Same-sex parenting: what is or is not changing within the family? Twenty years on

The author looks back at some of the work done in the social sciences and humanities on same-sex families, with the aim of examining the concepts that help us account for the changes these families undergo. In particular, he examines two concepts often encountered in work on new family forms, that is de-institutionalisation and de-sexualisation. The former, which is specifically sociological, appears to be unable to describe the complex work of reinstating the family that is operative both in a legal framework and within same-sex families themselves. The latter shows its relevance in the socio-anthropological field, but raises questions if we rely on psycho--analytically-oriented research into these family configurations. While from an anthropological perspective there is no doubt as to the emergence of a dissociation between sexuality and reproduction, the same cannot be said of the unconscious psychological processes at play in becoming a parent, based on the representation of a primitive scene and on fantasies of psychic bisexuality.