Abstract
The present chapter focuses on a relatively new family configuration, comprised of a gay man and a heterosexual woman who choose to conceive and raise a child together outside of marriage. In this family configuration, which we have termed the “hetero-gay family”, both birth parents are actively involved in their children’s daily lives and in child-related decisions, although they do not share a residence. To date, little is known about men’s and women’s motives for choosing the hetero-gay family as the context for raising their children. We found more similarities than differences between the men and women. A key motivation for all the men and women in this study to establish the hetero-gay family was the belief that both a mother and a father are essential to a child’s development. This traditional view of the ideal parental model paradoxically led them to their choice of a nontraditional family. From their perspective, the establishment of a hetero-gay family enabled them to create a “standard’’ family that is in accord with the traditional two-parent family model in many respects. The coexistence of traditional and progressive attitudes about the family and parenting may be explained, at least in part, by gender, sexuality, and cultural context of the Israeli society.
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Segal-Engelchin, D., Jen, S., Erera, P.I. (2019). Parenting in Hetero-Gay Families: Motivations, Assumptions, Gender and Culture. In: Taubman – Ben-Ari, O. (eds) Pathways and Barriers to Parenthood. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24864-2_9
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