Pollack, Sandra

Lesbian Mothering: Stressing the Differences

However, the culmination of Sandra Pollack's most significant work focuses on lesbian mothering. Pollack coedited Politics of the Heart: A Lesbian Parenting Anthology with Jeanne Vaughn in 1987. Pollack also argued in her essay included in the anthology, Lesbian Mothers: A Lesbian-Feminist Perspective on Research, that lesbian parenting should be contrasted with heterosexual mothering for the purpose of identifying the differences rather than similarities. She chooses to use the term parent rather than mother to demonstrate inclusiveness of the role(s) filled by co-parents, adoptive parents, stepparents, and parents who are not biological mothers.

According to Pollack, looking for parallels between heterosexual mothers and lesbian parents makes lesbian mothers invisible and obscures alternative models to parenting that could be affirming or helpful. Pollack claims parenting studies focus on white lesbians and thus fail to see racial differences in parenting and how mothers of color are viewed. Early feminist work on securing equality for lesbians also failed to include or recognize lesbian parents. Lesbian activists and researchers who were also mothers tended to focus their efforts on sexism and heterosexism in sectors of society such as work and education, and had a propensity to overlook the impact of sexism and heterosexism on their ability to parent.

Pollack goes further to insist scholarship be directed toward examining legal defense strategies for lesbian parents. She believes that an important part of making lesbian parenting visible is by examining the ways in which lesbian parents are treated by legal statutes in custody cases. Pollack cautions that by assuming lesbian parents are no different than heterosexual mothers the legal and social structures will value nuclear and heterosexual families as best. She also claims that courts are voyeuristic when it comes to lesbian relationships in ways they are not about heterosexual relationships. Pollack seeks to discover the ways in which lesbian parents are different than heterosexual parents in her writing on making lesbian parenting visible. She specifically questions the ways in which heterosexual mothers face inquiries about kinship and other close relationships compared to lesbian parents. She also questions the advantages claimed by courts of raising children either by heterosexual, nuclear families or by being closeted so that children are properly acclimated to traditional sex roles. Her claim is that by looking for ways that lesbian parenting is more advantageous when compared to heterosexual mothering, not only are children's best interests served, but successful arguments can be made in court custody cases and lesbian parents are able to build an optimistic sense of self.

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