I'll admit I should have read closer to have it sink in this was just a series of essays, but I still expected the content to be different than it was. This was in no way a "how to" for lesbians raising boys, but just stories of different women who have raised sons. It was overwhelmingly about these women dealing with their own ingrained prejudice against males, and dealing with appalling sexism from other lesbians who shunned them for having a "man-child". (One couple was told they "betrayed their species"--as if lesbian humans are a species unto their own).
However, "lesbians raising boys" might not even be a completely accurate description. This book wasn't so much about lesbian couples raising boys, but more about single lesbians raising sons they had from heterosexual relationships, or had while single. Then they had to integrate that child into their romantic relationships with other women, or women dating other them had to integrate the partner's children into their lives. There were many more stories of women (including the editor) who were single moms, and strangely enough a lot of outlier stories like a lesbian couple raising an M-F trans child and a lesbian who lived and co-parented with a gay man to raise troubled foster children. What more is that there were stories that I don't think should have been included at all, such as a butch lesbian's outings with her nephew, a woman who did not raise her son, but left him when she left her husband, and a long essay from a woman that did not even say she was a lesbian, but just appeared to be a heterosexual hippie feminist.
A lot of the issues in this book are outdated, as a good deal of the stories involve being gay/parenting young kids in the 70s and 80s. This is probably why the majority of stories involve women who had children with men first, rather than starting a family with their same sex partner. Were some stories good? Yes, some were. But I found some of the "important issues" the women who wrote these essays to be more about their sons playing with toy weapons rather than things that are more pressing or exclusive to women raising children. All in all this wasn't a very good book, and I wouldn't recommend it. I think the only time I would say someone should read some of these essays is if a lesbian about to have a son is overly prejudiced against males that they think they would hate him. Otherwise I'd look elsewhere if you want an actual parenting book.
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