‘I Could Eat My Baby to Bits’; passion and desire in lesbian mother–children love

Mother–children love and adult–sexual love tend to be differentiated by the absence/presence of passion and desire. In the course of my research on lesbian parent families, the artificiality of this distinction has become transparent. In attempting to describe ‘mother love’ mothers said repeatedly they loved their children ‘to bits’, wanting to ‘eat them up’, feeling ‘utterly passionate’ towards them. This challenges the traditional sexual–sexless boundaries between parents and children. The intensity of ‘maternal love’ often means that mother–child intimacy becomes a site of delicate negotiations between desire and love. The legal–moral boundaries that are invoked prohibit intergenerational desire, upholding the incest taboos that dominate Western culture. However the construction of these boundaries neither stop adult–child ‘border skirmishes’ nor quash children's ‘natural’ exploration of their sexuality. I explore how bodies and bodily boundaries are used to manage sexuality and desire in families. I consider how mothers negotiate their way through the contradictions of mother–children love, incorporating the passion and desire of this love. I suggest mothers' acknowledgment of their passion does not mean that ‘maternal love’ is potentially sexual/incestuous, but instead questions its conceptual framing. I suggest that future research on mother–children love might usefully look outside the traditional discourses used to describe and delineate love, towards ones that incorporate non‐sexual desire.     

Locating Lesbian Parent Families: Everyday negotiations of lesbian motherhood in Britain

Although there is some research on lesbian sexuality and space I contend that such analyses do not account for the ways in which lesbian parent families' actions and subjectivities are structured through the time–space nexus. The particularities of mothers' management of their maternal–sexual identities remain uncharted. In this article I interrogate how lesbian parent families negotiate everyday places, such as the street and schools and how they inhabit and produce space. I address their dis-location within academic studies, situating the home as critical in lesbian parents' consolidation of self. Home represents one of the few places where the sexual and maternal identities of lesbian parents may be reconciled. I suggest that the multiple identifications and subject positions of lesbian mothers and their families need to be acknowledged so that they may be included within the queer cartography of lesbian and gay space. The data cited in this article come from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 18 lesbian mothers and 13 of their children, who live across the Yorkshire region in the United Kingdom.

Mientras hay algún estudios del espacio y la sexualidad de lesbianas, contiendo que estos exámenes no dan razón de las maneras en que las acciones y subjetividades de padres lesbianas son estructurados por el nexos del espacio y tiempo. Las particularidades del manejo de los identidades materna y sexualidad de madres todavía quedan no examinado. En este articulo interrogo como las padres lesbianas negocian lugares cotidianos, tal como las calles y la escuela, y como ellas habitan y producen espacios. Exploro sus dis-localización dentro de los estudios académicos, situando el hogar como critica en la consolidación de sus mismos de padres lesbianas. El hogar representa uno de los lugares en donde las identidades de sexualidad y materna de padres lesbianas pueden ser reconciliados. Sugiero que las identificaciones y los posiciones sujetos múltiples de madres lesbianas y sus familias tienen que ser reconocidos así que puedan incluidos en la cartografía queer del espacio gay y lesbianas. Los datos en este artículo son de entrevistas semi-estructurados y profundos con 18 madres lesbianas y 13 de sus hijos, los cuales viven en el región Yorkshire del Inglaterra.