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>> 167 5 Public Representations of Gay Parenthood Men’s Experiences Stepping “Out” as Parents and Families in Their Communities The 38-year-old Daniel and 39-year-old Vaughn, both White, were living in a rural area in the Northeast when they adopted Miri, an African American baby girl, via private domestic adoption. Out in public, both men noted that they felt somewhat more “out” as parents, in that Miri’s presence served to clearly identify them as a family—and, in turn, to bring attention to Daniel and Vaughn’s status as a couple. They were both pushing her stroller, feeding her bottles, and wiping her nose, and this made it obvious that they were both her parents, and, by extension, that they were a couple. Vaughn, who described himself as “liking [his] privacy,” struggled with this new visibility more so than did Daniel, who viewed himself as the more “flamboyant” one. They both agreed that the fact that Miri was racially dissimilar from them also served to draw attention to the adoptive nature of their family. Vaughn described his particular concern about how African American adults might react to the fact that two White men had adopted an African American girl: “I’m a little bit more concerned about that than I am about anybody else’s reaction.” Importantly, though, Vaughn had not actually encountered any 168 > 169 a stroller may be seen differently from a gay couple walking down the street alone. They may be more readily recognized as a family and their sexuality may seem to be more on “display” than before, when they could possibly be mistaken as buddies and therefore garner little attention from outsiders. Simply put, some gay men may experience a heightened visibility upon becoming parents, in that the presence of a male partner and a child renders their homosexuality visible, and their families deviate in multiple ways from the idealized notion of the standard nuclear unit (e.g., as a function of their homosexuality, their adoptive status, and, in some cases, the multiracial nature of their families ; see Ryan & Berkowitz, 2009). Importantly, however, the degree to which men feel more visible may be shaped by their social context (Brickell, 2000; Steinbugler, 2005). For example, men living in urban, progressive communities may perceive less of a change in their communities’ reaction to them than men living in rural, conservative areas, in that they may be one of many gay-parentheaded families in their communities, and may therefore feel no less out than before. Men’s feelings of visibility may also be shaped by other factors, such as how out they were in their communities pre-parenthood. Alternatively, some gay men may in fact feel that parenthood makes their sexuality less visible, and may therefore feel less out as gay men. They may feel—particularly when out with their child alone, without their partner— that man plus baby automatically marks them as “probable heterosexual.” Gay men may experience a confusing shift in the way they are “read” by their communities, whereby they are suddenly seen as more heterosexual than before. Being so misread may be experienced and responded to in a variety of ways. The literature on sexual minorities and “passing,” for example, suggests that some gay men and women experience minimal discomfort associated with unintentional passing. Some individuals may actually appreciate the opportunity to pass as heterosexual, which enables them to avoid intrusions on their privacy (Anderson & Holliday, 2004; DeJordy, 2008; Fuller, Chang, & Rubin, 2009). Other sexual minorities, however, feel that passing as heterosexual violates their sense of personal integrity, and they may seek to correct presumptions of heterosexuality (Anderson & Holliday, 2004; DeJordy, 2008; Fuller, Chang, & Rubin, 2009). Such corrections function to disrupt others’ heteronormative assumptions, and to complicate—and perhaps even expand—dominant notions of family and sexuality (Oswald, Kuvalanka , Blume, & Berkowitz, 2009). The gay men in this study often reflected on their public identities as gay fathers—and, specifically, the degree to which they felt more or less out as gay parents—as well as their affective and behavioral reactions to perceived shifts in their public identities. 170 > 171 had made them more recognizable and identifiable as a gay couple, eliminating the degree to which he and Gerard could blend in while walking down the street. Parenthood had reduced the control they had over their own outness , such that what was once private was now rendered public (Steinbugler, 2005). Many of the men highlighted this sense of feeling exposed in a new...

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