How do queer moms parent their sons? The question isn’t just “Are our kids okay?” explained Gail Marlene Schwartz, co-editor of this new book on the topic. “We feel like that’s been established.” Instead, the book goes further and asks whether queer moms have “something particular to offer in terms of nurturing healthy masculinity,” Schwartz said in an interview.
Schwartz, a U.S.-Canadian dual-citizen, is parenting a 15-year-old son with her ex-wife and with Schwartz’s nonbinary current partner. In Boyhood Reimagined, Schwartz and her friend and co-editor Ada Malone, who has a 10-year-old son with her own wife, bring together essays and interviews by themselves and other queer moms to explore how they parent sons “in terms of being feminists, not just being queer women,” Schwartz said. “If you’ve got two moms or one mom and you’ve got a feminist framework, how are those boys emerging? How is their sense of their own masculinity different? We think we have something to share.”
Interest in queer moms and their sons is not new. Back in 1997, queer feminist author Jess Wells edited Lesbians Raising Sons, a similar anthology of essays, but one focused on the challenges of that era. And work by various social scientists in the past few decades, as Schwartz and Malone note in their book, has given us research-backed confirmation that our sons are “more than fine,” Schwartz said. But she feels that a new volume has more to add, as our understanding of gender evolves and as “cultural toxic masculinity” is on the rise.
The parents featured in the book all self-identify as queer moms and feminists, and include lesbian, bi, and trans women who are parenting sons (and sometimes also daughters and nonbinary children). Through their stories, we see how mom-only households take “female strength as a given”; how these moms are teaching their sons about kindness and consent, about gender as a construct and as something fluid, and about intersectional identities. Color illustrations by Schwartz’s partner, Erin Needham, enliven the text.
“If we don’t attend to our boys’ masculinity, other people will do it for us, and we don’t want that. That’s what’s happening now,” Schwartz insisted. Instead, “We need to figure out what is healthy, masculine, and we need to nurture that.” With guidance from the experiences and insights she and Malone have gathered in this recommended volume, however, families of all types will be better prepared to make that happen.
