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The Heterogeneity of Family: Responses to Representational Invisibility by LGBTQ Parents

This article draws on qualitative research data collected in semistructured interviews conducted during 2013 and 2014 with 30 lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) parents living in England and Scotland. It explores how LGBTQ parents respond to media representations of families like theirs and build narratives of family identity from limited cultural resources. Media, encompassing a range of cultural representational resources, including advertisements, television shows, books, and films, produces specific knowledges about LGBTQ families. Participants argued that popular entertainment media (including Modern Family) offered a limited range of representations of LGBTQ parents and concretized knowledge about the shape of families. I argue that available representations fail to acknowledge the diversity of non-heterosexual family forms and that this representational gap results in sociocultural invisibility. I explore the responses LGBTQ parents had to such gaps and how they negotiated or rejected representational meanings in order to consolidate new narratives of family.