Queer Families, Common Agendas

Vital information on family services, custody, and access rights for gay parents!Queer Families, Common Agendas: Gay People, Lesbians, and Family Values examines the real life experience of those affected by current laws and policies regarding homosexual families. The book will help policy makers, lawyers, social workers, and the general public better understand these families. Here you will be able to compare the progress of policy in the U.S. and Canada for gay and lesbian parents and their children and explore relevant legal approaches in the two countries. In Queer Families, Common Agendas: Gay People, Lesbians, and Family Values, a range of strategies for advancing the rights of sexual minority parents are considered for legal feasibility and political viability. You will gain insight into the contradictions in policies and practices that ultimately disadvantage children based on their family origins, and you will discover alternative approaches for improved services to homosexual families. Queer Families, Common Agendas explores:

• family law and protection of women-headed households
• legal definitions of motherhood and fatherhood in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom
• family and adoption idealogies concerning gay families and their rights to adopt
• new ways to make social services responsive to minority families
• the lesbian and gay "agenda"
• the value of family and the family of values--as opposed to the worn-out phrase "family values" Queer Families, Common Agendas serves as a primer to assist you in understanding the legal struggles that lesbian and gay families are facing today. You will explore concerns about family law, protection of women-headed households, motherhood, fatherhood, adoption and family ideology, and how to make social services responsive to gay and lesbian families. This excellent reference provides you with the necessary background and techniques to create services that are responsive and effective with sexual minority families.