The decision to have a child is seldom a simple one, often fraught with complexities regarding emotional readiness, finances, marital status, and compatibility with life and career goals. Rarely, though, do individuals consider the role of the law in facilitating or inhibiting their ability to have a child or to parent. For LGBT individuals, however, parenting is saturated with legality - including the initial decision of whether to have a child, how to have a child, whether one's relationship with their child will be recognized, and everyday acts of parenting like completing forms or picking up children from school. Through in-depth interviews with 137 LGBT parents, Amanda K. Baumle and D'Lane R. Compton examine the role of the law in the lives of LGBT parents and how individuals use the law when making decisions about family formation or parenting. Baumle and Compton explore the ways in which LGBT parents participate in the process of constructing legality through accepting, modifying, or rejecting legal meanings about their families. Few groups encounter as much variation in access to everyday legal rights pertaining to the family as do LGBT parents. This complexity and variation in legal environments provides a rather unique opportunity to examine the manner in which legal context affects the ways in which individuals come to understand the meaning and utility of the law for their lives. The authors conclude that legality is constructed through a complex interplay of legal context, social networks, individual characteristics, and familial desires. Ultimately, the stories of LGBT parents in this book reflect a rich and varied relationship between the law, the state, and the private family goals of individuals.

This collection highlights and extends contemporary women's and gender studies by presenting theoretical analyses and innovative research conceptualizations, applications and methodologies via a diverse variety of popular-in-the-classroom topics, such as changing masculinities; comedic/dramatic portrayals of ethnicity and discrimination; stigma and differences within mainstream media gender stereotypes; intersections of gendered and sexual identities in social media and fundamental institutions.

These topics emphasize relevant issues and nuances within popular culture, identities and perceptions and social problems and illustrate the breadth of gender studies and its applications, while the diverse methodologies like historical comparisons; ethnographic, demographic and statistical analyses, demonstrate its epistemology.

Each chapter remains solidly founded in gender theory while making significant innovative contributions to the overall field."

This book provides a unique analysis of the intersection between gender, sexuality, race, and social media. While early scholarship identified the internet as being inherently egalitarian, this volume presents the internet as a "real" social place where inequalities matter and manifest in particular ways according to the architectures of particular platforms. This volume utilizes innovative methodologies to analyze how internet users both re-inscribe and resist inequalities of gender, sexuality, and race. It describes how the internet has ameliorated and bridged geographic and numerical limits on community formation, and this volume examines how the functioning of social inequalities differs on- and offline.

The decision to have a child is seldom a simple one, often fraught with complexities regarding emotional readiness, finances, marital status, and compatibility with life and career goals. Rarely, though, do individuals consider the role of the law in facilitating or inhibiting their ability to have a child or to parent. For LGBT individuals, however, parenting is saturated with legality - including the initial decision of whether to have a child, how to have a child, whether one's relationship with their child will be recognized, and everyday acts of parenting like completing forms or picking up children from school. Through in-depth interviews with 137 LGBT parents, Amanda K. Baumle and D'Lane R. Compton examine the role of the law in the lives of LGBT parents and how individuals use the law when making decisions about family formation or parenting. Baumle and Compton explore the ways in which LGBT parents participate in the process of constructing legality through accepting, modifying, or rejecting legal meanings about their families. Few groups encounter as much variation in access to everyday legal rights pertaining to the family as do LGBT parents. This complexity and variation in legal environments provides a rather unique opportunity to examine the manner in which legal context affects the ways in which individuals come to understand the meaning and utility of the law for their lives. The authors conclude that legality is constructed through a complex interplay of legal context, social networks, individual characteristics, and familial desires. Ultimately, the stories of LGBT parents in this book reflect a rich and varied relationship between the law, the state, and the private family goals of individuals.

This book provides a unique analysis of the intersection between gender, sexuality, race, and social media. While early scholarship identified the internet as being inherently egalitarian, this volume presents the internet as a "real" social place where inequalities matter and manifest in particular ways according to the architectures of particular platforms. This volume utilizes innovative methodologies to analyze how internet users both re-inscribe and resist inequalities of gender, sexuality, and race. It describes how the internet has ameliorated and bridged geographic and numerical limits on community formation, and this volume examines how the functioning of social inequalities differs on- and offline.

This collection highlights and extends contemporary women's and gender studies by presenting theoretical analyses and innovative research conceptualizations, applications and methodologies via a diverse variety of popular-in-the-classroom topics, such as changing masculinities; comedic/dramatic portrayals of ethnicity and discrimination; stigma and differences within mainstream media gender stereotypes; intersections of gendered and sexual identities in social media and fundamental institutions. These topics emphasize relevant issues and nuances within popular culture, identities and perceptions and social problems and illustrate the breadth of gender studies and its applications, while the diverse methodologies like historical comparisons; ethnographic, demographic and statistical analyses, demonstrate its epistemology. Each chapter remains solidly founded in gender theory while making significant innovative contributions to the overall field.

This provocative collection showcases the work of emerging and established sociologists in the fields of sexuality and gender studies as they reflect on what it means to develop, practice, and teach queer methods. Located within the critical conversation about the possibilities and challenges of utilizing insights from humanistic queer epistemologies in social scientific research, Other, Please Specify presents to a new generation of researchers an array of experiences, insights, and approaches, revealing the power of investigations of the social world. With contributions from sociologists who have helped define queer studies and who use a range of interpretative and statistical methods, this volume offers methodological advice and practical strategies in research design and execution, all with the intent of getting queer research off the ground and building a collaborative community within this emerging subfield.

This provocative collection showcases the work of emerging and established sociologists in the fields of sexuality and gender studies as they reflect on what it means to develop, practice, and teach queer methods. Located within the critical conversation about the possibilities and challenges of utilizing insights from humanistic queer epistemologies in social scientific research, Other, Please Specify presents to a new generation of researchers an array of experiences, insights, and approaches, revealing the power of investigations of the social world. With contributions from sociologists who have helped define queer studies and who use a range of interpretative and statistical methods, this volume offers methodological advice and practical strategies in research design and execution, all with the intent of getting queer research off the ground and building a collaborative community within this emerging subfield.