers, lesbian mothers are much more tied to their children’s schedules and needs, and therefore tend to be less spontaneous and flexible, than childfree lesbians. Much like childfree heterosexual women, childfree lesbians do not need to build into their own time someone else’s nap schedule, play dates, school hours, or illnesses. They are much more flexible as to when they can go out, where they can go, and how long they can stay.

In order to accommodate the growing number of lesbian mothers and to create a space for their families within lesbian communities, lesbians have developed social networks specifically to meet their parenting needs. This development was enhanced by responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which provided general meeting places for lesbians and other LGBT community members. Many organizations that originally focused on the epidemic “began offering other social services, such as parenting and support groups” (Pollack, 1995, p. 99). As a result, since the early 1980s regional and national lesbian and gay parenting groups have burgeoned all over the United States, creating a structure of emotional, legal, and informational support for LGBT parents. In addition, local, regional, and national networking has allowed lesbian mothers to come out in large numbers to educate the public, promote positive images of lesbian families, and dispel myths about their families perpetuated by right-wing religious leaders and conservative social scientists (Pollack, 1995).

Because of the divisions within larger lesbian communities, and because the lives of most lesbians are multifaceted, in my study most lesbians were integrated into a variety of social networks involving a combination of friends, family, and community. The social support that they received in their mothering decisions was not only closely related to how easy or difficult it was for them to come out to families and communities of origin but also to the types of lesbian networks they had access to by virtue of race, class, and mothering decision.

NEGOTIATING DIVIDED LESBIAN COMMUNITIES

The lesbians in my study discussed clear divisions within larger lesbian communities, not only along lines of race and class but also along lines of motherhood. Middle-class lesbians, regardless of race, were integrated into and supported by formal lesbian networks. These networks greatly facilitated their mothering decisions, both to become mothers and to remain childfree. For middle-class lesbians who wanted to become mothers, lesbian support networks offered crucial information about how to become a mother as well as emotional support that these women did not always receive elsewhere. Kathy, a middle-class White lesbian who was among the first lesbians in her community to have children, discussed how even the few lesbian mothers she knew early on helped shape her decision:

I’m in a moms group. I’m in two moms groups, and one is a lesbian parenting one and one is a mixed one. And in the mixed one, there’s eleven families. Four of them are lesbian families, but the others are not. If I was not in this college-based community that had a large lesbian community that I’d been a part of, that I knew people were—at that time it was just insemination, although since then there’s been a lot of adoptions. If I didn’t have that right here locally, I might not have [become a mother]. If I had been in [a more isolated town] at the time, it might not have even crossed our paths till way past the clock was ticking. So I think it had an impact—where I lived and kind of the trends of the lesbian community in this country, um, definitely had an impact. Right place / right time kind of thing.

Other middle-class lesbians expressed similar sentiments: that because there were many lesbians in the area having children, and because those lesbians were well organized, lesbian networks provided a structure of opportunities (Gerson, 1985) through which they themselves could become mothers. In areas well populated with other lesbian mothers, the effort to have children did not feel like a continuous battle. Even if families or communities did not support lesbians, being supported by the lesbian mother community was often enough to give lesbians the help they needed to fulfill their desires to become mothers. For example, Anita, a middle-class Latina lesbian who experienced great resistance from her family and community of origin, acknowledged the importance of her connections to the lesbian community in her town:

For me, because my family wasn’t that supportive, it was my friends, and it was very important to me to hang out with, um, I got into the lesbian moms group before I adopted Jonathon, and it was part torture, part—you know, great to be around lesbian moms and all the kids, but it was a long one-and-a-half years before I got Jonathon. And it continued to be wonderful to have that group of people after I got Jonathon.

Anita explained that her children have complicated medical problems. While some of her heterosexual friends thought she was “nuts” for adopting so many special-needs children, her friends within the lesbian community continued to support her. As she recalled, she had “a good group of friends that stayed close, and finally kind of normalized my life, my family.” Anita’s comments summarize the benefits of being connected to strong lesbian mother networks. Such networks fill in when family, community, and childfree and heterosexual friends are not supportive. They normalize each other’s lives and families in ways that allow lesbians to feel secure and integrated into a healthy community for them and their children. For most of the lesbians in my study, personal desire alone did not provide enough support for them to become mothers.

Although lesbians found support among other lesbians, there were divisions within communities based on mothering decisions. As Rita, a middle-class White lesbian, described, she did not realize that this divide existed until after she decided to adopt a child:

It was very difficult because the part of the community I was in, I didn’t realize, they’re not anti-kids, but there is no room in their life for kids. So it’s been total, total social change for me. I was a lot in the sports community, and people who I thought would really be around and be excited ’cause they don’t have to parent, they just have to be around, you know, I thought they’d be excited. But they don’t even have room for that. And so it was really a big change for me, a huge change. And I would do it again anyway, but I didn’t foresee it. I didn’t see that having a kid would make my life that much different, that it would change friendships so much. But it has. Luckily I’ve found enough other parents that it’s worked out well, but it was a huge change.

Despite the lack of support Rita received from childfree lesbians, she was able to find lesbian mothers in her area who supported her decision and her new family. My findings suggest that this advantage comes directly from class privilege. As discussed later in this chapter, working-class lesbians were not nearly as “lucky.”

Middle-class lesbians, regardless of race, who wanted to remain childfree also discussed the importance of lesbian networks. They spoke of the support that other childfree lesbians provided them, as well as how lesbian mothers and childfree lesbians negotiated their different positions within the larger lesbian community. Middle-class lesbians pointed out that both groups lead somewhat separate but occasionally overlapping lives. They said that although most of their friends were childfree, at times they socialized with lesbian mothers and their children. Most childfree middle-class lesbians respected the decisions of their friends who became mothers and were still willing to socialize with them. Amy, a middle-class Black lesbian, discussed the debate surrounding motherhood, and her appreciation for that debate, within the larger middle-class lesbian community:

This is so wonderful ’cause I think about my friends who said they would never [become a mother] and used to call women who had children “breeders.” Those same women are having [children], and with such a slap in the face. If you were a pioneering lesbian who wanted a child, you were looked down upon in the community as selling out, as becoming part of this, this—you were being heterosexual-like. Well, you know, that’s how we determine your sexuality, not how we determine how you parent. And so I think what’s happened is sort of funny, because now they’re having this major debate in the community itself about, well, are you really a lesbian if you choose to have children and to live in a home and to parent those children like straight people? So I love it. I love the debate. I’m excited about it.

Because middle-class lesbians had more resources than working-class lesbians, including support networks, they were able to appreciate the debate and not have it tear their communities apart. Barb, a middle-class White lesbian who had wanted to become a mother but decided to remain childfree, stated:

I run in the same crowd that Judy and Tammy run in. And I think we make a special effort sometimes in saying that children can come and other times when we don’t want children. We made the decision that it’s not appropriate to have children at other times, like on poker night. Yeah, poker night. It’s not a good night to have kids. And the group camping trips are sometimes not a good time for kids. But then there are other times when they’re openly welcome.

Judy seemed less willing than Barb to have children around, although she stated that her expanded circle of friends has children and “we like them anyway.” Tammy said that sometimes she likes having children around because “it’s a change to see a different lifestyle.”

As this discussion suggests, middle-class childfree lesbians, regardless of race, exercised control over their social groups. And as Amy stated, the debate within the community was enjoyable, providing some intellectual stimulus. Control over social networks and the ability to turn a potentially divisive debate into an intellectual one allowed middle-class lesbians to find support for their decisions to remain childfree. Support from other childfree lesbians also reinforced decisions to remain childfree. Many lesbians in my study said they wanted to remain childfree because they desired personal freedom. The ability to control their social lives satisfied part of this desire.

In contrast to middle-class lesbians, working-class lesbians had a more mixed relationship to lesbian networks that varied largely by race and mothering decision. Working-class lesbians of color who wanted to remain childfree were integrated into supportive LGBT and heterosexual communities. Unlike their middle-class counterparts, this group of lesbians relied heavily on a variety of social networks, rather than just on lesbian ones, for support of their childfree lives. As Sara, a working-class Latina, explained:

I’m very active, but I mesh with the gay community. I mean, I have a well- balanced life. I’m very active with my family. I have straight friends; I have gay friends. I mostly hang out with my gay friends, but I do have straight friends, and I’m very active. I go to a lot of the gay functions, you know. We are very social. I’m a very social person. Every Friday and Saturday night, Thursday night, we’re gone doing things, and I feel that I’m very out there. Definitely!

When I asked Sara if she thought that being integrated into different communities affected her decision to remain childfree, she stated that what she liked about being childfree was the freedom to be able to join whatever communities she wanted. Her response shows a relationship between being childfree and having varied social networks. On the one hand, the freedom of not having children allowed her to be social. On the other hand, the availability of social networks supporting her decision to be childfree gave her the sense of freedom she desired. Terry, a working-class Black lesbian, also described her integration into multiple social networks. This strategy was one working-class lesbians of color used to increase their support in a world of limited options.

Unlike working-class lesbians of color who wanted to remain childfree, working-class lesbians of color who wanted to become mothers found it harder to access lesbian networks, which made it more difficult for them to realize their desires to become mothers. Neither Joy, Kizzy, nor Diane, all working-class Black lesbians, were integrated into or supported by any formal lesbian mother network or group. Like the childfree working-class lesbians of color, Joy was integrated into a network of childfree lesbians and gay men. But she knew of only a few lesbian mothers and was not closely connected with any of them. Kizzy and Diane had lesbian friends who were trying to have children, so they were able to tap into them as a source of support. However, they were not part of a formal support group or network. As Kizzy explained, the lack of support made it difficult for them to locate the necessary information and services, such as “lesbian-friendly” doctors (i.e., physicians willing to inseminate lesbians or order sperm for them so they could inseminate at home), needed for them to become mothers:

It seems to me very much piecemeal. You have to find out whatever you can find out wherever you can. ’Cause I was looking on the Internet and had this one search engine that claims to have a listing of gay-friendly doctors, and so I looked for [our area], and it didn’t. I was just like, “Oh.” I think a more formal network, even if it was just a support group or somebody who was willing to be a resource, would be good.

Given my own familiarity with and integration into formal lesbian mother networks in the geographical area in which Kizzy lived, I was surprised by her statement that pertinent information was “piecemeal” and lacked a formal structure. Kizzy and Diane were equally surprised when I told them that formal networks existed in their town. As working-class lesbians of color, middle-class networks were invisible and inaccessible to them. Because Kizzy and Diane were not integrated into any formal lesbian mother networks, the Internet became an important resource for them. However, Kizzy and Diane’s experience raises questions as to whether or not online resources provide the same kind of support as in-person support. In addition to the lack of integration into lesbian networks, the lack of knowledge about how to access important resources can deter lesbians from becoming mothers. Kizzy wanted to become a mother but had decided not do so. Then she realized that maybe she could:

Most of my decision not to become a parent was because I felt like I didn’t have a real support system, so that has always been sort of a prerequisite in my mind to belong to a larger community and to have a larger support system. So I felt like I have a little bit more of that now, so I think that’s helpful.

As Kizzy’s comment illustrates, social support networks within lesbian communities give many lesbians what they need to turn their mothering desire into a mothering decision. The lack of such support for working-class lesbians of color contributes to them delaying their decisions to become mothers or even deciding to remain childfree. It also suggests one possible reason why I had such difficulty recruiting lesbian mothers from working-class communities of color into my study. Because of a lack of support, there may be a limited number of working-class lesbians of color who actually become mothers.

Much like working-class lesbians of color, working-class White lesbians also had a mixed relationship with lesbian support networks. However, for them the gulf between lesbian mothers and childfree lesbians ran particularly deep and was not easily bridged. Whereas childfree working-class lesbians of color found support in a variety of networks, working-class White lesbians looked primarily to lesbian networks and found little support there for their desires to remain childfree. Nearly every childfree working-class White lesbian in my study complained about how the rift in the community limited their choice of lesbian friends, leaving them with little control over their social lives. Kerry, who had gained and then lost custody of her nephews prior to the interview, found that the community of lesbians she was integrated into was not accepting of diverse mothering decisions:

Growing up in the beginning of our relationship [my partner and I] never really dealt with other lesbians at all. In fact, she was the only other lesbian I knew. But after I started working where I do, I got into contact with some others, and we’ve become friends. And just as we were getting to know more lesbians and actually interacting in the community . . . , that’s when the kids entered our picture. And when the kids entered our picture it was like, boom, that [lesbian community] was gone again. And then now that the kids have moved back out, it’s hard. It’s hard for us to touch back into that [community] because it was like we were automatically shut out. You know you lose your contact with your friends being childless and having children. They are completely different, and that’s like our lives. When it happened, we’re like turned upside down and sideways and about 360 degrees the other way. And that is exactly what happened to us and now we’re actually having a hard time getting back into that circuit because . . . it comes back to harsh words. But if they threw you out of the community because you were having kids, why would you want to go back? Why go back?

Perhaps one reason why working-class White childfree lesbians did not want to spend time with lesbian mothers is that they felt pressure to have children from those lesbians. In Kerry’s case, she lost support when she became a mother and felt pressure to remain childfree. However, some working-class White childfree lesbians, such as Mabel, felt pressure from lesbian mothers to become mothers:

I’m feeling [social pressure]. We had [lesbian] friends of ours that had twins, and we felt it, me and my partner, when they had their commitment ceremony. “Why aren’t you guys having a commitment ceremony?” “Well, we decided not to.” And now they’re having children. “Well, why aren’t you guys having kids? You’ve been together more than five to six years. You should be having a family now.” And so we feel that pressure especially in today’s environment. And now we’re even feeling it even more with the children and commitment ceremonies, and society’s norms even for lesbians now are becoming pressure to answer that question.

As new family choices became available to lesbians, and as lesbian motherhood became more accepted not only by lesbians themselves but also by larger society, the working-class White lesbians I interviewed felt a new pronatalist pressure. Clara explained that such pressure from within lesbian communities was recent. She stated that “ten years ago it was all about just having fun. You know, finding out who you were.” Pronatalism within the community meant, therefore, that working-class White lesbians were forced to frequently revisit and defend their decisions to remain childfree.

For middle-class White lesbians, control over their social networks was something they took for granted. Middle-class White lesbians were not resentful toward lesbian mothers because they had a large middle-class childfree lesbian community from which they could gain support. The smaller, more divided working-class White childfree lesbian community felt restricted and confined by the intrusion of, and social pressure created by, lesbian mothers. Discussions among working-class White childfree lesbians suggest that the divide in the community based on mothering decisions leaves working-class White lesbians with limited support, particularly for those who want to remain childfree.

Pronatalism within working-class White lesbian communities worked to the advantage, however, of lesbians who wanted to become mothers. Whereas most working-class lesbians of color were not well integrated into a lesbian mother network, most working-class White lesbians were. For example, Sadie and Janet were active participants in formal lesbian mother groups. Janet had been integrated into the larger lesbian community for many years and entered the lesbian mother community after her partner had their first son. Because they recognized a growing interest in motherhood, Janet and her partner helped organize a formal lesbian mother support group:

There was a group of us that were trying to get pregnant or had just had children, and we decided we wanted to get together every month for support, and we had been doing that up to the last year. But when we first started there were maybe eight women, four families and one single parent meeting, and I think there were two children at the time. And now there are fourteen women, close to thirty-some children.

Janet’s comment not only shows how rapidly the lesbian mother community in her area was growing but also how lesbian mothers create networks to support themselves.

Regarding lesbian networks, Martha was the one exception among working-class White lesbians in my study. During the interview, she shared that she was not integrated into a lesbian mother group. As with Kizzy and Diane, the lack of integration made it hard for her to find a doctor to help her with donor insemination. When I asked Martha what events led up to her decision to be a mother, she responded:

I’ve just, ever since I was young I’ve, I’ve wanted to have kids, and actually it was after meeting you that, when you told me about the artificial insemination through [the doctor you used], that gave me, “Okay, I definitely have an option of someone that’s okay with doing this to go and try it.” So it was actually knowing of a doctor willing to do it. I called around and talked to probably about ten or fifteen [physicians], and they just weren’t willing to do it unless it was a father going to be the donor.

My being well connected helped Martha because I was able to pass on to her information I had gathered from the lesbian network. However, her lack of integration meant that she spent a lot of time and energy trying to locate resources that middle-class lesbians and some working-class White lesbians easily found through formal lesbian mother groups. Her lack of integration, and therefore lack of access to important knowledge, delayed her attempt to become a mother.

USING NETWORKS TO ACCESS PHYSICIANS AND CONCEPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES

As Martha’s comments illustrate, lesbians’ access to, and experience with, medical professionals was closely related to how well integrated they were into lesbian networks. Much like participants in previous studies (Lasker, 1998), several of the participants in my study reported difficulties in finding general physicians and fertility specialists willing to work with lesbians. This was important because the majority of the lesbians in my study (12 out of 17) became mothers through donor insemination. Two, Miriam and Desiree, used a known donor and inseminated at home, but the remaining ten used or were planning to use physician-assisted donor insemination. Only five of the seventeen had adopted children.

Because most of the lesbians in my study became, or were planning to become, mothers through physician-assisted donor insemination, most of their discussion revolved around how to find lesbian-friendly physicians. Lesbian mother support groups provided vital information about which medical and legal resources to use and how to access them. Finding physicians, as well as adoption agencies, was fairly easy for well-networked lesbians. As Patricia, a middle-class White lesbian, explained, she and her partner found a physician through a lesbian mother group in which she was involved. The physician was located near her home and was lesbian-friendly:

I think in somewhat of a positive way I knew that there was at least one OB/GYN physician in town here who was a fertility specialist who was supportive. We had already made the decision, but it helped the decision along ’cause I knew that there was service available here locally that would be supportive, and that we wouldn’t have to hassle with him. And, in fact, when I went in for my visit with him he brought in some med student or somebody was along, and I didn’t quite know how to say, you know, what my status was, and he said something about, he said “partner,” first of all, he didn’t say “your husband.” He said “your partner” or whatever, “your relationship status,” and I kind of stumbled with it and he goes, “I take it your partner’s a woman, then?” And it was sort of like, “Oh, thanks.”

Patricia’s comment shows how having real access to a lesbian-friendly physician was critical in actualizing her mothering decision. Patricia’s story was not unusual for other middle-class White lesbians in my study.

Just as race and class privilege through lesbian mother support networks increased White lesbians’ access to lesbian-friendly physicians, race and class subordination decreased access to such physicians for working-class lesbians of color. Joy, a working-class Black lesbian, explained that there were so many barriers to becoming a mother, not the least of which was how to get pregnant:

There are a lot [of challenges to becoming a mother]. Who’s going to be the father? Is it going to be someone that you know? How are you going to conceive? The sperm donation? . . . There’s a lot of challenges. Am I going to wait until I’m in a stable relationship . . . or am I just going to do this on my own? I think that’s the biggest challenge. And then after that falls, exactly how are you going to do it? Are you going to do the sperm donation thing? And then after you do that either way, what are you going to tell your parents? [laughs].

Later, in explaining how she tried to get pregnant, Joy added:

Well, I had, I met a gentleman. He didn’t really know that I was a lesbian. He knew I wanted children, and it was kind of trickery to it because he didn’t know that I was trying to conceive. But that was my intention, my full intention, but it just never worked out.

After not getting pregnant and feeling bad that she had tried to trick a man into getting her pregnant, she decided to use donor insemination. Yet, as Joy explains, it was not easy to find a physician, particularly because her health insurance limited the physicians she could visit:

JOY: Well right now I just started, I had been dealing with an HMO that kept you in a network for a long time, and I had been experiencing, um, female-related problems, and by me not being able to get out of the circle of doctors in the HMO I could never get the problem taken care of. So when I switched jobs and was able to get with [my current insurance], and be able to go to any doctor that you want to, I began to see new doctors. So I have a doctor now, and actually he’s corrected my female-related problem, which is a plus. Actually I do believe that he may know that I’m lesbian. I’m not sure, but he does all of the insemination, which was really, that was the first doctor I had ever ran into that did that. And I think that would probably be who I would go to.

NM: So do you think that that’s influenced your decision at all, working with the medical community?

JOY: Yeah, actually. It has become a light at the end of the tunnel a little bit. Yeah.

NM: That you found someone who could actually make this happen if you want it, when you’re ready to get pregnant.

JOY: And I probably can get it paid for through insurance, if I get it billed properly.

It was not until Joy switched to a job with more comprehensive health insurance coverage that she was able to find a physician who would address a reproductive health problem she was having and also inseminate her. Joy found a willing physician not through a lesbian mother network but through several years of searching and being constrained by her health insurance. Comparing Joy’s experience with that of most White lesbians in my study, my findings suggest that Joy’s initial overwhelming questions about how to get pregnant could have been answered more quickly and less painfully had she been integrated into a lesbian mother network.

Finding a lesbian-friendly physician was particularly important because most sperm banks will only send sperm to a physicians’ office, not directly to the client. Therefore, finding a physician was often the only way lesbians could get pregnant without having to engage in sexual intercourse with a man. Although Joy was initially willing to get pregnant through heterosexual intercourse, most lesbians in my study did not see that as an option. Finding a physician gave lesbians access to new opportunities. Beth, a middle-class Black lesbian who was well integrated into a lesbian mother network, described how her childhood aspirations to be a mother had been squelched and then reignited when she and her partner realized that there were medical means available allowing lesbians to have children:

Kids were the farthest thing at that point from [my] mind until we both started to recognize that this is a possibility, that you don’t have to give up those childhood dreams because you’re a lesbian. You don’t have to give those things up.

Beth’s statement shows that when lesbians succeed in gaining access to physicians and the conceptive technologies that physicians often control, they have a better chance of realizing their desire to mother. Not being well integrated into lesbian mother networks greatly reduced lesbians’ chances of finding such physicians.

FITTING INTO COMMUNITIES AND ACCESSING SUPPORT

How lesbians are integrated into and gain access to lesbian networks is complicated and depends on race and class positions as well as mothering desires. I found that lesbians weigh two particularly important issues concerning lesbian networks in making their mothering decisions: how they fit into divided lesbian communities, and how they could access the support they needed to become mothers or remain childfree. Working-class White lesbians found lesbian communities to be divided along lines of mothering decisions. Those who were childfree felt resentment toward lesbian mothers. The result was to ostracize lesbians who decided to become mothers. In many ways, working-class White lesbians who wanted to become mothers found a more supportive niche within White lesbian mother communities—that is, if they were able to find and access them.

Working-class lesbians of color who wanted to remain childfree were very adept at accessing a variety of support networks, including lesbian and gay networks, that allowed them to live fulfilling lives without children. However, working-class lesbians of color who wanted to become mothers had difficulty finding and accessing lesbian mother communities. Their lack of integration, and therefore their lack of knowledge of necessary resources such as where to find lesbian-friendly physicians, deterred and delayed decisions to become mothers for some working-class lesbians of color.

Middle-class lesbians of color, regardless of mothering decision, were able to access lesbian support networks that had fluid boundaries between childfree lesbians and lesbian mothers. The lack of rigid boundaries meant that middle-class lesbians of color were able to socialize among a variety of lesbians, thus creating a wider system of support outside their families and communities of origin. Similarly, middle-class White lesbians were able to easily access lesbian networks, both for childfree lesbians and lesbian mothers. These two networks were somewhat mixed. However, middle-class White lesbians had control over when they wanted to integrate the two groups and when they wanted to keep them separate. There was no community hostility expressed by any of the middle-class lesbians, regardless of race.

As this chapter demonstrates, lesbians’ access to, integration into, and experiences with lesbian support networks varied greatly by race, class, and mothering decision. My findings suggest, therefore, that lesbians constrained by race and class often feel isolated and even shunned by certain factions within lesbian communities. This is not to say that such communities do not offer support to those within them. However, the support can be limited because of how those communities have historically been shaped and divided by race, class, and mothering decision, as well as how they are currently being reshaped by the new family choices available to lesbians. Furthermore, how lesbians find, access, and fit into lesbian communities shapes their mothering decisions.