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Full-Text Articles in Gender and Sexuality
Getting "Bi" In The Family: Bisexual People's Disclosure Experiences, Kristin S. Scherrer, Emily Kazyak, Rachel M. Schmitz
Getting "Bi" In The Family: Bisexual People's Disclosure Experiences, Kristin S. Scherrer, Emily Kazyak, Rachel M. Schmitz
Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications
There are many similarities in gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals’ coming out experiences, but bisexual people face unique challenges. Despite this, an explicit focus on bisexual people is missing from family research. Using family systems and cultural sociological perspectives, the authors analyzed how social and cultural factors shape disclosure processes for bisexuals as they come out to multiple family members. After analyzing qualitative data from a diverse group of 45 individuals, they found that bisexual people navigate monosexist and heterosexist expectations in their family relationships. Cultural constructions of bisexuality shape the ways that bisexual people disclose their identities, including how …
Attitudes Toward Motherhood Among Sexual Minority Women In The United States, Emily Kazyak, Nicholas Park, Julia Mcquillan, Arthur L. Greil
Attitudes Toward Motherhood Among Sexual Minority Women In The United States, Emily Kazyak, Nicholas Park, Julia Mcquillan, Arthur L. Greil
Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications
In this article, we use data from the National Survey of Fertility Barriers—a national, population-based telephone survey—to examine how sexual minority women construct and value motherhood. We analyze the small (N = 43) random sample of self-identified sexual minority women using “survey-driven narrative construction,” which entails converting the structured answers and open-ended responses for each respondent into narratives and identifying themes. We focused on both sexual minority women’s desires and intentions to parent and on the importance they place on motherhood. We found that there is considerable variation in this population. Many sexual minority women distinguish between having and raising …