Chasing Rainbows: Exploring Gender Fluid Parenting Practices

Edited by Fiona Joy Green and May Friedman

Feminist parenting creates unique challenges. Mothers may struggle with shifts in their own subjectivity and the peculiar conjoinment of parenthood. As women experience the unique powerlessness of motherhood, they also hold the uncomfortable power of acting as advocates for and as agents of socialization and social control over their children. Fathers may feel the desire for feminist parenting whilst experiencing a backlash and a lack of support, while some parents may attempt to resist the binaries of mothering and fathering in their feminist parenting journey. Feminist parents may attempt to resist gender binaries; they may submit to them while attempting to foster critical dialogue; they may struggle with the display of their own femininity and masculinity or, for some, its perceived lack. For some parents a dialogue about gender normativity may be inspired by gender-diverse behavior on the part of their own children, while others may parent children who happily submit to the mainstream and query the need for gender questioning. Chasing Rainbows: Exploring Gender Fluid Parenting Practices attempts to cast a lens on the messy and convoluted ways that feminist parents approach parenting their children in gender aware and gender fluid ways. The collection draws together scholars, activists and community members to open a conversation about the challenges of exploring and maintaining an awareness of gender while parenting in a highly gender normative world.