Transforming Law's Family: The Legal Recognition of Planned Lesbian Motherhood

ISBN-13: 9780774819640 / Angielski / Miękka / 2012 / 232 str.

Fiona Kelly

Opis

In the past few decades, gays and lesbians, along with their families, have become more visible members of Canadian society, enjoying increasing levels of legal recognition. In Transforming Law's Family, Fiona Kelly explores the complex issues encountered by planned lesbian families as they work to define their parental rights, roles, and family structures within the normatively heterosexual tenets of family law.While Canadian courts recognize lesbian parenthood, they do so only to the degree that lesbian families are equivalent to heterosexual families in form and structure. Issues that are largely unique to planned lesbian families, such as the legal status of known sperm donors or non-biological mothers, remain undefined within the existing legal framework. Drawing on numerous interviews with lesbian mothers, Transforming Law's Family sheds light on changing definitions of family and suggests a model for law reform that allows for the legal recognition of alternative forms of parentage.The first empirical study in Canada to address the legal dimensions of planned lesbian families, this book makes an important contribution to family law, queer studies, and law reform literature.