Same Stork, Different Nests: Same-sex Parenting as Re-contextualized Social Practice in Primary Legislation and Advisory Literature

In this study we will be bringing together three different aspects of same-sex, specifically lesbian, parenting. We will begin by investigating the status provisions regarding parenting enacted by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (henceforth HFEA) 1990 and the amending statute HFEA 2008. Our underlying claim is that although the amending statute makes specific provisions for civil partners and same-sex parenting couples, it nonetheless maintains the strongly heteronormative framework present in the previous act, due to the fact that "Lesbian parenting represents a radical and radicalizing challenge to heterosexual norms that govern parenting roles and identities. It undermines traditional notions of the family and the heterosexual monopoly of reproduction" (Dunne 2000:11). In the second part of this study we aim to outline the language void which has been created by the above-mentioned acts when referring to the non-birth mother in a lesbian parenting couple. By law the non-birth mother, providing she is a civil-partner or has met the agreed female parenthood conditions, will be considered “a parent of the child” (HFEA 2008; Section 44 (1)) but never a “mother”, a title reserved for the gestational partner. This generic denomination may well have a trickle-down effect on the future relationships that the non-birth mother will establish with her children and with society as a whole. The practice of naming being a way of: "Not just representing the world, but of signifying the world, constituting and constructing the world in meaning [and it] contributes to the construction of systems of knowledge and belief ” (Fairclough 1992:64). In the third and final part of this study we will analyze a self-help booklet produced by the registered pro-gay charity Stonewall in partnership with The London Women’s Clinic and investigate the manner in which the words of law, medical technology and pro-lesbian emotional support reach the final consumer and are then reflected in the personal narratives which make up part of the booklet.