Jen Skattebol
Tania Ferfolja
University of Western Sydney

Keywords: lesbian mothers, early childhood education, lesbian-headed households, discrimination, sexual diversity

Introduction

The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade is renowned for political irreverent humour and artistry. In 2001, the parade began with pelicans with prams to the music of 'The Sorcerer’s Apprentice'. A semi-trailer-sized ‘Aussie backyard’, complete with Hills hoist and barbecue, followed. Costumed children of all ages, pregnant women, and men dressed in glittering pink tutus, femmes in cowboy pants, toy boys as 'Xena', and 'daddies as daddies' played on this float to disrupt normalised suburban images of family life. This was followed by hundreds of colour-coded families with prams, bikes and skateboards which gave substance to and embodied these reworked symbols of proliferation. A small and dedicated group of early childhood practitioners came after this unruly rainbow, enthusiastically supporting this community by participating in an event that celebrates the sexual diversity of individuals, families and relationships.

Children have always been a part of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and queer (LGBTQ) communities and certainly always present in Mardi Gras parades. However, 2001 was the first time LGBTQ-headed families were publicly forefronted and celebrated. The sheer scale was a visual shout, an affirmation of the rainbow baby boom, an acknowledgment that 'gaybies' (Ryan & Martin, 2000) are on the increase. This float marked a cultural shift in LGBTQ communities, a coming of age where increasing numbers imagine parenting children as part of their life trajectory. Undoubtedly for many in the queer community, that small band of early childhood professionals publicly marching in the parade signalled hope of increased visibility and inclusion of sexual and family diversity in education.

In this paper we draw on a series of interviews with eight lesbian mothers to trace their experiences and perceptions of early childhood education. The research participants focused primarily on the issue of the visibility of their family in curriculum and setting procedures. These families used two service types: family day care and accredited long day care settings. Where the differences are relevant to our discussion we will name the service type, but will otherwise refer to 'settings'. The findings offer some practical directions for practitioners that support their efforts to address the needs of this community.

At this point, however, it is crucial to point out that we undertook this research within a specific geographical zone of Sydney that has a high number of LGBTQ-headed households. This zone is within a broader countercultural milieu that enables an imagined community (Anderson, 1983) that is not only lesbian but also 'lesbian friendly'. Thus we are offering an analysis of the childcare experiences of some lesbian-headed families within a relatively 'accepting' community context.

The state of play for gay and lesbian sexualities

'Acceptance' of lesbian-headed households at a local community level, however, must be understood within its broader social context. The lesbian and gay baby boom accompanies a resurgence of powerful socio-cultural and political discourses of resistance to non-heterosexual and queer sexualities and family types in both the Australian and international arenas. Increasingly, the current Australian government reflects neo-liberal, neo-conservative fundamentalist rhetoric in its policy directions. Over the past five years there have been several inflammatory public debates over lesbian and gay rights. For example, when babies led the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in 2001, the Federal Government was trying to amend the Sex Discrimination Act (1984) to enable state governments to discriminate against lesbians and single heterosexual women in the provision of fertility services (Millbank, 2003). While this move was unsuccessful, it was a direct attack on the fertility rights of lesbians and single women. Then, prior to the 2004 Australian Federal election, the current prime minister publicly supported the exclusion of lesbian and gay people from marriage, claiming it was a sanctified union between two people of the opposite sex.

Another public onslaught on non-heterosexuals’ rights followed soon after. Play School, a high-quality early childhood program (produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation), depicted a one-minute segment of a young girl with her two mothers at a fun park with a friend. The episode resulted in a media frenzy. Numerous politicians smelled a public platform for wedge politics and political expediency and used it to fuel the media hysteria to marginalise lesbian and gay families (Ferfolja, 2006). The Minister for Children claimed that Play School had ‘been an excellent program but I wouldn’t like to see it become politically correct’ (Krien, 2004), and the acting prime minister described it as ‘putting the indulgences and the particular wheelbarrows of adults before children’ (Wroe, 2004). The right to representation for children from lesbian- and gay-headed households was sidelined in the debate.

Thus, despite an apparent acceptance of diversity in the lesbian and gay enclave of Sydney, the maintenance of lesbian and gay rights, which have been historically hard won, remain tenuous at best in the current conservative political climate (Ferfolja, 2006). Such public ‘debates’ significantly impact on homophobic attitudes in the broader community and create a climate of insecurity for LGBTQ people. Social and political regulation has long been a feature in the lives of non-heterosexuals (Foucault, 1978). This regulation is based on heteronormative beliefs which posit a set of fixed and immutable connections between limited and constrained conceptions of biological sex, gender and (hetero)sexuality (Butler, 1990, 1993). The conceptual framework that underpins heteronormative values refuses any physiological variation in biological sex, gendered performance and, ultimately, the possibility of non-heterosexual orientations. These orientations are not only possible but are the fabric of the child-rearing environments of many children in lesbian- and/or gay-headed families.

Unfortunately, there is not a strong research base to support educators in their work with these issues. Much of the policy and research on gay- and lesbian-headed families presumes that lesbian and gay parenting is questionable, problematic and/or harmful (Millbank, 2003). The research has largely sought to compare whether lesbian/gay parenting/families are ‘as good’ as heterosexual families. There is a strong focus on whether children from these families meet social, psychological and/or sexual norms (Allen & Burrell, 1996; Chan, Raboy & Patterson, 1998; Patterson, 1995; Patterson & Chan, 1999; Golombok & Tasker, 1996). Many studies focus on the potential ‘atypical gender identities’ and ‘atypical gender roles’ of children raised in lesbian-headed households, with particular emphasis on the emasculation of male children and the defeminisation of female children (Ryan & Martin, 2000). Heteronormative assumptions dominate these studies which revolve around beliefs that boys and girls are rendered deviant in families structured differently from the heterosexual norm.

However, in spite of the normative assumptions in the research base, this body of research actually indicates no adverse effects of being raised in non-normative households. In her review of the literature, Millbank (2003, p. 18) concludes: There is now a wealth of credible data that demonstrates lesbian- and gay-headed families are ‘like’ heterosexual parents in that their children do not demonstrate any important differences in development, happiness, peer relations or adjustment … It is family process and not family structures that are determinative of children’s well being. The number of adults and the sex of the adults in a household has no significant bearing on children’s well being.

There is a strong need for new research that moves beyond heteronormative assumptions and investigates how heteronormativity impacts on the life experiences of children from LGBTQ-headed families and how this might be effectively addressed. There are few studies that address issues faced by lesbian and gay parents/family constellations in relation to their access to, and satisfaction and experiences with, social and educational services for their children. Certainly, the small body of educational research that deals with this topic suggests that entry into the educational field is difficult for non-normative families. Savage (2002) reported her experiences of trepidation and the perceived need for careful negotiations with her children’s educational institutions. Others have suggested that gay and lesbian parents commonly experience fear that their children will experience discrimination as a result of their parents’ sexuality (Mercier & Harold, 2003; Ray & Gregory, 2001). These fears are not unfounded, as few schooling systems ‘have the information, experience, comfort level, or even willingness to address the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender-parented families’ (Ryan & Martin, 2000, p. 207).

There is a small body of work written about the experiences of lesbian-headed families within the early childhood sector in Australia (Andrew et al., 2001) and internationally (Cahill & Theilheimer, 1999a, 1999b; Casper, 2003; Casper & Schultz, 1999). Virginia Casper’s (2003) work is particularly relevant to the experiences of families. She discusses the protective strategies that gay and lesbian people use to combat homophobia and how these strategies are difficult to maintain in a parenting context. Furthermore, she illustrates how the experiences of children raised in non-heteronormative contexts offer significant challenges to the gendered assumptions of child development theory. This paper extends this literature, drawing on the perspectives of Australian lesbian mothers and their experiences with early childhood settings.

Methodology

We undertook qualitative interviews with eight women who self-identified as lesbian. These participants were located through ‘snowballing’, a technique frequently applied to research considered sensitive in nature (Epstein & Johnson, 1998). Lesbian parents not only potentially jeopardise themselves through their participation in social research, they also may feel that participation increases the vulnerability of their child. Therefore, in keeping with the tenets of feminist research and to protect the anonymity of all participants, no continuous narratives have been used and pseudonyms have replaced individuals’ names.

The interviewees were all educated women from middle-class, Anglo-Celtic, English-speaking backgrounds, who were aware of, and could freely articulate, the theoretical and practical issues associated with diversity and discrimination. Each woman self-identified as lesbian and, at the time of the research, was in a long-term lesbian partnership. Each couple had one child, with the children’s ages ranging from seven months to three years. The findings reported here are thus focused on initial experiences of using children’s services.

The interviews lasted approximately one hour. The semi-structured approach employed enabled the exchange to remain focused but also allowed unexpected and useful lines of enquiry to be pursued. The interviews were taped with the permission of the participants, and transcribed by the authors to ensure confidentiality and close analysis. They were coded for emerging themes and a discursive analysis was undertaken (Burr, 1995). The following sections highlight the discourses arising from these interviews, providing a critical discussion and analysis.

Discussion

Invisibility and visibility: Processes of disclosure

One of the interesting features of the Play School debate mentioned earlier is that the first time the ‘two mums’ episode was screened, no-one seemed to notice it. The episode’s peaceful passage across the airwaves suggests that for many viewers a same sex family is unthinkable; it is simply read as something else. The initial invisibility of lesbian mothers on Play School resonates with our participants’ experiences as mothers. Articulating one’s non-heterosexuality is not always immediately understood within heteronormative contexts, as heterosexuality is assumed (Rich, 1980/1993).

This is in part related to the way motherhood is constructed. Motherhood is assumed to be heterosexual through biological understandings of conception requiring sexual intercourse between two people of the opposite sex. From this perspective, once the utilitarian reproductive act is completed the woman becomes a ‘mother’ and moves into a new realm of subjectivity. Dominant discourses of motherhood position sexuality and motherhood as mutually exclusive; mothers are constructed as non-sexual beings, devoted to their offspring. As lesbians are labelled by their sexuality, and discursively positioned as deviant, highly sexualised subjects (Ryan & Martin, 2000), thus the idea of ‘lesbian mothers’ is an oxymoron in heteronormative thinking.

This conceptual process of ‘filling in the heterosexual blanks’ frequently enables the life experiences of gay- and lesbian-headed families to be eclipsed. This phenomenon was articulated by one of the participants, Lisa. She discussed being rendered invisible as a lesbian when asked if ‘mothering’ changed the way people saw her. She said:

In the public? Yeah! [People see us as] three generations … definitely people see us as a family unit, but honestly, it is consistently grandma or sister … So they see you as a unit, but they construct it in some other way. So it hasn’t been a hostile experience, because people have not formed it [as a lesbian relationship] … It’s not two lesbians with a baby, it’s grandmother [and] mother.

Lesbians have reported similar experiences in other studies. Mercier and Harold (2003, p. 42) found that ‘school personnel mistakenly attributed some other (non-partner) relationship to the respondent and her same-sex partner’. This lack of ability to ‘see’ difference in sexual orientation is a mechanism of regulation that operates below a conscious refusal of Otherness. It is important for educators to understand, however, that when they render key aspects of a person’s identity invisible, the recipient experiences a form of symbolic violence at a psychic level (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990, p. 41).

Issues of visibility and invisibility are complex in lesbian and gay communities because visibility is both liberating and threatening. Much of the political activism within gay and lesbian communities aims to address the symbolic violence that stems from this ontological denial and thus shift the imbalance of power between heterosexual and homosexual identities. In the everyday, however, homophobia impacts on LGBTQ people in a trajectory of violence that ranges from denial to verbal abuse and eventually physical forms of violence such as gay bashing. To avoid emotional and physical violence, those who identify as gay or lesbian are usually skilled in an array of sexual identity performances that enable them to move between visibility and invisibility as a sexual Other (Griffin, 1991).

The vernaculars of gay and lesbian communities reflect the widespread use of nuanced acts of protection. If an individual perceives recognition of their sexual identity in a particular context as risky, they may present as heterosexual; these acts are named as ‘passing’, ‘playing it straight’, or remaining ‘closeted’. These terms basically refer to the act of masquerading as an identity one ‘is not’, a strategy for attaining the necessary distance between ‘oneself and one’s image’ to avoid discrimination (Doane, 1987, p. 2). Alternately, individuals may choose to identify as lesbian or gay by ‘coming out’ or ‘camping it up’.

We contend that motherhood brings a new dimension to these variable and nuanced performances of sexuality. With the birth of a child, a new social landscape opens up and new subjectivities are negotiated via the emotionally saturated relationship between mother/s and child. The experience of mothering raises complex issues for lesbians about disclosing their sexual identities. The presence of a young child may compel parents to ‘come out’ outside of the relative safety of their homes and gay and lesbian communities (Casper, 2003).

The participants in this study reflected on the way they negotiated, presented or performed as parents in their early childhood setting. These performances were designed to balance their need for family pride with the possibility of homophobic reactions towards their young children. All the women expressed a degree of concern that their children would in the future experience discrimination or harassment as a result of their parents’ challenges to heteronormativity, a phenomenon reported in other studies (McNair, Dempsey, Wise & Perlesz, 2002; Mercier & Harold, 2003). Yet, in spite of their anxieties about homophobic reaction, participants all also stressed the need for disclosure, aware that in ‘coming out’ there is little chance of returning to the closet. One of the participants, Meredith, articulated the imperative to come out for her daughter’s sake:

I do think that her major support, up until she’s going to school, where she looks for clues on how loved she is, primarily come from her parents. And if we show some level of shame … then she’s going to be shamed. But if we show a cohesive front and she sees at home that we’re proud to be her parents, are proud to love her and we want her to be proud of us, then … ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.’ The core strength for her in the coming years has to come from us being 100 per cent positive … I’m not going to go to a childcare function with, ‘I’m an out and proud lesbian’ written on my shirt, but I’m certainly not going to go to a function and pretend [my partner] is my sister. We have to show [our child] that we are proud of who we are and happy with who we are, and if we shy away from that, then she’ll feel she’s got something to hide.

Meredith’s use of the child’s rebuttal emphasises her belief that educational settings are potentially sites of discrimination, a perception which is validated in the literature (Epstein & Johnson, 1998; Letts & Sears, 1999). She was determined that her child should learn that it is not only possible to have a lesbian-headed family but also possible to challenge heteronormative discourses.

However, Meredith was also keenly aware of the risks of being ‘out’. Indeed, her comment showed she understood her position as precarious, and more likely to be accepted if she framed herself as a ‘good homosexual’—one who does not ‘flaunt’ her sexuality or challenge the (hetero)sexual status quo (Epstein & Johnson, 1998; Robinson & Ferfolja, 2001). The power implicit in the heterosexual-us/homosexual-them binary (Sedgwick, 1990) enables those constituted within dominant heterosexual discourses to have a ‘right’ to ‘accept’ and/or make judgements about those who are Other, and Meredith was careful not to take up a potentially antagonistic position.

Meredith’s sense that the pride of the parents contributes to the resilience of the child is supported in the literature. Golombok and Tasker (1996) draw parallels between lesbian mothers’ openness and pride in their identity and family structure and children’s subsequent acceptance of their family constellation. Disclosure in educational environments promises to relieve many of the social stresses involved in parent-care negotiations. When disclosure is positively received, it benefits the child by enabling authentic family-setting relations and educational success (Ryan & Martin, 2000).

When Meredith and her partner initially sought child care, they had very little knowledge about the field and what to expect. They did, however, discuss their relationship with the peak organisation. They were pleasantly surprised by the inclusive conceptions of family that were communicated to them on their application for family day care.

I had myself down as a single mother and there are two spaces for the parent details, and she said, ‘Are you a single mother?’ And I said, ‘I’ve got a partner’, and she said, ‘Well, put your partner down in that area’. And I said, ‘Well, my partner’s a woman.’ And she said, ‘You’re not the only people on our books where the partner’s a woman … we’re completely fine with that.’ And I said, ‘What about the carers?’ She said, ‘They may have their own opinions; we see all types of families who require family day care and your type of family is no more interesting than the next type of family.’ … Right from the beginning they’ve been fantastic and supportive. If they ring up, it’s ‘Hello Meredith and Kaylene.’ It’s not ‘Hello Meredith, mother of baby.’ It’s ‘Hello Meredith and Kaylene.’

These interactions led them to believe that their child’s carer knew about their family structure. While happy with the care of their child, over time they came to realise that the carer herself would not explicitly refer to or validate their family structure with their child. Meredith and her partner did not pursue being ‘out’ with their child’s carer. They hoped their child was too young to notice the carer’s silence about their family type. So, in spite of their belief that a nurturing environment for their child required acceptance of their sexuality, they did not challenge the carer’s silence as they did not want to disrupt what they considered was otherwise (hard to access) quality care for their child.

In their case, the administrators in the organisation could deal with the differences that sexuality brought to families. It appears, however, that the carers who actually did the day-to-day work with families and their children were not adequately supported to make the attitudinal changes necessary to ensure equity of service provision. This gap in service provision needs to be addressed for the organisation to actually provide quality care for children from gay- and lesbian-headed households.

The vulnerability of new lesbian mothers is highlighted by Meredith and her partner’s choice to live with an invisibility they ultimately believed was damaging. When asked about the things that would make them feel safe about pursuing the recognition of their family structure, Meredith’s partner Kaylene suggested:

The day-to-day reality of just walking in and actually just seeing on the wall pictures of other people like myself; you know, two women with children, two guys with children, straight family with children, the grandmother of a different racial group—just seeing those images there and knowing that is just part of the daily visual input of those children, that would make me feel [accepted] … not necessarily as political dogma for the children, but [as something to] lower people’s own reactivity [to differences].

One of the unique features of lesbian-headed families is that, unlike other families who experience oppression on the grounds of their Otherness, there is often no historical experience of family resistance to heteronormativity. All new mothers enter a new affective territory as they negotiate the world on behalf of their infants, a developmental transition identified in the research as a significant time of stress (Cowan & Cowan, 1992). However, as Casper (2003) suggests, this stress is intensified for lesbian parents who invariably have witnessed or have direct past experiences of homophobia. The lesbian families in this study feared their children would have the same experience. Emotionally, witnessing one’s child experiencing discrimination may well be more distressing than experiencing it oneself. Meredith said:

…because I’ve gone through the hard times with my family and I think I can face anything, but to see my own daughter cry, if someone says, ‘your mum’s a filthy dyke’, or something like that, will actually be really hard to deal with. I’m an adult and I can feel my pain, but to see my daughter in pain would upset me.

Meredith distinguished between her capabilities to feel to feel her own pain and being upset or disrupted by her daughter’s pain. The concept of emotional capital is useful for understanding the emotional rawness of a lesbian mother’s experience of discrimination directed at her child. Emotional capital is a resource that enables people to express their emotions in ways that enhance rather than detract from their social power within the social field (Reay, 2002). Reay conducted research with working-class and black mothers, and argues that emotional skills and knowledge can be intergenerationally accumulated. This emotional capital enables marginalised people to resist the psychic violence of discrimination in educational institutions and productively fight for change. Lesbian identities tend not to be intergenerational and new lesbian mothers often have no inherited resources that assist them to negotiate the value attached to their ‘difference’ within the field of education.

In addition, the relative newness of lesbian mother networks means that many families are frequently negotiating the field of education without the cultural capital and knowledge that is often accumulated by heterosexual women in their informal networks. Most participants in this study had very little knowledge about children’s services. In this respect, early childhood settings are crucial sites of experience where lesbian mothers can increase the emotional and cultural resources they have to negotiate normative parenting discourses in other educational and social fields.

The representation of non-normative families

Unlike Meredith and Kaylene, the remaining women interviewed opted to be ‘out’ by declaring their situation directly to carers. However, once visible, they found that the process of maintaining visibility was difficult and ongoing because of the pervasive construction of family as heterosexual and as biological. Every participant discussed the lack of representation of diverse identities and family types within early childhood environments. Heteronormative assumptions were evident in the way most services perceived the daily routines of the children and in the way their social worlds were (not) represented in centre curriculum.

Within the childcare settings used by interviewees, family was generally conceived to be one or two parents who held the responsibility for the routine daily needs of the child. This assumption was apparent to one of the participants, Sam, through the attitudes of childcare staff to the organisation of her son’s transitions between home and the centre.

He’s always been picked up by lots of different people. I mean this is a really serious thing in relation to how he’s figured in [our] community; he doesn’t have the one person … he’s always had a broad range of people coming to get him and take him away. That was quite difficult for [practitioners] to begin with actually, and then they just kind of got used to it … Nobody ever actually says, ‘That’s weird’, but what they do is make comments like [shifts to a slightly incredulous tone], ‘Is someone getting him today?’ Or ‘Toby’s got a lot of friends or aunties’ … I don’t think that I’m being paranoid … it’s just the phrasing of those kind of things, [that] indicate that’s unusual … you know that it’s not within their ‘normal’ range…

Diverse family constellations are not unusual in gay and lesbian communities, in our study, or indeed in the community at large. As Weeks, Heaphy and Donovan (2001, p. 9) point out, family is increasingly ‘being deployed to denote something broader than the traditional relationships based on lineage, alliance and marriage, referring instead to kin-like networks of relationships, based on friendship, and commitments beyond blood’ [original emphasis]. In gay and lesbian communities, people create different family types in response to feelings of not belonging; a rejection of ‘oppressive heterosexual connotations’ along with a desire for and a celebration of one’s own family/community (Weeks et al., 2001, p. 10).

This shift in family structures and formation is not unique to lesbian- and gay-headed households. Indeed, in her analysis of globalisation and its impact on family life, Carrington (2002) suggests that changes in family formations are increasingly common across the broader community. This necessitates significant shifts in thinking for many early childhood practitioners who need to move beyond the idea that there is one family structure they will deal with, or even that family structures are stable through time or space.

The women interviewed were conscious that their non-normative family lives may lead their children to experience struggles over concepts of family and over ideas of what is admissible as loving human relationships. Indeed, their narratives included many stories about their child’s interactions with peers and practitioners that illustrated these struggles were occurring (Skattebol, in review). This created an impetus for them to introduce or request curriculum resources that portrayed same-sex families. In a number of instances the lesbian mothers purchased books for the centre in the hope such resources would be used to represent and ‘normalise’ non-heterosexual and diverse families. Repeatedly, however, resources were not used or available to children. Lola requested that the service buy resources:

The first thing I did when the kids started asking about daddies and stuff was to see his [teacher] and say ‘Do you have any books? What sort of resources do you have?’ After much hassling, like it probably took six, seven months, they went out and bought a couple of books … which actually I’ve never seen anywhere in the centre.

Deb related a similar experience with her 21-month-old:

I said to them, ‘Where are the books?’ and they said, ‘Oh we’ve got some in the locked cupboard’ and I said, ‘Can you bring them out?’ and she said, ‘Yeah, occasionally we bring them out and read them to the big kids’ and I said, ‘Can we put them in the little room for a while?’ … So they ended up the next day in the little kids’ room. And the next day I said ‘It’d be great if we had some more’, and that’s when they sort of said, well off you go [to buy the resources] …They were kind of at a loss of how they access those sorts of resources.

Two key issues are highlighted in these comments. Firstly, the ability of early childhood professionals to access resources that deal with sexuality differences and secondly, their use of these resources. In terms of the former, it is worth reiterating the human geography of the area. All of these centres were within the parameters of a lesbian enclave, highly visible to those who can see beyond heterosexism. There were several prominent bookshops in the vicinity that carried gay and lesbian books for children. Gay and lesbian magazines were given away in many local cafes. If resources were hard to find, it was because people did not look. Such apparent lack of initiative or ‘unknowing’ may be linked to Robinson’s (2002, p. 9) ‘hierarchy of differences’ in early childhood pedagogies. She argues that educators are more likely to take up issues that link to their own identity, experiences and knowledge about difference, ‘their religious and cultural values, [and] their positioning in sexist, heterosexist, homophobic and racist discourses’. Additionally, many teachers may be apprehensive about addressing lesbian/gay issues for fear of being read as lesbian or gay themselves. Hence, lesbian/gay-headed families may be positioned at the bottom of this hierarchy, and other ‘safer’ issues and identities given priority by educators.

In addition, even when resources were available in settings, it was the lesbian families rather than educators who were frequently placed in the position of taking the risks that make sexuality differences visible. Deb felt that the educators at her daughter’s setting were genuinely trying to incorporate their family but were limited in their resourcefulness. For example, they presented a family collage in which children were encouraged to cut out pictures of diverse families. However, a non-heterosexual model was not included because the magazines used were exclusively mainstream. Feeling frustrated about the continued lack of inclusion of her child and family, Deb herself added a quirky cartoon of a lesbian family to the collage when it was displayed on the wall.

Deb’s use of humour in this representation was linked to her sense of risk in putting herself forward in this way, and aligns with Meredith’s earlier strategy of positioning herself as a ‘good’ homosexual by avoiding t-shirts emblazoned with ‘I am a lesbian’. Humour was intended to temper the challenge that her contribution made to heteronormativity. Through this act, Deb’s family was included for the first time in the visual culture of the centre, potentially challenging people’s heteronormative values. This political act of inclusion, however, was left to the individuals most vulnerable to heteronormative forces.

When the books are out…

The interviewees felt that simplistic, one-off or tokenistic representations positioned them as a highly visible Other to ‘normal’ families. It was felt this Othering produced a hypervisibility that had the potential to result in, or exacerbate, homophobic responses from members of the childcare community. Rema discussed the problem of a poorly considered approach to inclusive curriculum that foregrounded her family’s difference from the two-parent heteronormative model.

They want photos of how people constitute their families, which is actually a really good thing. I haven’t done it and the reason I haven’t done it is I have a strong sense of not wanting Declan to be a complete freak. If I had a photo of his family, there would be maybe five people, six people … not actually blood-related, and it sounds really stupid because there’s a part of me that just doesn’t want a picture with him and Maeve and I, because that’s not his [only] family … so I’m still in the process of working out who to put in that photo and how to manage it in a way that doesn’t mark him out in a context that they can’t support him in. …If I felt that they [the teachers] were having these conversations I would do that [i.e. provide the photo] … It’s the thing where you can see that they’re trying … to go, ‘Here we’ve got different families’, but actually for me, all that does is reinscribe the fact that he’s not in that model.

In Declan’s family, a number of non-biologically related people contribute to the everyday running of the household and form an emotional and social fabric of his world. This everyday situation may or may not be significantly different from that of other children in the centre. The inclusion of a single photo, however, encourages all families to reduce their families to heteronormative models. As Rema pointed out, a static image produces a singular focus on structure then runs the risk of inscribing her child’s life as ‘abnormal’ or strange. It reinforces a binary where Declan would not only stand alone, as different from all the other children at the centre by virtue of his mothers’ sexuality, but also deny his everyday experiences of family.

It may well be that many children live in large family networks of biological and non-biological family. Curriculum that relies on single limited representations of children’s families tend to interpolate fixed family structures and erase the fluid functional networks that support everyday life. Furthermore, the everyday functional practices of families would inevitably include the myriad ways people ‘do’ supposedly gendered tasks and roles. It offers a much richer curriculum platform and scaffolds connections and community between families.

An example of practice that drew on this idea came from a setting that also continuously displayed different representations of gay and lesbian and Other families at the entrance. Here, family life was a continuous source of curriculum. Children brought in a steady stream of family photos showing various aspects of their home lives—picnics, Sunday breakfasts, gardens, end of year holidays and so on. This allowed for the relationships between lesbian mothers to be explored alongside the many family combinations and relationships that all children experienced. The focus was on what children did with their families, not on what their families were. When limited to single and static representations, family photos do little to disrupt the heterosexual-us/homosexual-them binary and the hegemonic gender relations that underpin it, limiting the options of all people, including heterosexuals (Sedgwick, 1990). A focus on what families do not only addresses some of the issues of safety and representation for gay and lesbian-families, but also has the potential to strengthen genuine practitioner/family relationships for all families.

Conclusion

In this paper we have outlined some of the issues raised by lesbian-headed families in their experiences and perceptions of childcare services. The conceptual underpinning of much early childhood curriculum has a heteronormative base that inhibits educators’ thinking about a range of issues related to family diversity (Boldt, 1997; Casper, 2003; Silin, 1995). We propose that educators need to create environments that reduce the risks for marginalised families to disclose their differences from normative models of family. For this to occur, services need to ensure that diverse family structures are visible in their resources and interactions. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, a conceptual move needs to be made from a singular focus on family structures to more nuanced and detailed engagement with the ways families function in terms of gendered roles, biological and social connections. Attention to the ways families function does much to address the issues of hypervisibility and/or invisibility identified in our earlier discussion as problematic to the participants’ sense of safety within childcare environments.

We are not suggesting that children can never stand alone in the ways their families differ from other families, or that sexuality differences should be subsumed under a supposedly asexual representation of families. This will only reinscribe heteronormativity. Rather, representations and understandings of differences need to be highly nuanced and the safety of families and children negotiated. For this negotiation to take place, trust is necessary and educators need to take some of the risks. An engagement with the very real differences between families might be unsettling, but, as Hughes and Mac Naughton (1999) suggest, family members have the potential to enrich teaching practices. As Rema insightfully suggested, moving beyond heteronormativity in work with young children means that early childhood educators:

…have to read the books and occasionally talk about mums and mums … to shift the way [they] relate to children. It’s not much to do. On another level it’s kind of a funny mental shift that actually requires thinking about and doing it.

Thinking and doing, in this sense, requires educators to be reflexive about their own ideas about sexuality and family, and to take well-considered risks that challenge homophobia in ways that allow lesbian families to establish productive connections with the families of their children’s friends.

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Australian Journal of Early Childhood Volume 32 No 1 March 2007, pp. 10-18.

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