Third ISA Forum of Sociology (July 10-14, 2016)

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Intersectionality and Intergenerational Family Relationships

RC06 Family Research (host committee)
RC32 Women in Society

Language: English

The aim of this section is to bring together research on family relationships, focusing specifically on relationships between adult children and their parents, that is sensitive to the interplay of various sources of inequalities, especially sexuality, gender, and social class. 
While the thriving research on LGBT and other “unconventional” families is welcoming, the gap between legitimated and non-legitimated families might have been reified, consequently limiting more complex understanding of familial and related intimate relationships. For example, to date, most studies on non-heterosexual daughters and their mothers have focused on the coming out process, while those on their heterosexual counterparts connect mother-daughter intimacy with gender expectations and motherhood. Questions we still need to answer include, for example, how non-heterosexual daughters relate to their mothers beyond their “coming out” process; what roles the partners play; how the gender of the partner might matter to the mother and challenge or reinforce gender norms, and so on. 
Further, many, if not most, studies on LGBT families we encountered focus on the middle class. How does “social class” intersect with sexuality in determining the lived experiences of sexual minorities? For example, how do economic resources affect heterosexual and non-heterosexual daughters’ respective sense of obligations towards their mothers and their mothers’ acceptance of the partners? 
Since the intersectional perspective is more established in the US and Europe than in Asia, we therefore especially encourage submissions of research on Asia. Posters: