ABSTRACT
Within the field of family studies, there has been a shift in emphasis away from households and blood ties, to an engagement with the more complex family structures that appear in our postmodern world. These newer structures reflect social changes such as the increase in divorce and growth of ‘blended families’, the introduction of civil partnerships or same-sex marriage in some countries, and the complexities of new reproductive technologies, which may produce new configurations of biological and social kinship. Gabb (2009: 17) characterizes this shift as one from a concern with narrow roles to ‘who affectively counts’. One of the most influential concepts within this theoretical literature that focuses on affective relationships, is the concept of ‘families we choose’ (Weston 1997), or relational networks based on ‘choice’ and ‘love/friendship’, rather than ‘blood’ or ‘marriage’. Weston’s (1997) classic study suggested that lesbian and gay people had a distinctive approach to kinship. She argued that many LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) people experienced homophobia and alienation from their ‘families of origin’, or parents and siblings. Thus, the barriers to intimacy or rejection they experienced with their families led them to create new ‘families we choose’, or new familial networks consisting of lovers, ex-lovers and friends. This characterization of queer kinships persists in much academic literature. For example Weeks et al. (2001) refer to choice as the basis for queer familial arrangements.
