Focus on ‘the family’? How South African family policy fails queer families

Macleod, Catriona I; Morison, Tracy; Lynch, Ingrid

Title: Focus on ‘the family’? How South African family policy fails queer families
Creator: Macleod, Catriona I
Creator: Morison, Tracy
Creator: Lynch, Ingrid
Subject: To be catalogued
Date Issued: 2019
Date: 2019
Type: text
Type: book chapter
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/434398
Identifier: vital:73054
Identifier: ISBN 9780367777401
Identifier: https://www.routledge.com/Queer-Kinship-South-African-Perspectives-on-the-Sexual-politics-of-Family-making-and-Belonging/Morison-Lynch-Reddy/p/book/9780367777401
Description: The most policy document is the White Paper on Families, which aims to facilitate the mainstreaming of a family perspective into all government policy-making from the national to the municipal level and across multiple departments. The irony is that less than a third of South African families actually conform to the two cisgender heterosexual biological parent model that is favoured in family policy. South African research has shown that children of lesbian parents learn open-mindedness and to be comfortable with the family in which they live, and that men in same-sex relationships challenge gendered divisions of household tasks. Promoting the two-biological-parent family as the preferred family structure creates an impossible ideal for the majority of South Africans to live up to. Because such a family structure is strongly connected to class, it is out of reach for the majority of citizens, let alone those who live in queer relationships.
Format: 10 pages
Format: pdf
Publisher: Routledge
Language: English
Relation: Macleod, C.I., Morison, T. and Lynch, I., 2019. Focus on ‘the family’? How South African family policy fails queer families. In Queer Kinship (pp. 22-32). Routledge
Rights: Publisher
Rights: Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Routledge Rights and Permissions Statement (https://www.routledge.com/contacts/rights-and-permissions)

Hits: 160
Visitors: 162
Downloads: 8

Collections

Gender Action Forum (GENACT)

Macleod, Catriona Ida (Distinguished Professor)

SDG 05. Gender Equality

RU Department of Psychology

RU Books and Book Chapters

RU DST/NRF SARChI for Critical Studies in Sexualities and Reproductions Research (CSSR) Programme

SDG 03. Good Health and Well-Being

		Thumbnail	File	Description	Size	Format
View Details Download			SOURCE1	Focus on ‘the family’ How South African family policy fails queer families.pdf	603 KB	Adobe Acrobat PDF	View Details Download