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Conclusion
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>> 193 Conclusion Gay parenthood represents just one example of the new family forms that are emerging in today’s society. Single-parent families, adoptive families, multiracial families, and complex co-parenting arrangements (e.g., a lesbian couple and a gay male couple; a single woman and a gay male friend, who is also the sperm donor) are just a few examples of innovations in family life (Kleinfield, 2011). As we have seen, the stories of the men in this book reveal insights into the “doing of” and the “living in” creative and new family forms, particularly families that deviate from the heterosexual two-parent family ideal, and thus these men face societal opposition. The creativity and resourcefulness that the men demonstrated in the face of challenging circumstances reveal the exciting possibility of the “new family forms.” For example, when faced with legal inequities (such as discriminatory adoption and marriage laws), some of the men employed other strategies to both communicate and protect their familial status, such as hyphenating their names and obtaining legal safeguards. Likewise, upon becoming parents, gay men who lacked contact with other gay parents in their immediate social 194 > 195 full-time were often aware of the ways their work-family arrangement could lead to highly differentiated parenting roles. In response, they worked together to ensure that this did not happen (e.g., by encouraging the fulltime -employed parent to contribute as equally as possibly to child care). The men cannot be viewed as simply “accommodating” to heteronormative configurations of work-family roles, inasmuch as their meaning-making processes and enactment of the division of labor often served to disrupt, not uphold, heteronormative scripts. Second, dichotomizing the men into “accommodators” versus “resisters” would overly politicize men’s possible motives, because it seems to suggest that those men whose behavior does not conform to heteronormativity are necessarily acting intentionally and for political reasons. In other words, such a categorization would oversimplify (and ignore the variability in) the motivations for accommodation versus resistance. There were men who were aware that their choices and families could be viewed as political statements, but who resisted such interpretations, wishing to “just blend in” and be left alone. Likewise, some men were aware that instances in which they were recognized as gay parents—or, alternatively, mistaken as heterosexual—offered the opportunity to educate outsiders about their families. But they objected to the notion that they ought to engage in such efforts, preferring just to “live [their] life.” They were not ashamed of their status as gay male parents, but at the same time did not feel compelled to challenge heteronormativity in public settings. Similarly, some of the men in the study desired the privileges and rights of marriage, but did not conceptualize this desire as either radical or assimilationist. They asserted their wish to be married in uncomplicated, politically neutral terms, perhaps reflecting, as Weeks (2008) described, their desire for simple “recognition for what you are and want to be, for validation, not absorption . . . [a desire for] the ordinary virtues of care, love, mutual responsibility” (p. 792). Moreover, dichotomizing men into two types is overly simplistic because it fails to acknowledge the social conditions that facilitate conformity versus resistance. As we have seen, some men’s geographic advantage and financial privilege facilitated their ability to resist heteronormativity or to circumvent it altogether. Men who lived in liberal locales or who were fairly affluent often conducted extensive research before choosing private domestic adoption agencies with gay-friendly reputations. Gay men who lived in conservative areas or who lacked financial resources were forced to work with their local child welfare system or to choose from a limited number of agencies, thereby rendering them more vulnerable to heterosexism and sexism by agencies, social workers, and the legal system. Another type of privilege pertained to 196 > 197 Implications This study holds many implications for the work of scholars in fields as diverse as gender and sexuality studies, family studies, social work, and legal studies. Scholars who study families and gender have much to learn from these men, whose work-family roles and parenting arrangements resist simplistic readings or attributions of “mother” and “father,” and whose relationships therefore cannot be viewed as “mirrors” of heterosexual relationships. Indeed, the men may draw from gendered or heteronormative meaning systems to make sense of their experiences and roles, but at the same time, they complicate such meaning systems by pointing out ways in which their identities as men, parents, and workers...