This study reports how lesbian families negotiate their family identities via symbols and rituals. Sixteen couple interviews were conducted with lesbian co-mothers (for a total of 32 participants) who had their children via donor insemination in the contexts of their current same-sex relationships. Interviews were analyzed using grounded theory. Framed by symbolic interactionism, this study reports how these families negotiated affirmation and disconfirmation of their identities when interacting with families of origin, social networks, sperm donors, and community institutions.

The researchers adopted a dialectical perspective to study how stepchildren experience and communicatively manage the perception of feeling caught in the middle between their parents who are living in different households. The metaphor of being caught in the middle is powerful for stepchildren and this metaphor animated their discourse. A central contribution of the present study was to understand the alternative to being caught in the middle and what this alternative means to stepchildren. Reflected in the discourse of stepchildren is that to feel not caught in the middle is to feel centered in the family. Stepchildren's desire to be centered in the family was animated by the dialectic of freedom-constraint, which co-existed within the contradictions of openness-closedness and control-restraint. These contradictions are detailed in the analysis, along with advice to parents from the perspective of stepchildren. Implications for the interaction of stepchildren and their parents are discussed.

This study explores the processes by which a group of lesbian women report managing public-private dialectical contradictions at the external border between their relationship as a couple and networks, social norms, and laws. Specifically, 18 dyads and 2 individuals, all of whom had been in a committed relationship for at least 1 year, were interviewed about the rituals that are part of their relationship. Transcripts of the interviews were analyzed using grounded theory. Participants reported using the dialectic response strategies of integration and segmentation to manage the inclusion-seclusion and revelation-concealment dimensions of the public-private contraction.

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This study explores how lesbian couples negotiate public-private tensions in their display of relationally significant symbols. Interviews were conducted with 20 lesbian couples. The majority identified rings and homes (85% and 90%, respectively) as symbols that nonverbally communicate their commitment. Relational dialectics frames our explanation of couples' negotiation of the public-private tensions of these symbols. Couples dealt with tensions by choosing to display symbols either privately or publicly. Couples who displayed symbols publicly sometimes upheld and other times challenged heteronormativity. Couples who challenged heteronormativity were required to do more discursive work to call into question heteronormative standards.Researchers across disciplines have studied romantic relationships for decades. Scholars in the social sciences and the humanities have addressed how commitment between certain heterosexual pairs can be viewed as controversial by society. For instance, biracial couples, couples who marry younger than cultural standards, or couples who marry across social class boundaries sometimes meet resistance from social networks and culture at large, finding themselves having to negotiate their private sense of Elizabeth A.