Negotiating Heteronormativity in the Heterosexual Mother–Lesbian Daughter Relationship

Abstract

a review of the extant literature on parent–adult child relationships, this paper showed how hetero-sexuality was generally assumed in studies of mother–daughter relationships and raised questions about the dy-namics of such relationships when the daughter refuses to or cannot live up to heterosexual ideals. Taking as il-lustrations data from previous qualitative research on same-sex relationships, the authors showed that (1) heteronormativity is both enforced and challenged in the relationship between heterosexual mothers and lesbian daughters, (2) distancing and intimacy are not mutually exclusive, (3) disclosure is complex, (4) gender could fa-cilitate intimacy without necessarily reinforcing heterosexual norms, and (5) the woman partner has a signiicant role to play in the relationship. In the conclusion, the authors argued that the focus on lesbian daughters and het-erosexual mothers has larger implications for a queer analysis of family dynamics.