Radical Relations - (Gender and American Culture) by Daniel Winunwe Rivers (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

In Radical Relations, Daniel Winunwe Rivers offers a previously untold story of the American family: the first history of lesbian and gay parents and their children in the United States. Beginning in the postwar era, a period marked by both intense repression and dynamic change for lesbians and gay men, Rivers argues that by forging new kinds of family and childrearing relations, gay and lesbian parents have successfully challenged legal and cultural definitions of family as heterosexual. These efforts have paved the way for the contemporary focus on family and domestic rights in lesbian and gay political movements.
Based on extensive archival research and 130 interviews conducted nationwide, Radical Relations includes the stories of lesbian mothers and gay fathers in the 1950s, lesbian and gay parental activist networks and custody battles, families struggling with the AIDS epidemic, and children growing up in lesbian feminist communities. Rivers also addresses changes in gay and lesbian parenthood in the 1980s and 1990s brought about by increased awareness of insemination technologies and changes in custody and adoption law.

Review Quotes

"[Rivers's] engaging and well-researched social history argues that the history of lesbian mothers, gay fathers, and their children challenges a foundational American belief that the family is heterosexual and that gays and lesbians are childless. . . . A necessary corrective." -- American Historical Review

"An important history of lesbian mothers, gay fathers, and their children." -- Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

"Daniel Rivers has produced a major contribution to family history, to LGBT history, and to the history of children. Weaving together legal sources, interviews, personal papers, and the archives of grassroots community organizations, Radical Relations demonstrates the transformational impact of lesbians and gay men on each other, and on the generations of children that they fought to raise." -- Claire Bond Potter, professor of history, The New School for Public Engagement

"In this deeply researched social history of six decades of gay fathers, lesbian mothers, and their children, Rivers seamlessly blends legal materials, oral histories, personal correspondence, and archival materials of grassroots organizations. . . . Essential. All levels/libraries." -- CHOICE

"Opens up a largely unexplored history." -- Women's Review of Books

"Rivers explores how lesbian and gay parents have worked to expand the cultural and legal definitions of family since the 1950s." -- Stanford Magazine