Reinventing the Family: The Emerging Story of Lesbian and Gay Parents Paperback - 1995

First line

Three-year-old Danielle, just home from preschool, is playing with her best friend, Sophie.

Media reviews

"When people frame the nuclear family as morally superior, they focus on the shape of families (how many parents? of what gender combination?) rather than on the quality of relationships both within and beyond the family. At the same time, idealizing the traditional family obscures the violence and gender inequity often hidden behind closed doors.

"Our society's foundation, its very bedrock, has been shaken by the realization of lesbian and gay parenthood. When lesbians and gay men reveal their connections with children, as part of families of their own, a cultural earthquake ensues. We are in the midst of many such quakes. This book is a chronicle of the faultlines, tremors, aftershocks, and landscapes we reconstruct." -- From the Introduction

"Dr. Benkov's work is a moving and urgent call for all of us to support gay and lesbian families in their legal and emotional struggles -- as they lead society from the simple-minded, frequently cruel, and selectively privileging definitions of 'legitimate' family based solely in biology and paternalism to more complex family foundations based in parental agreements, responsibilities, love, and care."

-- Judy Grahn author of Another Mother Tongue

"Gracefully written and lucidly argued, Benkov's study is the first sustained analysis of the emerging phenomenon of lesbian and gay parents and of the considerable obstacles they must surmount in reinventing the family." -- Publishers Weekly