no place like i WORLDS Of DESIRE J THE DHhO^GO SEflltB OH SEXUALITV, OENOER AMD CULTURE ' Kr«i Ednrd by Ciltm Herdt Relationships and Family Life among Lesbians and Gay Men christopher carrington The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London 11 711 * The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 I To James Arthur Dibble and The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London 'i © 1999 by The University of Chicago :j jQ Lesfom md Gay Homemaking and Homemakers All rights reserved. Published 1999 ■ Paperback edition 2002 j Printed in the United States of America } 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 2 3 4 5 1 isbn: 0-226-09485-5 (cloth) ;j ..... isbn; 0-12,6-09486-3 (paperback) J Carrington, Christopher. ! No place like home : relationships and family life among lesbians and g-ay j men / Christopher Carrington. j p. cm. — (Worlds of desire) s Includes bibliographical references. ] issn 0-226-09485-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1 1. Gay couples—California—San Francisco. 2. Gays—California— j San Francisco—Family relationships. 3. Households—California—San j Francisco. 4. Housekeeping—California—San Francisco. I. Title. :! II. Series. HO76.3.U53S253 1999 1 306.84'B —DC21 99-19780 j CIP j The paper used in this publication meets die minimum requirements of the 1 American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper [ for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z3 9.48-1992. i introduction cieties (Mohr 1994; Stacey 1996). However, a pervasive sense of crisis in the American family has existed throughout much of American history (Skolnick 1991; Coontz 1992), and the national debate concerning lesbian and gay families is but the latest grist for the mill. This sense of family crisis pervades the political efforts to block lesbian and gay people from attaining legal marriage and the benefits of domestic partnership. The sense of crisis, and the rhetorical overkill that accompanies it, not only makes it difficult for political debate to focus on the everyday realities of lesbian and gay families but insures that many people will both understand such families in stereotypical ways and impede efforts to improve the quality of lesbian and gay family life. The quotation at the beginning of this chapter from Ms. Hamrick denies the possibility that lesbian and gay families exist, much less acknowledges that they should enjoy any kind of cultural recognition. ■ The debate over the cultural place of lesbian and gay families rages not only among the predominantly heterosexual, mostly male, affluent European Americans in the centers of economic and political power but within the various lesbian, bisexual, and gay communities as well. It remains an open question in the minds of at least some lesbians, gays, and bisexuals whether "marriage" is worthy of the political capital it will take to achieve it, or even worthy at all (Eskridge 1996; Polikoff 1993; Ettelbrick 1989; Sullivan 1995). And the same rhetorical overkill that characterizes the national debate also permeates the lesbian, bisexual, and gay communities. William Eskridge, a gay-male proponent of same-sex marriage, in a rhetorical flourish conceives of same-sex marriages as a move from "sexual liberty to civilized commitment" (1996). This formulation implies the presence of some uncivilized menace in the present lives of lesbian and gay families. Don't believe it. For while many lesbian and gay families face difficulties in their family lives, difficulties often resulting from heterosexism and homophobia, die notion of some uncivilized phantom dwelling at the heart of such families is demonstrably false. Actual lesbigay families, like most other American families, face the struggles of balancing work and family commitments, of managing the stresses and strains of waxing and waning sexual desires, of maintaining open and honest communication, of fighting over household responsibilities, and, most frequently, of simply trying to make ends meet. The latter point deserves much more attention, for if any phantom lurks in the lives of lesbian and gay families, it is their inability to achieve financial security, the foundation of a happy, communicative, and stable relationship (Voydanoff 1992). introduction This is a study of "family life" among a group ofjnrty-two lesbian and gay families (twenty-six female and twenty-six male). This study provides an ethnographic and empirical account of how lesbians and gay men actually construct, sustain, enhance, or undermine a sense of family in their lives. Rather than an excursion into the frequently symbolic politics of gay marriage, or into the debates about the liberating possibilities of lesbian, bisexual, or gay-male sexuality, this work explores the seemingly ordinary terrain of everyday life within and among lesbigay families. I use the tennľ/ejfógrtyTVhich is coming into wider use, because it includes lesbians, bisexuals, and gay men, all of whom participate in the families I studied. Of the fifty-two adult women participants, two consider themselves bisexual, as does one of the fifty-three adult men. In this study I reflect upon the details of everyday life in the households of lesbigay families, and explore the relationship of such detail to the actual experience of and creation of family in the lives of lesbigay people. The participants in this research, similar to many other citizens, use the term family in diverse and often contradictory wäyšľAt one moment a participant will conceive of family as a legal and biological category, a category that they reject, and might even define themselves as over and against. In a different place and time that same participant will conceive of family as a way of behaving and will reject the formal understandings of family in favor of an understanding that emphasizes the labors involved and not the socially sanctioned roles. And at yet another place and time that same participant will embrace the legal and biological definitions of family with the hopes of achieving lesbigay inclusion into those categorizations (for example, advocating lesbigay legal marriage or attempting to secure custody of a child on the basis of biological linkage). In my analysis die crucial element for defining what or who constitutes a family derives from whether the participants engage in a consistent and relatively reciprocal pattern of loving and caring activities and understand themselves to be bound to provide for, and entitled to partake of, the material and emotional needs and/or resources of odier family members. I understand family as consisting of people who love and care for one another. This makes a couple a family. In other words, through their loving and caring activities, and their reflections upon them, people conceive of, construct, and maintain social relationships that they come to recognize and treat as family (Schneider 1984). In this sense a family, any family, is a social con- introduction struction, or a sec ot relationships recognized, edified, and sustained through . human initiative. People "do" family. This research ponders the deceptively simple activities that constitute c Jove and care, activities that frequently go unnoticed in most families, in-chiding- most lesbigay families. These may entail trips to the store to pick up something special for dinner, phoning an order to a catalog company for someone's birthday, tallying the money owed to friends, sorting the daily mail, remembering a couple's anniversary, finishing up the laundry before one's spouse returns home, maintaining a photo album, remembering the vegetables that family members dislike, or attending to myriad other small, often hidden, seemingly insignificant matters. Decidedly not insignificant, these small matters form the fabric of our daily lives as participants in families. Moreover, the proliferation of these small matters produces a stronger and more pervasive sense of the relationship(s) as a family, both in the eyes of the participants and in the eyes of others. . .x; Conceiving of them as labors of love, people customarily romanticize many of these domestic activities (Abel and Nelson 1990) and fail to recognize them as forms of work that consume the time and energy of those who do them (Jones 1985; Romero 1992). The reality that families consist of a multitude of often small, frequently unrecognized, laborious acts of caregiv-ing, in addition to some set of codified roles (for example, mother, father, spouse, brother), tells us something else about why Kristi Hamrick's comments are so problematic. The notion that family cannot consist of a "fill in the blank"—that is, person(s) of one's choosing—contributes to concealing the labors that actually produce and sustain a family, any family. Emphasizing formal roles, a common tendency of family politics, family policy, and family law, detracts from the more basic reality that various forms of work dwell at the heart of family life. Suggesting that various forms of work constitute the sum and substance oi family life raises a number of questions about how to define work. While many citizens hold work in the highest regard in contemporary American society, viewing it as the answer to many of life's most fundamental questions, as well as the elixir to a host of life's problems, the question of what.co.nsri-.. ttites work eludes easy classification. Commonsensical notions of work often appeal to distinctions between productive and unproductive work, pleasant and unpleasant work, between producing and consuming, between the things we do tor money and the things we do for love, or between activities introduction we are willing to pay for and those we are not Such categorical distinctions tell us much more about how we value particular forms of work, and who does them, than they tell us about the actual characteristics of that work. In contrast to these commonsensical notions, many sociologists make a convincing case that the idea that work consists of some quintessential meaning that transcends political and cultural context is untenable (Becker 1963; du Gay 1996; Hughes 1971; Urry 1990). For example, if I were to provide cleaning services twenty hours a week for an hourly wage, and over the course of subsequent revisits I begin a relationship with my wealthy employer, fall in love with him, begin a relationship with him, and eventually move into that very same house where I continued my cleaning work, nothing will have necessarily changed in the content of that cleaning work but it is highly unlikely that I would continue to receive a wage for my labors, and I would quite possibly conceive of my cleaning work in new ways. In mainstream economic accounts of work, as I made that transition from paid worker to unpaid lover, I also shifted from being productive (that is, contributing to the gross domestic product) to unproductive. Such a scenario makes it patently clear that we need a social and an interactional conception of work, one emphasizing its socially constructed character. Vantage Points: Situating Myself My preoccupation with work and family matters reflects dre confluence of my personal biography with my intellectual pursuits. My own experiences widt work and family life have left an indelible mark upon my understanding of domesticity. I am an openly gay, Euro-American, educated, and affluent male. In contrast to my adult life, I grew up in a working-poor, female-headed, single-parent family. Through much of my childhood, in order to make ends meet, my mother worked nights as a bartender. There were periods where she could not get enough hours and our family had to turn to food stamps and welfare. I remember fighting intensely with the older of my two younger sisters over who would pay at the checkout counter because we both wanted to avoid the stigma that came with using those food stamps. We also received free lunches at school, although these lunches were not quite as free as one might believe. Our school principal thought it important that we learn the value of earning our keep, so, in the fourth grade, several other poor kids and I had to clean the introduction dining hall during the second half of our lunch hour. This included emptying the garbage cans into the dumpster. In order to do that, we had to drag the cans by all of the other kids on die playground over to the dumpster. One can weil imagine the shame that I felt Pile on top of these experiences the reality that I knew, and other kids seemed to know, diat 1 was somehow "different" (gay) by the time I was ten years old, and one can appreciate the ferocity of my effort to escape such a life. I wanted to avoid stigma so badly that I would steal lunch money from my mother's inebriated customers at the bar. By die end of the fourth grade I had finagled and charmed my way into an illegal (in violation of child labor laws) after-school job at a flower shop where I could earn that lunch money. Such experiences fueled an intense desire within me to escape the working class and, for the most part, I have. None of this is to deny the importance of social-structural dynamics (job opportunities, educational opportunities, gender and racial privileges) diat facilitated my escape, but it is to acknowledge the particular experiences that motivated me and subsequently influenced my perceptions of the world. My childhood also taught me a great deal about domesticity. My mother's work as a bartender required her to work nights, which meant that she increasingly came to rely on me to keep the house going in her absence. We occasionally had baby-sitters, but they were frequently unreliable, and they rarely did any domestic work. By the time I was eleven years old, I knew how to do laundry, iron, clean, cook, baby-sit, and shop. Such experiences provided knowledge of things that most boys never come to know. It meant that much of the invisible work that women do became quite visible for me. My mother greatly appreciated these contributions, and I suspect that set the stage for me to question the widespread devaluation of domesticity. In some ways I was experiencing a nascent version of the second shift as an elementary-school kid. Each day I went to school until 3:00 P.M., to my paid job from 3:30 to 5:30 (which I held for three years), and then to my unpaid job at 6:00; my mother had to be to her shift starting at 6:00. In addition to my school-work each night, there was a meal to cook, cleaning activities, groceries to buy, and getting my sisters to take baths and get into bed. I would call my mother at work each night at around 9:00 to report that all was.running, smoothly and that my sisters were in bed.1 As I entered into my own adult family life, 1 brought a set of skills and an understanding of domesticity that most men do not have, including most gay men. 1 have spent much of the past fifteen years both participating in the introduction everyday life of my own gay family, and those of others, and reflecting upon that participation as a budding sociologist. Over that period of time I came to realize just how problematic family life can actually become, especially for those gay men, bisexuals, and lesbians who wish simultaneously to pursue family, cateer, and community. I found myself increasingly identifying with and understanding the stresses and strategies heterosexual women use in their relationships to negotiate multiple commitments, to work, family, and community. I also found myself coming out of the domesticity closet. As the following pages reveal, gay or bisexual men who do domestic things, and lesbian or bisexual women who do not must carefully manage such information in order to avoid the stigma associated with violating widely held expectations about domesticity and its assumed links to gender. These expectations persist even if concealed by ideological commitments to eg-alitar iaiiism among most straight, bisexual, lesbian, and gay people. Vantage Points: Intellectual Traditions and the Study of Domesticity My intellectual concern with domesticity appears at the intersection of three I distinct lines of theory and research. First, my analysis is informed by a feminist-inspired literature exploring the paid and unpaid work 01 caring performed mostly by women but occasionally by men (Fowlkes 1980; Hertz 1986; Weskott 1986; Tronto 1987; Di Leonardo 1987; Abel and Neb i son 1990; DeVault 1991; Diamond 1992; Glazer 1993; Gerstel and Gallagher I 1994)- Like the mid-August San Francisco tourist peering through the fog, J attempting to discern the contours of the Golden Gate Bridge, this literature I strives to discern^ the expansive structure of the work of caring. This caring I work is often hidden by the fog of gender ideology, by "official" definitions j of what constitutes work, and by the persistent devaluation of women, and I the forms of work associated with them (Kessler-Harris 1990; Kemp 1994; f Lorber 1994). This same fog envelops much of the work of loving and car- I ing within and among lesbigay families. Even much of the newer literature j exploring caregiving is restricted to care within traditional families, j The second line of thought relevant to this study emerges from the soci- i ological literature exploring the relationship of paid work to family life. This I literature investigates the division and organization of domestic labor within io introduction heterosexual families and includes the field-defining works of Komarovsky ..............(uk j: 196.0, Lopata (1971), Oakley (1974). Stack (1974), Bernard..(i982), Cowan (1983), Finch (1983), Gerstel and Gross (1984), Fenstennaker-Berk (1085), Rollins (1985), Hertz(1986), Smith (1987), Di Leonardo (1987), Danic Is (1988), Coltrane (1989), Hochschikl (1989), DeVault (1991), Romero (1992), and Glazer (1993). All of these scholars paid particular attention, either empirically and/or theoreticaliy, to exploring the breadth and depth of (domesticity^ and to integrating domesticity into social analysis and theory. The work of these scholars provided me with the "sensitizing concepts" (Blumer 1954) that guided my neldwork among lesbigay families and informed the kinds of questions asked of participants in the semistructured interviews (see appendix A). Central among these sensitizing concepts are those that illuminate much of the invisible work of domesticity, including concepts like feeding work - y> (DeVault 1991), kin work (Di Leonardo 1987), interaction work (Fishman 1982), consumption work (Weinbaum and Bridges 1976), emotion work (Hochschild 1983), and household status presentation (Collins 1992). These novel conceptualizations of work provide a wider and more inclusive understanding of what constitutes work encouraging us to recognize the political and economic factors that come into play in the process of defining what constitutes work worthy of wages and/or compensation (Zaretsky 1973; Tilly and Scott 1978; Collins and Gimenez 1990; Diamond 1992). Much of this kind of work remains invisible because individuals either are unaware of '/ its presence or they lack a vocabulary for naming the activities that consume their time and energy. Some of this work is intentionally invisible for a vari-': :■ ety of reasons. Sometimes making this work more visible might lead to con-> fiict within the relationship. At other times the invisibility of such work contributes to the perception of its natural or normal status, or in other words, one didn't really need to work at it. Moreover, many scholars have identified a persistent and vigorous effort to hide, and beke, the actual division of domes tic labor and/or the extent of that labor (Hochschild 1989; Romero 1992; Glazer 1993). Hochschild dis-\, covered the use of "family myths" (1989, 19), which are myths intended to veil the actual unequal division of labor yet simultaneously affirm the basic equality of the relationship. Hochschild's discovery led me to wonder if such myths might exist within lesbigay families as well. They do. When I first began the exploration of domesticity among lesbigay families, I was perplexed introduction by the public responses to my inquiry. My field notes capture dozens of -social occasions where couples, upon Icarning- about my research., -began to smile, giggle, laugh, and/or tease one another. Most of those occasions also ended with a clear public affirmation.of the basically equal-division of domesticity among those couples. Something was very strange about this. Why, if a basically egalitarian division of labor prevails in these families, should raising the topic provoke smiles, nervous laughter, teasing, and public affirmations of equality? Because lesbigay families are neither as egalitarian as they would like to believe nor as we would prefer that others believe. This, of course, does not make lesbigay families pathological or dysfunctional or exceptional. It makes them rather ordinary. Finally, a third line of research and theory influencing my work consists of the cross-disciplinary literature exploring lesbian, bisexual, and gay relationships and family life. A review of the research into the domestic lives of lesbigay families reveals the presence of a somewhat odd, historical pattern in the findings. Assuming the reliability of findings, lesbigay families before the mid-1970s lived rather different family lives than they did thereafter. The question of whether a behavioral change or an ideological change took place deserves closer attention, but let me describe the historical distinction that exists in the research. Social-scientific research efforts in the 1950s and 1960s examined gay and lesbian couples and concluded that one of the members of a gay or lesbian couple took on the "masculine" role while the other member took on the "feminine" role (Bieber 1965; Ellis 1965; Haist and Hewitt 1974; Jensen 1974)- Such a pattern conformed to the classical sociological distinction between "instrumental" and "expressive" roles within the family articulated by Parsons and Bales (1955), who argued that such a distinction of roles constituted ar> efficient division of labor within the family and provided for die well-being of all members. For Parsons and Bales, women in heterosexual families usually play the expressive gender roles, taking care of nurture, maintaining personal relationships, providing eiiiouoiial suiacc lO'ilieii who spend their days in the male sphere of competition and practical achievement. Within this model men play instrumental roles characterized by pragmatic concerns with sustaining the family economically. This Parsonian model also fits the stereotypical butch/femme hypothesis that many people used to assume characterized gay and lesbian relationships (Tripp 1975). In this model the butch partner plays the instrumental roles while the femme partner plays the expressive roles. introduction with expectations that partners should be similar in age and equal in power and should share responsibilities fairly equally" (1990, 344). My research findings stand in bold contrast to this more recent literature. In fact, my empirical findings strangely—and depending on one's perspective, perhaps disturbingly—resemble the work oi the earlier generation of scholars. A number of factors contribute to this marked discrepancy in findings. First, unlike much of the recent research, 1 base my analysis upon both in-depth interviewing and upon ethnographic observation of the everyday lives of multiple lesbigay families. This dual methodology reveals that a ~~y chasm exists between what many of my participants report during in-depth interviews and what they actually do in. their day-to-day lives. Moreover, unlike much of the recent research, I interviewed participants in lesbigay families separately yet consecutively. This prevented the development of "seamless" accounts so common among joint interviews with couples (Aquilino 1993). This interview strategy results in significant discrepancies between partners in their portrayals of domesticity. Given the depth of the interview schedule, I conducted the wide majority of these interviews on Saturdays spending the morning with one partner and the afternoon with the other. In the early evening I would meet with both to gather the remaining information, including the square footage of the house, photos of the grocery list, the living room, and of the inside of the refrigerator, a look at the calendars, the budget, and a list of financial transactions for the last week. Separate interviews with partners resulted in contradictory accounts of many aspects of domesticity. There were also many contradictions between .■y what the interviews elicited and what I observed in the field study. Such contradictions point to the importance of recognizing that powerful ideological pressures influence participants' answers to questions about domestic work. Other researchers have noted this phenomenon as well. The research of Hochschild (1989) among heterosexual families parallels my findings. She revealed a persistent tendency among heterosexual couples to assert equality through appeal to myths that hide unequal divisions of domestic labor (1989, 19-21, 43-49). Not only does a similar dynamic exist among lesbigay families, but it may even be stronger. Let me briefly review some of the possible reasons for this. First, many gay men opt for quite traditional masculine images for themselves; these men often draw clear distinctions between themselves and highly effeminate gay men. How might this affect the portrayal of domestic- 4 ity within the household? Joseph Harry found that in gay-male couples, most individuals held that they "dominated" decision making in the couple (1984, 67). Apparently, individuals resisted acknowledging that they may hold a extensively against notions of the effeminate man, and a hypermasculinity came into existence in the American gay-male community over the past few decades to combat this notion (Humphreys 1971; Kleinbcrg 1992). In a recent study in Australia, Connell found that most gay men embody quite traditional patterns of masculinity: "In this sense, most gays are 'very straight'" (1993, 746). Gay men in my study often deny that they hold more of the responsibility for domestic work than do their partners, even when it is not true, and they fiercely declare allegiance to egalitarianism. In parallel fashion, the extensive impact of the feminist critique of the heterosexual family has taken root among many lesbian families. Many lesbians, familiar with the extensive inequalities that exist in heterosexual relationships, perceive of lesbian identity as a way of escaping the dynamics of inequality. Among some lesbians there also exists a significant ideological"1 commitment to egalitarianism, especially among the baby boomers. As Faderman observed, beginning in the 1970s, an intense critique of butch/ femme roles for lesbians developed within feminism, and it became politically incorrect for lesbians to affirm such roles (Faderman 1992). This dynamic, prevents many lesbian families from even acknowledging drat any kind of differentiation takes place within the family unit, much less that some inequality might exist. Yet I found both differentiation and inequality in the domestic lives of many lesbian families, including among the baby boomers. Furthermore, partners in many lesbigay relationships work together to camouflage the actual divisions of domesticity and to prevent threats to the gender identities of their partners, particularly for women who do little domestic work and for men who do a lot. Countless examples of this dynamic appear in the pages that follow. Lesbigay people, particularly those exposed to higher education, are quite aware of the politics of social, research, and I suspect this influences their responses to social researchers, including me. 1 rpr^U niy ow1 : as an undergraduate, when my firstpartner and I were asked to participate in research conducted by the psychologist, Lawrence Kurdek (1988b; 1993V We each filled out long survey forms multiple times over the course of many years. As I reflect back on those occasions now and talk to my first partner about them, we both have come to realize i(i introih;ction that we shared an overwhelming concern about what the world was thinking about-gay-people. We were young gay men, in the midst of an epidemic, under;) track from right-wing political forces, and craving our place at the table. We portrayed our relationship in the reigning ideals of the era—equal, compassionate, balanced, and stable. In fact, it probably wasn't quite as ideal as we portrayed it. Perhaps we were unique. My subsequent research suggests otherwise. We were actually a lot like many families (both gay and straight), organizing our domestic life around our jobs with the resources (time, energy, money) available to us and strenuously avoiding the potential for stigma from others in how we portrayed and understood our family life. We also knew that we were ■ tokens, meaning that others would draw conclusions not only about us as individuals but about other lesbigay people as well, based upon their appraisal of us. We harbored a deep-rooted concern about the public image of our community. While a concern with the public images of the lesbigay community might well influence how lesbigay families portray themselves to the outside world, die possibility also exists that the social and historical context has shifted dramatically in the last two decades, and that this contributes to different empirical findings. Some of those researchers who found pervasive equality in the late 1970s among lesbigay families asserted that one of die primary reasons for this was die rejection of the model of heterosexual marriage for lesbigay relationships (Blumstein -and Schwartz 1083, 323-25; Harry 1984). Lesbian and gay marriage is now all die rage. This suggests something has changed. Perhaps the more conservative cultural climate encourages the lesbigay families of today to organize dieir family lives in more traditional ways. Finally, I suspect one of die central reasons for this discrepancy in findings results from distinct conceptualizations and measurements of domesticity. Unlike much of the previous research, 1 define domesticity broadly and avoid the reduction of the complex dimensions of domesticity into simple and narrow concepts. For instance, rather than reducing the processes of providing meals to a few questions about who cooks or who buys groceries, I instead observed and asked for details. In the next chapter, I explore feeding work (De-Vault 1991) in lesbigay families, and as that chapter will show, reducing feeding work to who cooks actually conceals more than it reveals about meal preparation. Many participants "cook" meals—meals conceived of by their spouses during their morning break, meals consisting of grocery items bought introduction by their spouses during dieir lunch hour on dishes bought and washed and put away by fhwn»pousesritaid^dlese" cWcep^oTisbFwIiaFto have for dinner often subsume within them extensive rosters of knowledge about what spouses like and don't like to eat, about nutritional and dietary concerns, about family finances, of inventories of the food products at home in die cupboards and on the shelves at the local grocery store. So while someone may spend forty minutes cooking a meal, someone else may have spent hours enabling die cooking of that meal. Much of this labor will be hidden from view by asking who cooks. Too many of the recent studies of lesbigay families ask too few questions about domesticity, conceptualize that domesticity too narrowly, and ask questions that invite participants to portray their relationships in normative terms. Many of these same studies blithely accept verbal portrayals of domesticity without giving consideration to the ways in which that portrayal reflects complex personal and political strategies for the participants. Caring and Domesticity among Lesbigay Families Many aspects of domesticity, from tending to the sick to planning an evening meal, involve care. Much of contemporary opinion about domesticity assumes diat women, either by nature or by nurture, intrinsically care for others (Chodorow 1978; Gilligan 1982). Care, in this widely held view, becomes an aspect of one's personality, often a component of a woman's femininity, This expectation, or perhaps more accurately, this imperative (Westkott 1986), that women care creates innumerable problems for lesbigay families. It creates problems because the assumption diat care intrinsically dwells within the personalities of women, and less so among men, transforms the men who do more caregivmg in gay-male families, and the women who do less caregiving in lesbian families, into gender deviants. The violation of diese gender expectations, a violation that must occur for lesbigay families to exist, creates the potential for stigma, and it creates the need to manage such stigma. Despite all the rhetoric of the modern era about the fluidity of gender expectations, and the praise of men who nurture or of women who pursue male-dominated careers, the stark reality remains that many if not most people are not comfortable with violating gender expectations. One will see this widi great clarity when looking at the lives of lesbian women on male-oriented career ladders or looking at the lives of gay-male "homemakers." introduction introduction These women, and men, as well as their friends and families, construct elaborate accounts to explain their identities to themselves and to others. The t men struggle with issues of self-esteem ancLself-Avorth. The high-powered-career, women struggle with feelings of guilt about their lack of involvement in domestic matters. In the pages that follow I investigate the work involved in managing such stigmas, including the management of the feelings and emotions that such stigma generates among lesbigay family members. In contrast to die view diat care or caregiving exists as an intrinsic aspect of personality, particularly of female personality, I will show that care is the ' product of caring behaviors, behaviors often structured by organizational and institutional needs and expectations. Those who engage in caregiving become known to others as caring personalities, and so I do not conceive of caregiving as some inherent aspect of womanhood. Male nurses and male flight attendants seem to me excellent examples of individuals who learn to care because the organizational context where they work expects them to do so. And even if heterosexual males in these professions seem to care in a more masculine way, in order to avoid the stigma associated with other people conceiving of them as gay (Williams 1989), the fact remains that they must engage in caring activities. There no doubt exists a strong cultural expectation that women should engage in caring activities—even women in high-powered careers must confront this expectation—but acknowledging that expectation is distinct from the assertion that caring dwells within women. Men care, and they sometimes develop nurturing, caregiving identities, depending on the expectations that others hold of them and die expectations they hold of themselves. Men in gay-male families serve as vivid reminders of this social fact because without their caring activities, their families would crumble. And even in those cases where their families are literally crumbling, as in the case of family members dying from HIV-related illnesses, the caring activities of gay men proliferate and flourish. Even so, much of die caregiving that transpires in lesbigay families remains hidden and frequently devalued. In so many respects, we do not possess vo- cabularies or tvDoloeies rh , X _ -L-------------r ^ u.UJV, WXX H$